Two of them were there with their spouses and we had a great visit. Compared bikes, our collective of installed farkles, talked tech and in general geeked out. It even included some wine chat! :D
Pics taken by 'Nachodaddy' of Stromtrooper.com
Our meet thread
Geeking out!
Got a couple of great ride hints of routes to check out, so I loaded them up in the GPS with my final destination of the day to be Aberdeen WA, and hit the road.
Hitting the road
Made my way to two areas, Bald Peak and Cornelius Pass, both were short but very fun rides. Bald Peak went straight up and over a small mountain. Thought I was in trouble on the way down as I certainly abused the speed limits on the route and passed a couple of cars and on the way down there was a state trooper driving up the opposite side. I was going pretty slow at that point due to the extreme rate of descent and the switchbacks. However, I was nervously checking my mirrors to see if the trooper would turn around and come get me. Whew, thankfully no tickets. This entire trip I've been very very lucky with the law enforcement not pulling me over. I have certainly abused a lot of the speed limits and every time I've come across the popo, they'd already had someone pulled over, or my spidey sense had me back off not 30 seconds before. :D
My only regret about leaving Oregon was that I was riding through some of their wine country and the air was filled with the scent of fermenting grapes. Oh damn, did I ever want to stop for a couple of days to go do some wine tasting and maybe ship a few bottles back home. Plus I really wanted to go check out the Spruce Goose, its home is in McMinnville.
I was pulling into Longview WA just as the sun was setting, I had planned on riding to Aberdeen that night, but with it getting dark and being a rural area, I didn't want to risk any inadvertent close and personal meets with the local deer. I like venison, but not wedged into the front of my bike and that undercooked!
Next morning, as the weather peeps had forecast, it was pouring!
I was hoping that it would subside a bit later in the morning so I delayed leaving until 11am(checkout time at the hotel). Still pouring hard! Suited up in my long winter underwear, jeans, two shirts, electric vest and gloves, plus the waterproof pants and jacket, away I went. Nice and toasty, for all of 20 minutes until my boots started to leak at the seams and filled with water. :(
I scrapped any idea of continuing the ride further onto the coast and headed for the nearest bike shop that had a large selection of gear. In this case, Renton Motorcycles. Picked up these sexy boots and had nice warm and dry feet all the way home. Even in a torrential downpour at 130-140kph on the I5!
As I hit the customs line up the guy directing traffic felt sorry for me(he came over to commiserate how wet and cold he was, thinking I was sharing the pain) and directed me into the duty free line missing out on about an extra 10 minutes of waiting.
When my turn with customs came up, I thought to myself, I'm not taking my helmet off unless asked, it's too wet and it means taking off my gloves to do so. So off came one glove to fish out my passport. The officer asked me the routine questions, and then in the middle of that, blurted out "hey, is that an aftermarket windscreen?" turns out he's in the market to buy a V-Strom himself and had a few questions for me about it. In the end, he didn't even want to see my passport and just waved me on home.
After I arrived home, I fired up MSN to get in touch with Q, and then told her I was still on the road and was staying in Port Angeles that night. After finding out she hadn't had dinner yet, I picked up some takeout and showed up on her doorstep. :)
It was a good trip, but I'm glad to be home.
1 comment:
me too ;)
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