R
rocketman
Guest
Four Winds Rally report
Ride to Four Winds Rally PA
OR
Rocket and Dawn go riding....
OR
Rocketing into the Dawn....
(well maybe not as that sound like I ran into her...
)
I headed out from work near Dullas around 11 AM Thursday for Berkeley Springs WV to meet Dawn (a member of our local riding group in the DC area) and arrived there around 1:15 and grabbed a couple of hotdogs from a little stand right next to the Hot Springs park. The ride up was nice along Rt. 50 to Sinkersville Pike to 522. For some reason though I couldnÔÇÖt seem to settle into the ride, something just didnÔÇÖt feel right about it; it wasnÔÇÖt the bike or the road or the weather, rather it was something I just couldnÔÇÖt put my finger on. Perhaps youÔÇÖve had that same sort of start to a ride yourself? Once I got into Berkeley Springs and was sitting in the park waiting for Dawn I half considered just bagging the whole thing, but after getting something to eat, I felt a whole lot better, so perhaps it was just hunger and having not slept well the night before. By the time Dawn showed up I was ready to roll, the felling of uncertainty having past, so we headed on up to PA. A little ways out and the sky just opened up on us and we held up under an overpass till the lighting stopped and the rain subsided enough to be able to see. Naturally as soon as we had stopped again to take the rain gear off it started raining again, this time not so hard so we just kept on going. After hitting several of the places Dawn had on her "hit list", including the Johnstown Flood park (located in what appeared to be the not so good section of town where you would not want to be caught in at night!) we crossed the river and headed up a hill overlooking the city. Once up there we started passing some pretty large homes, more like mansions or small estates. I couldnÔÇÖt for the life of me figure out where the money was to be made after seeing downtown Johnstown but looking at a map later I saw there was a fancy country club near there so I guess where there is a country club you have money coming into the area from somewhere. After hitting the last stop before Moundsville we decided to head to a motel and do the rest of the stops the next day before heading to the rally.
Time on the road for me was around 9 hours and nearly 300 miles.
Friday we left Greesnburg PA around 8 AM and headed to Mountsville, WV.
Moundsville was a nice little town right on the Ohio River just down from Pittsburgh where we "visited" the old prisin. From there we rode up to a park I wanted to visit in Pittsburgh called Grand View Park that overlooks the city from the south side of the river just above where the two rivers meet to form the Ohio. It sits up on a steep hill (which Dawn and I then road down, and it was quite a desent with some nice switchbacks thrown in). Unable to find the entrance for the one way road into the park I headed up past the do not enter sign and drove the bike right onto the observation platform as the grounds keeper looked on. He just shrugged his shoulder and continued cutting the grass as if he was used to crazy motorcyclists driving into the park the wrong way and riding right on to the observation platform. Dawn had parked just outside the park road but then went and got her machine and drove on up to observation deck as well (IÔÇÖm such a bad influence! Ha Ha!) HereÔÇÖs the first pic, my bike parked by the railing with Pittsburgh in the back ground.
And a small version of the panorama I took with the G9
You can see the larger one here
panorama and then slide the arrows at the bottom of the image to pan left or right.
I did shoot a few shots at the Mountsville stop of the old prison but havent processed those yet so..on to the rally
After getting in one more stop for Dawn which took us almost all the way to into Ohio, about 4-5 mile shy of it, we back tracked to New Bethlehem and went to the park that Dawn had programmed into her GPS ( which we later christened ÔÇ£DurfusÔÇØ, if you have a GPS you can probably imagine why ) only to discover it wasnÔÇÖt being held there so we headed back to the town proper and then in an ever decreasing radius spiral which took us down several rather steep gravel roads (tons of fun on fully loaded road bikes!) we finally found the rally and set up camp shortly before evening set in. We spent the better part of Friday on the slab and managed to skirt around the various rain showers in the afternoon hours and really only got sprinkled on and never enough to require stopping to don rain gear.
PA has some really strange signage that I noted on the ride Friday, the first one that struck me odd and I canÔÇÖt figure what it refers too was a large sign painted on the side of an overpass we went under that stated in large block letters (with an arrow pointing to a road leading off to the right) ÔÇ£SCRAP LEVEL PAINTÔÇØ Huh? What is scrap paint? And how does one know ÔÇ£levelÔÇØ scrap paint from, say Unlevel scrap paint??? (and here I didnÔÇÖt even know there was a need (or market) for scrap paint of any kind!)
The other two I liked were road signs that stated in one case ÔÇ£NO RETARD BREAKINGÔÇØ Again , WTF??? Retard breaking, isnÔÇÖt that a bit insulting?? I mean these are government signs, seems a little less than PC to refer to individuals as ÔÇ£retardsÔÇØ. The only thing I can figure is that the town where this sign was must have had a problem with inmates escaping from the local institution and folks in the area had been taking out their frustrations on these poor souls. Still, it did seem they could have phased it better.
