Ohio trip....day 1

I met up with Brent in Perth this morning and we headed out.
Crossed into the US at Landsdowne, and had no problems.

Rode through Watertown and Syracuse, and headed to Ithaca.
Not a bad town, but kind of touristie .
 From there we ended up in Hornell NY.
Seems nice.

We are at the Bates motel.....

Oh well....

I will figure out how to post pics tomorrow.


Al

1 more sleep !

Heading out tomorrow with Brent for Ohio Bike week.

The weather is looking pretty iffy down there for the weekend....could be doing some wet riding.

Oh well !
There are worse things to do.
I have rain gear good to go, and it will still be a great adventure.

At least Thursday and Friday are looking not so bad....we will arrive dry, I think.

We have a place booked about 17 miles out of Sandusky, so if there are some less rainy times, we can just head into town to see what is going on.

Just checked gas prices in Ohio...premium is going for just under $1 a litre ( regular is around $0.95/liter)...considerably less than the $1.43 I gassed up the bike at last night in Nepean.
That rocks !

Just gotta throw my stuff in my travel bag tonight, and I am good to go.

If I have wifi in any of the motels down there ,  I will update our goings on in the evenings.

I found this on the sphincternet...certain members of my family will get the joke.

al

4 more sleeps!

Just 4 more sleeps until I head out for Ohio with Brent !

Forgive the bad language above..but that is exactly how I am feeling .
Can't be helped.


All kinds of things to do to get ready...go over the bike with wrenches to make sure nothing is loose, clean it, get some American money.....
Double, triple and quadruple check that my passport is packed.

Calls for some tunes....

"Ain't got the blues" from B.B.S.
Seems appropriate.


And as for today, I am getting ready to head out  meet up with Brent in Lanark and ride.
It is kind of windy,  cold and crappy at the moment...butt his past week has really sucked weather - wise, so I am still looking forward to it.

Friday's ride

I took a vacation day on Friday.
Sunny, warmish...good planning Albert !



1st some tunes:

More Blackberry Smoke.


So I was up with the birds Friday morning good to go, and left at 7am.


I headed up past Perth and stopped at Silver Lake.

Kept going and I was in Madoc. I had decided to go towards Bancroft and do the Boulter road to Combermere.

Great ride on the Boulter, but some sections of road were pretty rough, and had a lot of sand on them.
Made for slow riding.
Oh, well !

On the Boulter Road

Just outside of Combermere, I stopped at the logging park I had visited with my family last summer while on holidays.
Lots of water this year.
Last year we were walking across the rocks...I wouldn't try it now now.

And did I mention...the black flies were outrageous?

I stopped in Combermere and bought some bug stuff..it was crazy.
Even Ned Stark would have had a problem with them.

I love this place.
Wish it was mine....

I kept going up Old Barry's bay road to the Polish monument.
From the little bit of English on the signs, it is apparently a monument to the Polish  boy scouts killed in the 2nd world war aiding the resistance.

In Barry's Bay I stopped to pay my respects to Cheryl....Dan's sister.
Someone does a great job off making sure there are always flowers there.
Still a sad thing.

Barry's Bay was getting busy...lots of long weekend travellers starting early.

Came home through Wilno, Eganville, Cobden to 17.
Traffic coming into Ottawa was almost nonexistant.
Traffic heading away?
Crazy.
Big lines of people caught behind  "drive below the speed limit" geeks.
You know the kind...clutching the steering wheel, gaze welded to the front, impervious to honking, tailgaiting,
flashing high beams....
Secure in the knowledge that by going a constant 82 km/hr in a 90 zone, that all is good in the world.
ROR ( raff out roud )

Today is sunny again.
Going to ride with my wife, do some canoing...a real killer of a day :)
Just going to enjoy the long weekend.

Settling into Routine

AHHHH..
How I love summer routine!

On sunny days if the weather is decent, I ride to work.
Weeknights, I try to get out for even a little spin...could be a 15 minute'er...something...
Weekends....a ride day with my wife or a friend.
Now,  maybe a canoe outing with my wife to throw into the mix ( radical change, that ! )
Cut the lawns, do some weeding.
Play some guitar.
Eating on the patio with family.

