Monday, July 28, 2008

Trike Riders Int'l Trip Day 8

250 miles to home.

There's no place like home.
Click-click-click
There's no place like home.
Click-click-click
There's no place like home.
Click-click-click

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Sunday, July 27, 2008

Repost Of Day 6

Something is awry with my original day 6 post.

Here's the gist:

350 miles in 10 hours does not a record make. But, our slow pace kept us behind a line of storms except for the last 10 miles.


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Trikes Riders Int'l Trip Day 7

450 miles in 12 long, long hours.

Plus side: short day tomorrow.

Did Deals Gap. Police everywhere. Nobody went fast. But it was fun.

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Friday, July 25, 2008

Trike Riders Int'l Trip Day 5

Definitely the hottest, most uncomfortable day of the trip so far. Mid 90s and high humidity are mutually exclusive to comfort on or off a bike.

More trikes have shown up and none of the hotels are without trikes in their parking lots.

It appears my wife and I are the youngest couple attending. There's a message in that. I wonder what it is?

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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Trike Riders Int'l Day 4

Maybe about 300 trikes (?) on the first day. The vendor turn out was less than expected. We checked them out, and then hit the road for a ride in the area.

We road on the flatest, straightest, most anti-motorcycle roads we've ever ridden. One stretch was even without other vehicular traffic--eerie.

More trikers are expected tomorrow, the first full day of planned events.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Trike Riders Int'l Trip Day 3

Can't use rain as an excuse for the 9:30 start today. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful morning for riding. After 8.5 hours, we rode the 305 miles to Sikeston. All total, we've traveled 960 miles through VA, WV, MD, OH, IN, IL, and MO.

Under a vivid blue sky, we zoomed along the southern border of IN amidst fields of preprocessed ethanol. After passing one field, I noticed two deer on an intercept course with us if we maintained our speed. I signaled to slow down but my wife had already seen them and was braking. They noticed us just as the got to the edge of the road and turned back the way they came.

Tomorrow the Rally begins.

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Int'l Trike Rally Day 2

Waiting for the rain to stop, we got off to a late start at 9:30 am. Nine hours later, we covered 335 miles to Clarksville, IN. We side stepped rain by changing our route to first head west and then south rather than the other way around. The nominal distance this route change added more than paid off by staying dry.

The run across Ohio was not as picturesque as yesterday. This was offset a bit by slightly lower temperatures.

We're looking forward to rolling into Sikeston tomorrow.

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Monday, July 21, 2008

Int'l Trike Rally Trip Day 1

Off at 8:30am, we rode Rte 50 from WMA thru West VA to MD back to W VA to OH where we arrived at about 6:00pm. 321 miles, 72.2 max speed, 44.1 mph avg.

It's nice to see rural areas still exist. It's nice to know curvy mountain roads are still being repaired. If only it didn't tie up traffic so.

Time to crash. Planning about 350 miles tomorrow.

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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Test Of Lifecast App

This is a test of the Lifecast app on the iPod touch. If all is well, I'll be using it to update the blog during the trip to Sikeston.

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Road trip to Trike Rider's Int'l Rally

No suspension bridges for the rest of the month at least. My wife and I will be heading west to Sikeston, MO to attend the first annual Trike Rider's International Rally. We'll be making the 850 mile ride over 3 days--could do it faster, but can't come up with a compelling reason to do so. We'll hang out at the rally for at least 2 of the 3 days and then take 3 days to get back home. If you see me with my red & white Valkyrie and my wife with her champagne colored Goldwing trike, wave.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Four bridges on July 12th


Initially thinking about Gettysburg Bike Week, we decided instead to continue our summer project of photographing Virginia's suspension bridges. Because of a tight schedule, we needed to make this a day trip. And since we've seen nearly every bridge that's an easy day trip from home, planning for this one promised to be a bit challenging. We intended to see a bridge in Strasburg, one that I some how missed on an earlier trip. Then, on to three others in the Williamsville area about 200-miles south. There was no way around this being a long ride.

Breaking our "no Interstate" rule, I traced out a route that included I-66 and I-81 to expedite getting to the bridge locales. We started at 7:30am heading for Strasburg. 12.5 hours later we rolled back into the garage having made a "side trip" to stop at a diner in Fredericksburg for dinner. Though a long trip, we had a good time and the weather cooperated (no rain).

Strasburg






Williamsville
There are three bridges along Rte 678. The photos are in north to south order.






Tuesday, July 8, 2008

A wet 4th of July suspension bridge trip


The luck from our previous two near misses with rain (June 21st and June 14th) was bound to come to an end. It did on July 4th. On our way to west central VA where nearly 20 suspension bridges are clustered, the rain and/or threat of rain forced us to change our plans of visiting at least a dozen bridges. On the 2nd day, a line of strong thunderstorms passed our hotel early in the morning with a second line forecast to follow. We decided to leave for home after the first line and ride at a pace that, hopefully, would keep is between the two. We succeeded in getting home without getting wet but also without visiting most of the bridges I had hoped to photograph.


View Larger Map

Looking eastward, a snapshot of Google Earth zoomed in showing our GPS track and push-pins of the bridge locales we were able to visit during our short first day in the area:


Rockbridge Baths
Our first stop was near the small town of Rockbridge Baths along the Maury River. Next to the US Post Office is a foot bridge crossing the river. In full downpour, I snapped a quick pic, did my requisite cross to the other side, and return. We hopped on our bikes and headed for Lexington to find a place to eat lunch and dry out.



Griffith
Luckily, the rain stopped after lunch. Rather than go to the hotel, we decided to use the time to visit as many bridges as we could before it started to rain again or got dark. We planned a route that would loop us around passing several bridges. Our first stop was near the town of Griffith where two bridges are close together along state route 630. We were able to photograph the first bridge, walk to the second, and photograph it as well.




Goshen Pass

Looping around Rte 42 to 39 and just northwest of Rockbridge Baths is the bridge at Goshen Pass. This turned out to be the final bridge we visited on this trip.




Trip stats:

  • 435.5 miles
  • overall avg 32.5 mph
  • moving avg 44.3 mph
  • max speed 93.6 mph (whoops!)
  • total time 13 hrs 22 min (not including over night)
  • moving time 9 hrs 49 min
  • stopped 3 hrs 33 min