Then there was the one obviously directed at motorcyclists which stated quite clearly Use Less Gear. As we know PA does not have a helmet law and its now clearly obvious to me why this is so. Its quite appearant that they are hoping that by discouraging the use of helmets and gear, they will reduce the motorcycling population numbers to a minimum and thereby rid themselves of the scourge of having such low-life individuals living in their midst; but still, a government sanctioned program of eradication of a sub-set of an emerging lifestyle seems in rather poor taste (to say the least!), certainly glad I dont live in PA! But enough of this social commentary, this is after all a motorcycling report not a socio-political rant
Rounding up the totals for Friday, around 10 hours of riding (with stops) and nearly 300 more miles covered.
Now for some shots at the rally
They had some field games Saturday, one of which consisted of a two up event where the passenger had to get a pretzel held in the mouth thru the hole of a bagel covered in cream cheese two contestants got it dead on..
A few hole-shots
There were number of nice old airheads there, at least 8 that I counted. (dont these things EVER break?????) and most were much nicer looking than mine! (as is usually the case...)
Heres a shot of an old mill/refinery of some sort, just cause I like old machinery
Both mornings started out very cool (in the low 60ÔÇÖs) with a heavy mist.
Which made having the fire from the night before still glowing in the AM nice to sit near while having my morning coffee..and much nicer than the non-existant one back at BMWBMW headquarters)
IÔÇÖve also noted that at all the events IÔÇÖve been at that are held in public campgrounds that have permanent trailers set up used as a permanent home, there seems to be an unwritten rule that the trailers be surrounded with an odd-ball assortment of cheap, rather trashy looking oddments and ornamentations.. this one even had a sign in front with the words ÔÇØTrailer TrashÔÇØ on a wooden board nailed to a tree, Ha Ha!
Sunday we packed and departed for home around 8 AM. I had preprogrammed my GPS to take us home via non-highway routes as I didnÔÇÖt trust ÔÇ£dufusÔÇØ to be capable of such after the rather round-a-bout route it had brought us to the rally site on Friday. Well was I in for a surprise, seems that now my GPS had become infected by Dawns and went we took off it insisted we travel north-west when in fact we should have been traveling south-east! Then a few miles into the ride, the roadways displayed on the map started to vanish and according to the GPS we were now traveling in some gray ether-real plane of non-existence! Humph! I restarted it several times and tried a variety of options but it kept insisting we travel in the exact opposite direction from where we wanted to go. So now I have named my GPS ÔÇ£Dufus IIÔÇØ. After a few false starts I simply used it as a general map and found my own route home. Also within a few miles of starting out my traveling companion began to drop behind ( I suspected she thought that my leading was no better than her attempts when relying on ÔÇ£dufusÔÇØ to guide us and simply "made up" the story about "lossing" me) so we soon parted company and each traveled their own way home. Interesting enough when we talked later that evening, it turned out both dufus and dufus II had the same general routes in mind even though we had different ultimate destinations, which simply re-enforces my suspicions that Dufus infected my GPS! (Yet another reason to question the wisdom of traveling with her again!) Ha Ha!
So finally some shots from the ride home thru PA
I also passed several (what I thought at the time) were Nuclear Power plants one within only a mile or so and thought of stopping to take a picture or two till I noticed a slight glowing from parts of my unprotected exposed skin, so beat a hasty exit up and over the next rise. I have since discovered they were not nuke plants, so much for the rosey glow... Oh well....
All told I rode 910 miles in 19 hours and 15 minutes of traveling time, based on that I should have gone another 90 miles and I could have qualified for an iron butt (had it not been for the fact that is was spread out over two and a half days! Then again do the rules specifically state they have to be consecutive hours???:.)
Tourizmo, my 78 airhead ran wonderfully, (as always, well OK, mostly) and I am pretty confident that the relay shortage that happened recently was not caused by another factor, the relay simply failed by itself. We also hit a top speed of 77 Mph, which was petty good considering she is ÔÇ£compressionally challengedÔÇØ at this point and was fully loaded with camping gear for the weekends adventure. The only thing I noted was that the left side valves became noticeably noisier, although I had recently set them (and YES, I did the right side too, Mr. smartly pants!) but it was still quieter than a few other airheads that rode by me at the campground. 30 years, 170K plus miles, admittedly badly abused by myself (I ride the p*ss out of it, never wash it, and donÔÇÖt always do maintenance right on time, etc) yet she just keeps on puttzing down the road,,, donÔÇÖt these airheads EVER break?? Or, as the man with the watch used to say, as it was being run over by a steam roller, ÔÇ£Takes a LickinÔÇÖ, And keep on TickinÔÇÖ ÔÇØ
RM
over and out..