I am quite content to be living life this way.
Maybe it isn't action packed... but I don't care.


Just enjoying the good life, my way.

I have a 4 day weekend starting tomorrow.
Monday is a holiday, and I took Friday off as well.
Going to do some riding, some gardening , some guitaring and some canoing.
How excellent does that sound?

Now some tunes to start it all off :

More Blackberry Smoke.
Song is called One Horse Town.
Can't not love this !

Beautiful Sunday.

1st...a musical interlude.

Beautiful Sunday by Daniel Boone from 1972.

So lame it is truly awesome.
Everybody remembers it...and turns it up when it comes on the radio.
you know you do....

Anyways, that was what  today was like. Sunny, 26 degrees. no wind...

Met Brent for breakfast in Lanark, did the Calabogie run.

Stopped at the lake in Calabogie.

Went to Renfrew, Eganville, and then back to Kaladar via highway 41.
Big sections of 41 seemed to have been redone last fall, I guess. The pavement was in amazing shape.

We stopped at Silver Lake of course .
Pics didn't turn out.

Perth, Carleton Place and home.
Nothing special...just great weather, and a ride with a good friend.

A beautiful Sunday, indeed.

Now this is more like it!

The last few days have been awesome weather-wise.
Mid 20's C. and sunny.

A few weeks back when I changed my holidays around for Ohio at the end of May, I cancelled a week off mid May, and spread it out over some long weekends.

This past Friday was one of those days off.

Sunny and 22 C.
YAY!

I headed out to Arnprior through the back roads, and then followed the River road to the dam at Portage.
The water is super high.
Quite awesome, really.

From there I headed to Kazabazua through Campbell's Bay and Otter Lake.

Rode to Maniwaki, and then the Mont Laurier.

Enjoyed a lovely lunch of PFK (....KFC in the rest of the world  ).....and headed back.

Highway 309, which runs from Mont Laurier to the 50 near Buckingham is great.
Lakes, rivers,rolling hills, small towns...

I stopped in a little town called Notre-Dame-de-Pontmain.
The view from town just struck me as particularly pretty, for some reason.

Imagine waking up every morning and seeing that ?

I had forgotten that in Quebec, the speed limit is only a suggestion....a reference point.
I was driving 100-110 km/hr on a 90Km road, and being passed like I was standing still.
Passing lanes are apparently optional as well..I got passed on hills, curves..you name it.
No road rage or like that, from the drivers...they usually waved as they blew by me....they just drive fast.
Even the bikes.
Not that there was a lot of traffic...the roads were quiet.

I was lucky enough to hit Hull and Ottawa just at the start of rush hour, but coming back along the Ottawa River Parkway, it is not so bad.
The view is at least good.

Friday night my wife and I joined the ranks of the Birkenstock wearing / granola crunching crowd, and bought a canoe.
Saturday morning for the inaugural test run, I wore cut off jean shorts, and a tie-dye shirt with an eagle on it.
Not intentionally...but funny in retrospect.
Old guy..ponytail...cut off jean shorts..tie dye shirt...canoe.... I was a walking/paddling stereotype!!

Well it is now 6:22 am and time to get ready to head out for a Sunday ride with Brent.
Meeting in Lanark for breakfast at 8:30.
It is calling for sun and 26 degrees.

I can live with that.

Yes...Yes I can.

Change of change of plans

I mentioned before that we were not doing Laconia in New Hampshire this year.
The plan was to got to bike week in Pennsylvania at the end of June.

Well, we have changed our minds.
Old guys are allowed to do that.
We are going to bike week in Sandusky Ohio at the end of May.




It is right on Lake Erie.
In 2012 they figure there was 150,000 bikes there over the course of the week.....not too bad.
And...Ohio is a no helmet state! ( people 17 and younger have to wear one....seems legit to me )
Hurrah!!!
+/- 5 weeks from now... a ride with no helmet....the way it is supposed to be.

See below a picture from last year in Ohio  that I found on the sphincternet ...doesn't it look so right?

