Ride With Tank

Here we are in the deepest, darkest bowels of winter.

This is the worst time of year for folks like us.   Nothing really to do but watch the calendar and wait for summer to come back.

There is one point of light on the horizon: the Cleveland Cycle World International Motorcycle Show. This gives us a chance to at least go out and see some motorcycles. 

This year there will be 19 manufacturers at the show:  Aprilia, BMW, Buell, Ducati, Harley Davidson, Honda, Hyosung, Kawasaki, KTM, Kymco, Moto Guzzi, MV Agusta, Piaggio, Star, Suzuki, URAL, Vespa, Victory and Yamaha.  If you ask me that list cheats a little bit.  I don’t see Star and Yamaha as being different manufacturers, but why get picky about it?

There is a little something for everyone at the show no matter what you ride or what type of riding you do.  I’ll be there so if you miss it you will feel bad when you see what a great time I had!

I got an email a few days ago from a guy who had crashed his V-Strom.  He saw the story of my bike on the V-Strom forum, and contacted me because he wanted to buy my old bike.

I called Geico and found out that my old bike was sold at auction on January 3.  In a way it makes me kind of sad that some unknown person has my old bike, but I just have to remind myself that it is just a motorcycle.  It is crazy that you can get attached to something like a motorcycle.  I hope whoever the new owner is can put it to good use.  My worst nightmare is for the Orange County Chopper guys to get it and turn it into some kind of a stupid chopper.

I sure hope everyone got out and enjoyed it, because today was a spectacular day!

This is the kind of weather I would like to have every January!  Warm and even toward the end of the day the sun was out!

This gave me a chance to get the new bike out and get the odometer to 600 miles!  I took a ride up north and checked out the helmets at Shadetree, then I stopped at a Suzuki dealer in Mantua, then I rode around Berlin Lake, Lake Milton, and Meander.  It was so nice to get out I feel like a new person!

Since I made it to 600 miles I was able to get my first service out of the way!  I was feeling so good I even washed the bike!  Now I am officially ready to go for spring.  I could hop on the bike right now and head for the mountians!

Not much chance that is going to happen.  Tomorrow will still be warm but it is going to rain, and then Wednesday winter returns. 

Well folks, thats another Christmas done with.

I had a great Christmas.  The family bought me a new camera and it is really fancy and nice.  I guess next year if the pictures on the site are no good all the blame will be mine.  This camera is so fancy and so nice I should have some really nice pictures to post next year!

I am still transferring the old  rides over to this new site format.  It really is a time consuming process, but eventually I will have it finished.  Much of my time has been taken up these last few weeks with the http://rideohio.org forum.  It has really taken off faster than I ever expected it to.  There are a lot of great folks on the board and it is pretty active.  We already have more than 3,000 posts.  If you have not checked it out yet, make sure you do!  I am sure it will end up wasting an awfull lot of your time!

I was really hoping to go on a Polar Bear run on 01/01/08, but the weather does not look like it will be acceptable. 

Don’t forget the Cleveland motorcycle show is just a few weeks away!  I am sure I’ll see lots of folks up there again this year! 

Here in Ohio we have a lot of motorcycles.  In fact there are only two states that have more motorcycles registered than Ohio.  This is kind of amazing when you consider how crappy our weather is.

Even though we do have crappy weather, Ohio does have a lot to offer motorcycle riders.  We have the Lake Erie coastline up north and the hills to the south.  Most any type of riding can be found here in Ohio.  There are an enormous number of rallys and poker runs and other events.  The problem is, we have no convenient source of information on riding here in Ohio so we have started the Ride Ohio forum. 

This has been tried before with limited success.  The thing that is hard about something like this is getting the ball rolling.  It can only be a success if there is participation, so I encourage everyone to register and post up an introduction to get the ball rolling.  Click here to go to the site!