Ride to Four Winds Rally PA
OR
Rocket and Dawn go riding....
OR
Rocketing into the Dawn....
(well maybe not as that sound like I ran into her...
)I headed out from work near Dullas around 11 AM Thursday for Berkeley Springs WV to meet Dawn (a member of our local riding group in the DC area) and arrived there around 1:15 and grabbed a couple of hotdogs from a little stand right next to the Hot Springs park. The ride up was nice along Rt. 50 to Sinkersville Pike to 522. For some reason though I couldnÔÇÖt seem to settle into the ride, something just didnÔÇÖt feel right about it; it wasnÔÇÖt the bike or the road or the weather, rather it was something I just couldnÔÇÖt put my finger on. Perhaps youÔÇÖve had that same sort of start to a ride yourself? Once I got into Berkeley Springs and was sitting in the park waiting for Dawn I half considered just bagging the whole thing, but after getting something to eat, I felt a whole lot better, so perhaps it was just hunger and having not slept well the night before. By the time Dawn showed up I was ready to roll, the felling of uncertainty having past, so we headed on up to PA. A little ways out and the sky just opened up on us and we held up under an overpass till the lighting stopped and the rain subsided enough to be able to see. Naturally as soon as we had stopped again to take the rain gear off it started raining again, this time not so hard so we just kept on going. After hitting several of the places Dawn had on her "hit list", including the Johnstown Flood park (located in what appeared to be the not so good section of town where you would not want to be caught in at night!) we crossed the river and headed up a hill overlooking the city. Once up there we started passing some pretty large homes, more like mansions or small estates. I couldnÔÇÖt for the life of me figure out where the money was to be made after seeing downtown Johnstown but looking at a map later I saw there was a fancy country club near there so I guess where there is a country club you have money coming into the area from somewhere. After hitting the last stop before Moundsville we decided to head to a motel and do the rest of the stops the next day before heading to the rally.
Time on the road for me was around 9 hours and nearly 300 miles.
Friday we left Greesnburg PA around 8 AM and headed to Mountsville, WV.
Moundsville was a nice little town right on the Ohio River just down from Pittsburgh where we "visited" the old prisin. From there we rode up to a park I wanted to visit in Pittsburgh called Grand View Park that overlooks the city from the south side of the river just above where the two rivers meet to form the Ohio. It sits up on a steep hill (which Dawn and I then road down, and it was quite a desent with some nice switchbacks thrown in). Unable to find the entrance for the one way road into the park I headed up past the do not enter sign and drove the bike right onto the observation platform as the grounds keeper looked on. He just shrugged his shoulder and continued cutting the grass as if he was used to crazy motorcyclists driving into the park the wrong way and riding right on to the observation platform. Dawn had parked just outside the park road but then went and got her machine and drove on up to observation deck as well (IÔÇÖm such a bad influence! Ha Ha!) HereÔÇÖs the first pic, my bike parked by the railing with Pittsburgh in the back ground.
And a small version of the panorama I took with the G9
You can see the larger one here
panorama and then slide the arrows at the bottom of the image to pan left or right.
I did shoot a few shots at the Mountsville stop of the old prison but havent processed those yet so..on to the rally
After getting in one more stop for Dawn which took us almost all the way to into Ohio, about 4-5 mile shy of it, we back tracked to New Bethlehem and went to the park that Dawn had programmed into her GPS ( which we later christened ÔÇ£DurfusÔÇØ, if you have a GPS you can probably imagine why ) only to discover it wasnÔÇÖt being held there so we headed back to the town proper and then in an ever decreasing radius spiral which took us down several rather steep gravel roads (tons of fun on fully loaded road bikes!) we finally found the rally and set up camp shortly before evening set in. We spent the better part of Friday on the slab and managed to skirt around the various rain showers in the afternoon hours and really only got sprinkled on and never enough to require stopping to don rain gear.
PA has some really strange signage that I noted on the ride Friday, the first one that struck me odd and I canÔÇÖt figure what it refers too was a large sign painted on the side of an overpass we went under that stated in large block letters (with an arrow pointing to a road leading off to the right) ÔÇ£SCRAP LEVEL PAINTÔÇØ Huh? What is scrap paint? And how does one know ÔÇ£levelÔÇØ scrap paint from, say Unlevel scrap paint??? (and here I didnÔÇÖt even know there was a need (or market) for scrap paint of any kind!)
The other two I liked were road signs that stated in one case ÔÇ£NO RETARD BREAKINGÔÇØ Again , WTF??? Retard breaking, isnÔÇÖt that a bit insulting?? I mean these are government signs, seems a little less than PC to refer to individuals as ÔÇ£retardsÔÇØ. The only thing I can figure is that the town where this sign was must have had a problem with inmates escaping from the local institution and folks in the area had been taking out their frustrations on these poor souls. Still, it did seem they could have phased it better.
