I’ll get back to the Declaration of Independence once I get back to The Suck. For now, I’ve been on mid-tour leave, and life has been good. The guys tell me things are going pretty well over there, so that’s reassuring. I made sure to bring my camera(s) home with me, and have been pretty diligent about taking pictures, so this is gonna be a long post. I’ve also got a cable-modem connection here at the house, so there are gonna be lots and lots of pictures and even some video!
Made it home okay, and after managing to get on as a standby passenger on the first thing smoking out of the ATL, I caught a ride with a retired AF Col from the airport so I surprised Amanda at home about 4 hours before I was originally even supposed to leave Atlanta.
Couldn’t come home without visting the in-laws, and couldn’t possibly take this picture of my nephew and not post it. Too cute:
We then went to VT to spend a week, for our first real “don’t have to do anything or see anybody we don’t want to” vacation. 5 nights in the 1850 River House B&B just east of Montpelier. Doug and Libby were very gracious hosts, and the experience was wonderful all around. Gratuitous Link Here. Getting both bikes in the truck was a bit of a challenge, as the Dodge has a 6′ bed where the F-150 had a slightly deeper and wider 8′ bed. We managed to get it sorted without killing ourselves, and had use of the bikes for 3 days of running all over VT and NH.
Day One: Southern Loop
The roads were at worst Fair over the beginning of this route, with frost heave damage being the major concern. However, I do prefer the clean but cracked road surface on Rt 12 over the ‘covered in tar snakes’ version that most other states would resort to. Vermonters understand it’ll just crack again next year, so as long as the road surface is drivable, don’t mess with it. You’d literally have to cover the entire lane width with tar snakes to fill in all the cracks on some roads. However, they were not bumpy most places, which made that surface much better than the slippery mess the tar would be. We stopped in Woodstock for lunch, and walked over to the local covered bridge:
A little further down the road, I hit a bit of a milestone:
Somewhere in the intarwebz, I’ve got a picture of where the bike rolled 10k. I was on the way to the Bug Bash (Annual biker party in OH), and it rolled as I was headed in for fuel. I missed the 20k picture, I was somewhere in the vast expanse of AZ, and didn’t have a camera. Of course being in VT, this time it happened in a scenic location:
The point of day one for me was the little stretch of road labeled “Buels’ Gore” on Google maps, just between Bristol and Waitsfield along Rt 17. I’ve seen it called the ‘Dragon North’ in reference to the Hwy 129 madness that is The Dragon, down in NC/TN, and though it’s quite a bit shorter, it is a well deserved reference. Full lanes, excellent sight lines in most corners, good pavement… yep, it’s a motorcycle road for sure. Here’s a look at the scenery from the top:
Of course the point of day one for Amanda was not the MC road, but what was at the end of it: A tour at the original Ben & Jerry’s plant in Waterbury:
Day Two: Mt Washington
With the exception of the middle section of the Auto Road going up the mountain (unpaved) the roads on this entire day’s riding were in the good to excellent category. I don’t have a wildlife picture, but that’s only because I was trying to avoid hitting said wildlife. Just after we cleared the interstate over in NH, what at first appeared to be a very large Irish wolfhound started out in front of us from the side of the road. As the hindquarters cleared the bushes, we realized it was not a dog, but a specimen of the Ursus americanus variety (black bear, and a good sized one too!). It didn’t even glance at us, it just kept hauling ass to the other side of the road where it disappeared back into the bushes. Wow. We continued on to the base of the Auto Road at Mt Washington, where Amanda informed me that she wanted to ride her own bike up. Another Wow. For those not familiar with the road, it climbs some ~4600 feet in 7.6 miles, with grades in excess of 20% in places. Not a beginner’s road. But she did it!
My brother Mike was kind enough to give me a copy of his Canon Camera software disc, which contains an automatic photo stitching program. Thus, from the top, I was able to shoot this panorama from the observation deck behind us in the picture above. Be warned, it’s freakin huge…
Day Three: Smuggler’s Notch
Situated between Stowe and Jeffersonville is VT 108, which passes up over a shoulder of Mt Mansfield, the highest point in VT. Most of the road is two-lane, but at the top of the pass the double-yellow goes away for about half mile, and the road necks down to just over a lane wide at the top. Here’s Amanda wheeling through the very highest point on the road:
And here are two full-size SUVs not wheeling through. The one on the right had to wait for the other one to clear the bottleneck…
Not a ‘Motorcycle road’ per-se, but definitely a road bikers should ride through. No sight lines, zero run-off, and as you can see no room for error. But gorgeous. Truly gorgeous.
Saturday: NYC
We stopped by and visited my brother and his wife (along with my parents who had come up from NC). This of course meant we had to stop by Karen’s work (a vet clinic) and visit their new adopted kitten, Chester:
He’s blind, as his eyes did not fully develop, but he’s cute nonetheless. We hit a little place in southern Harlem for dinner, and then went to see Spamalot on Broadway. Hilarity. Genious. Sunday we drove the 10+ hours back to OH.
Two wheel Tuesday:
I took the bike over to Kil Kare raceway to see what I / she could do. With the hydraulic clutch and my preference for trying to keep the front end on the ground on throttle instead of the clutch…
It was needless to say a difficult task. I did get better:
Best run of the day:
This is at least a respectable time for a stock-motor ‘hawk, with -1 on the front and +1 on the rear sprocket. I am no drag racer, as was apparent from the SV650 I ran against a couple times which leaped off the line and which I had to drive past every single time. If I could launch like that, I would have dropped to the low instead of the mid 11’s. The hydraulic clutch is a bear to slip smoothly, so it’d take me much more practice to get this right. Still, I’m happy.
Last, on the way home from the strip, I managed to get a knee down for the first time (minus my unscheduled get-offs). On a pair of Left-right 15mph corners near the house, I dropped it to 1st gear since I was stuck behind a couple of cars, backed way off, then rolled hard on the right hander as they cleared ahead of me. Yeah baby:
Mission accomplished. More later from back in The Suck.
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