Happy Helmet-less people

A musical interlude....

Blackberry Smoke...a band I have been really enjoying lately.
Kind of country/southern rock.
Easy to listen to, and not extreme in any way.
check them out...

and now...back to our program!

 On the way down to Sandusky, we are going to stop in the Ithaca New York region to visit the Finger Lakes.
There are supposed to be a ton of waterfalls to visit there.
Something new.

We are actually going to take 2 days to get to Ohio...it is 1000Km/630 Miles.
No need to kill ourselves....it is about the ride and the scenery.

Only 25 sleeps until we go !!!!!

Spring is here...YAY !!!

23 and sunny today.
Finally.

I haven't been blogging because I am ranted out, and haven't done any noteworth rides because the weather has sucked, for the most part.
Would you want to bother reading about a ride to Richmond, or Carleton Place?

1st some news...I got my oil leak fixed with the help of some gasket glue from Brent.

The offending gasket

Inside the primary

Gasket seal from Brent

And the whole operation went off with no ecological disasters of any kind.
There will be no fodder for family gatherings...
And I am not leaving a puddle of oil everywhere I park.


I went for a ride Saturday night with my wife, and we went down to Remic's rapids, where the stone sculptures are.
As you can see below, there is no rock exposed to build sculptures on...the Ottawa river is super high right now.

Today I got up early and headed to Brent's in Lanark, for breakfast and then riding.
We didn't do anything huge, but stopped at Silver Lake, of course.

From there we went up to the Snow road.
This road is an original colonisation road that has been there since the mid 1800's.
It connects with what is now highway 7 and runs to Elphin and around.

We stopped by the Mississippi River to stretch.

Parted ways with Brent in Watson's Corners...he headed home from there.

I came home via the Calabogie run, and then to Burnstown and Arnprior.

Not a huge run, but we were just enjoying the day.
Everywhere we stopped, people were talking to us, and just being friendly.

There were a ton of bikes out with this great weather...by the time I got home I was biker waved-out...

I have a 3 day weekend next weekend, and hope to get some longer rides in.
The week is looking kind of crappy...starts with rain tomorrow.

But the important thing is that...SPRING HAS SPRUNG !!!

More oil....

There is a little gasket in the primary where the mid controls were removed when I had forward controls put on, that is now on a list I have going.

Last year there was a point when every time I stopped, there was a little puddle of oil under my bike.
It's a Harley, so a little is not a big deal, but this was getting to be a pain in the ass.
Plus ....I was taking a shit kicking from my lovely wife.
It reached the point I needed to do something about it....

Maybe a slight exaggeration...but not by much.

I did some research and discovered that it was probably the tower gasket, which is a $2.00 part.
That is cool.
The only thing is that to get at it you have to drain the primary.
So add in a $20.00 quart of replacement oil.
Stripped a bolt removing the derby cover...a $25.00 bit extractor set.
Decided to replace all the bolts with allen key stainless...another 10 bucks.
And another oil spot on the laneway.
Sweet!

The good news is that I have what appears to be the same leak happening.
Yay !
I won't have to deal with stripped bolts etc....but it is like eating pudding with a fork...it is do-able, but still a pain in the ass.
And I just changed my primary oil....that is 20 bucks down the drain.
Makes me almost want to say "fuhuuu...ck dude....". But I won't, cuz that would be rude, and I am never rude.

On another front...the weather is getting cold and crappy again....at least for the next week.
Jesus H Christ!
It's April...it should be bug bite season...not turn on the heat season.
I am once again forced to wonder what kind of retards my ancestors were.

No excuse at all for the Italian side.
None at all, Precious.

I can kind of understand the British/Scottish side staying here... Britain and Scotland ?...nuff said.
I mean would you go back to a place where rotten teeth make you a real looker?

I think not.
The United Kingdom is also a place that any tan above Vampire-white is considered amazing, because of their weather.
Un-fricken believable.

Still, that leaves us all holding the "leaky bag of dogshit", that is weather in Canada.

On the positive side?
It looks real nice in the 14 day...above 10 and sunny..... if they can actually forecast that far.
Let's hope.