Never trade the thrills of living for the security of existence
Yesterday I took a ride to Mantua HD for the pig roast. After that I took a ride into Cleveland and along Lake Erie. Click here for the pictures and the story.
I received my Deals Gap shirt in the mail, so I am pretty happy now. I have ordered a Deals Gap license plate – “129 DG”, but I have not received it yet. Some people thing I am going a little overboard with the Deals Gap thing, but I don’t think it has gone too far. Yet……..
I decided pretty late in the day to head on over to Mantua HD to go to the Hog Roast. I did not leave home until about 12:15, but there was still plenty of food when I got there. I know Tony and Jan were going to be there and we hooked up as we waited in line to pay to get in. The swap meet was not very big, and the bike show was pretty small, but the food did not disappoint. How can you beat roasted swine? I got some swine, some beef, and some baked beans. The baked beans were extremely excellent. I did not get any of the potato salad because I am a macaroni salad kind of guy, but the potato salad woman was really cool so I took her picture.
Once I had my fill I headed north up 44 to Headlands Beach. I followed Lake Erie down into downtown Cleveland. As I was driving through Cleveland I thought about how last week I was in the Smokey Mountains and how different this ride was. I headed south out of Cleveland and as I approached Medina I saw Romeos pizza on my GPS. I had marked a waypoint for it months ago because I intended to get some pizza there this summer. We saw a Food Network show where they had a pizza competition and they won all kinds of prizes. I test fit some boxes and found that three medium pizzas would fit in my trunk, so that is what I bought. Turns out they were pretty good, but that is a long way to go to pick up a pizza!
Wow, I cannot believe it is October. The nights are getting pretty cold. Jim, Mark, and I returned from our Deals Gap ride last Sunday. It was an excellent ride. I don’t think you could have a bad ride when Deals Gap is your destination, but this really was an excellent ride. The people at the Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort are really great. Every single person there is just so friendly and helpful it is crazy. Mark is hooked. When we were on our way down I asked him where he was going to put the Deals Gap stickers on his bike and he looked at me like I was crazy. He said, “Are you crazy??? This is a brand new bike!!”. Two days later he was coming out of the store with stickers and looking at his bike trying to decide where to put them. There is no finer place to go on a motorcycle, and there is no finer place to stay than the Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort. It took me a long time to update the site, but here are pictures from our second trip this year to Deals Gap. Killboy.com took a lot of great pictures of us on Friday.
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Jim, Mark and I are on the top of Mt. Mitchell and the clouds are blowing through the parking lot. Mark and I are very impressed buy Jim has seen this before.
Whenever I told people I was going to Deals Gap, they kept asking me, “Didn’t you just go there a couple of weeks ago?”. Yes I had, it makes no difference because deals gap is “The Best Place on the Earth”. Well, at least it is the best place I have ever been to. The whole area lives and breathes motorcycles. There are so many great roads you could ride for years and never get tired of them.
We started out early on Wednesday. Mark and I met up at 5:40 AM and hooked up with Jim at 6:00 AM. There are not too many reasons why I would be up and about at that time of morning on a day off.
We took 77 South to 81, across to 40, and down 129. It was about a 640 mile ride, but it was a pretty easy ride. We had a lot of fog as we were driving through Ohio, but by the time we got to West Virginia the skies were sunny and the temperature was warm.
