Ride With Tank

You know, this weather just won’t stop!  I can’t believe we had another excellent weekend.  I know I told everyone who asked that I would not be riding this weekend.  I know I said I had too many things to do to get ready for the next two big rides.  I really did.  The wife really, really wanted to go riding so I did not want to deny her needs.  We ended up throwing the tent on the bike and going camping up to Tionesta.  Had a great time.  We rode to Tionesta, set up the tent, and then did the 666 to 6 to 66 loop.  You just have to like that loop because of all the sixes!  This morning we headed north into New York and then back across along Lake Erie and home.  It was really nice too do a more relaxed ride.  We only rode 400 miles total for the entire weekend.  Saturday night we went to sleep and did not wake up for 11 hours!   I justified this ride as preparation for the week long ride in October.  I’ll be camping on that trip and I figure this would be good practice to see if I had everything I need.  I guess I already knew that but I did need an excuse for riding instead of doing what needed done. 

Don’t forget that next weekend is the Virginia ride!  This is going to be a spectacular ride.  The weekend after that I am leaving for the Gap.  I am probably going to take several days on the way down to ride the Parkway. 

Well, another great trip south is over.  I stayed at Deals Gap from 09/01 and left on 09/07.  I took three days going home and got to ride the Blue Ridge Parkway and visited Shady Valley. 

What a great trip it was.  I was kind of worried the THP would take a lot of the fun out of it, but I managed to avoid them and had a really great time.  I really can’t say they affected me at all.  The times when they were out the road were so busy it would have been hard to enjoy the road anyway.  While I was there they did seem to be pretty decent.  I kind of forgot about them on Friday on my way out and came around a turn to find two of them pointing right at me in a pulloff.  I looked down and found that I was going over 50mph.  There was no response from them.  I think you draw a lot less attention to yourself if you have a quiet motorcycle and you are not spinning the engine up.  I suspect if they can hear you coming from a mile away it kind of gets them all worked up.  Even if you are riding slow they are going to nail you because they have been anticipating somebody who is riding really fast. 

I switched to a Metzler Tourance again for this trip, and I did miss the sticky rubber, but the Tourance will last a lot longer and I am going broke buying tires.  The first week of October I plan to get with Fat Tommy and get a new front tire.  I’ll let everyone know how it goes.

We have a two day trip planned to Virginia at the end of the month.  If you don’t know about it you are not on the mailing list so click here and send me a message and I will bring you up to date and add you to the list.  This is going to be two days of the most spectacular riding you have ever done.  It looks like we might have a pretty decent turn out for this one.

I know it has been a while since I did an update, but with going to work, and riding motorcycles, and going on vacation it is hard to find time to update the site!

Last week we were at Deals Gap.  We lucked out and got one of the apartment rooms at the Gap so we did not have to camp at all!  It was kind of a bummer that we packed and hauled all the camping equipment with us all week.

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Ok, so I finish my update, upload to the server and I am about to go on with life.  I decide to check my email and here is one from Verne about the Deals Gap situation.  I am really hoping it makes no sense at all, because most of the emails I get make no sense and then I don’t have to continue updating the site, but Verne makes sense so I have to go back to work again.  Here are his thoughts:

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One thing stuck out in the statistics on tickets issued at Deals Gap last weekend:  Two tickets for “Riding Standing Up”.  I just could not see how this could or should be against the law.  I contacted Mr. Browning to see if I could find out why riding standing up deserves a ticket.  There are many circumstances where this is exactly the right thing to do.  It is the safe thing to do.  If a giant pothole appears in front of you that you cannot swerve around what do you do?  Stand up.  Really rough railroad tracks?  Stand up.  How do dirt bike riders ride?  Standing up.  Here is the answer I got:

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