Monday, July 26, 2010

92 and Rising

We spent the day Saturday in Provincetown MA aka P-Town. Provincetown is on the very tip of Cape Cod. We took the ferry there from Boston on Saturday morning and planned to spend the day walking around the little town, do some people watching, take some pictures, have lunch, and then take the late afternoon ferry back to Boston. The ferry is about 90 minutes. If we were to drive there it would have taken at least three hours so the ferry was a much better way to go. We had a nice day. On Sunday, I went to the Yankee Beemers monthly breakfast meeting in Southbridge MA. The Yankee Beemers is a motorcycle club with primarily BMW owners as members, but there are a few Triumph, Ducati, and other bike brand riders as well. My friends Marc and Valerie are members as well so we met along the Mass Pike and went down there together. After the meeting we hit the road for a ride around CT and RI. The temperature hit 92 around 3:00. We only did about 200 miles that day. It was mostly a social riding day. It was too hot to do anything else on Sunday. Les and I had an early dinner and went to Arlington MA for ice cream and then called it a night.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Vermont in the Heat

It hit the low 90's last weekend and I decided to go for a ride in full gear. Crazy? Maybe, but I always look at extreme weather as a rider training opportunity. It's good to ride in different kinds of weather to improve skills and push yourself to see what you are capable of. Many riders do not like to ride in the rain, but I love it. The harder the rain the better. I once rode four hours up Vermont in heavy pouring rain to a rally and I discovered that I really like riding in the rain. So, last Saturday morning I met Marc and Valerie at one of our meeting places along US 2. They beat me there which is not the norm. When I got there, Marc was topping off his tank and we chatted for a bit. The first thing he said to me was "are we really doing this?" It was 7:00 am and kind of cool outside, but we all knew it was going to be a scorcher. We booked up to Vermont through some very nice roads in New York while the weather was decent. Our routine has been to basically ride north until lunch time, park it for lunch, and then head back south on a different route to get home. The whole time I chase Marc's blue K-rocket beemer (see picture). That's basically what we did on Saturday and I didn't really feel the heat until around 3:00. We did the hills and curves along VT 9 on the way back and that is one of my favorite roads in VT. Very smooth, but traffic held me back a bit. We ended the day in Chelsea where we met Les for a nice dinner at Ecco in East Boston.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

The Catskills

My friend Marc and I met along the Mass Pike at 7:30 Saturday morning for an adventure in the Catskills. I knew it was going to be a long day. It was 4th of July weekend and it was going to be hot. I was, of course, in full Aerostich gear. I had my long LD comfort undergear along with a nice wicking shirt so I stayed relatively cool until the end of the day when it got really hot. I probably drank about half a gallon of water and only had to go to the bathroom once so that gives you an idea of how warm it was in all the gear. Anyway, the ride started out very nice with some great roads through MA and CT heading to NY, but slowly the traffic started to increase. Marc warned me that there was no easy way to get to where we were going. We hit a lot of lights and traffic heading to 23a in NY. Once we got there though, the road was as advertised. 23a is one of the best motorcycle roads I've been on. It wasn't as nice as the White Forest in NH, but it was pretty nice. We buzzed uphill most of the way on 23a and then had lunch at a place called Maggie's Krooked Cafe in Tannersville NY. Marc was really bragging-up this place. I guess he's been there a number of times, but I thought it was just alright. The location was perfect though. It is right on top of the 23a mountain. We hung out there for about an hour before hitting the road back home. We decided to take a different way home through part of VT. It started to get incredibly hot once we dipped into western MA around 5:00 in the afternoon. We took Hwy 2 in western MA which is basically the Mohawk Trail the whole way. It was a nice ride with no traffic. I've been along the Mohawk Trail before, but I always hit traffic so it was nice to really book through there without traffic. It was shady most of the way until we exited the Trail and got on the straight route back to Boston along Hwy 2 and baked in the sun the whole way home. I got home around 8:00 pm so it was a little over 12 hours and about 550 miles on the clock. A nice bit of riding. I am planning to take the RT to Second Wind BMW this Saturday for some much needed mid-season maintenance.