Then there was the one obviously directed at motorcyclists which stated quite clearly Use Less Gear. As we know PA does not have a helmet law and its now clearly obvious to me why this is so. Its quite appearant that they are hoping that by discouraging the use of helmets and gear, they will reduce the motorcycling population numbers to a minimum and thereby rid themselves of the scourge of having such low-life individuals living in their midst; but still, a government sanctioned program of eradication of a sub-set of an emerging lifestyle seems in rather poor taste (to say the least!), certainly glad I dont live in PA! But enough of this social commentary, this is after all a motorcycling report not a socio-political rant
Rounding up the totals for Friday, around 10 hours of riding (with stops) and nearly 300 more miles covered.
Now for some shots at the rally
They had some field games Saturday, one of which consisted of a two up event where the passenger had to get a pretzel held in the mouth thru the hole of a bagel covered in cream cheese two contestants got it dead on..
A few hole-shots
There were number of nice old airheads there, at least 8 that I counted. (dont these things EVER break?????) and most were much nicer looking than mine! (as is usually the case...)
Heres a shot of an old mill/refinery of some sort, just cause I like old machinery
Both mornings started out very cool (in the low 60ÔÇÖs) with a heavy mist.
Which made having the fire from the night before still glowing in the AM nice to sit near while having my morning coffee..and much nicer than the non-existant one back at BMWBMW headquarters)
IÔÇÖve also noted that at all the events IÔÇÖve been at that are held in public campgrounds that have permanent trailers set up used as a permanent home, there seems to be an unwritten rule that the trailers be surrounded with an odd-ball assortment of cheap, rather trashy looking oddments and ornamentations.. this one even had a sign in front with the words ÔÇØTrailer TrashÔÇØ on a wooden board nailed to a tree, Ha Ha!
Sunday we packed and departed for home around 8 AM. I had preprogrammed my GPS to take us home via non-highway routes as I didnÔÇÖt trust ÔÇ£dufusÔÇØ to be capable of such after the rather round-a-bout route it had brought us to the rally site on Friday. Well was I in for a surprise, seems that now my GPS had become infected by Dawns and went we took off it insisted we travel north-west when in fact we should have been traveling south-east! Then a few miles into the ride, the roadways displayed on the map started to vanish and according to the GPS we were now traveling in some gray ether-real plane of non-existence! Humph! I restarted it several times and tried a variety of options but it kept insisting we travel in the exact opposite direction from where we wanted to go. So now I have named my GPS ÔÇ£Dufus IIÔÇØ. After a few false starts I simply used it as a general map and found my own route home. Also within a few miles of starting out my traveling companion began to drop behind ( I suspected she thought that my leading was no better than her attempts when relying on ÔÇ£dufusÔÇØ to guide us and simply "made up" the story about "lossing" me) so we soon parted company and each traveled their own way home. Interesting enough when we talked later that evening, it turned out both dufus and dufus II had the same general routes in mind even though we had different ultimate destinations, which simply re-enforces my suspicions that Dufus infected my GPS! (Yet another reason to question the wisdom of traveling with her again!) Ha Ha!
So finally some shots from the ride home thru PA
I also passed several (what I thought at the time) were Nuclear Power plants one within only a mile or so and thought of stopping to take a picture or two till I noticed a slight glowing from parts of my unprotected exposed skin, so beat a hasty exit up and over the next rise. I have since discovered they were not nuke plants, so much for the rosey glow... Oh well....
All told I rode 910 miles in 19 hours and 15 minutes of traveling time, based on that I should have gone another 90 miles and I could have qualified for an iron butt (had it not been for the fact that is was spread out over two and a half days! Then again do the rules specifically state they have to be consecutive hours???
:.)Tourizmo, my 78 airhead ran wonderfully, (as always, well OK, mostly) and I am pretty confident that the relay shortage that happened recently was not caused by another factor, the relay simply failed by itself. We also hit a top speed of 77 Mph, which was petty good considering she is ÔÇ£compressionally challengedÔÇØ at this point and was fully loaded with camping gear for the weekends adventure. The only thing I noted was that the left side valves became noticeably noisier, although I had recently set them (and YES, I did the right side too, Mr. smartly pants!) but it was still quieter than a few other airheads that rode by me at the campground. 30 years, 170K plus miles, admittedly badly abused by myself (I ride the p*ss out of it, never wash it, and donÔÇÖt always do maintenance right on time, etc) yet she just keeps on puttzing down the road,,, donÔÇÖt these airheads EVER break?? Or, as the man with the watch used to say, as it was being run over by a steam roller, ÔÇ£Takes a LickinÔÇÖ, And keep on TickinÔÇÖ ÔÇØ
RM
over and out..
