Ride of Silence

Today was a day off that was scheduled long ago to allow ourselves to enjoy the Cowboys-Eagles game on prime-time Sunday Night Football. At the time, we had no idea it would be for first place, but this is a brutal rivalry and we are both rabid fans of our own teams. We knew this was gonna get ugly.

We were pleased to see the unseasonable weather of Sunday (see previous post) forecast to continue through the beginning of the week, so we'd not only be able to stay up late and sleep in past our usual 5:00, we'd also be able to get a ride in when we did get up. The problem is, would we be on speaking terms?

So, we began to refer to the upcoming Monday as the Ride of Silence. After all, the nice thing about being on the bikes is you don't really talk much to begin with. At least we'd be 'together.'

Of course, none of this came to pass, despite the fact that someone (me) did, in fact, have to lose. See pix added at bottom for the bet. We woke up none the worse for wear, and hit the road smiling.

The male half of us needed another 300+ miles to hit 10,000 for the year, so we made an effort to get most of it at one shot. Donna already passed that mark, but since Annie was a little under the weather for a while after our Canada trip, I did a couple of our rides on a bike borrowed from Dad. We got about 275 of it, and I'll be turning in my 10k for sure when the club records the numbers next week.

We met Dad for breakfast and headed west. The Pike Tavern in Gettysburg became our lunch stop and turnaround point, but not until we'd found one of the goofy roadside oddities that I love to sniff out. Behold, the Haines Shoe house of Hallam, PA:

With the super-short days this time of year, we got home after dark, but were plenty warm thanks to the unseasonable weather. My guess is this is probably the last ride of any length we'll get in for a few months. I have my hands full with maintenance on both bikes and a couple cars now anyway, so it's probably a good thing. We just need to make room in the garage to work.

THURSDAY ADDENDUM:Good sport that I am, I have attached below a couple pix of the payoff of the Eagles' loss to the Cowboys Sunday night. The public appearance was at our HOG meeting in front of 100 of our good friends. What fun.

I Stand Corrected

A few posts back, I stated that the odds of one of those random "off-season" days perfect for riding actually occurring on a weekend, are significantly less than the 2 of 7 that your prob & stats teacher would have had you believe. So, of course, after weeks of freezing, wet, and cloudy weather, we find oursleves basking in warm, 70-degree sunshine on this fine November Sunday morning. And, to make it the perfect (anti-) storm, there isn't even an Eagles or Cowboys game to miss in the afternoon. In fact, they play each other in a much-anticipated Sunday night game.

Soo... no-brainer, right? Bikes down the driveway, off to destinations unknown. God bless us.

You'd be 50% right. (Can't get these statistics right, can we?) While Donna had worked diligently all day Saturday and early Sunday morning, the other half of KevAndDonna was trapped in a 2-hour line for a flu shot after ducking out of same on Saturday. Now, mind you, this was for a savings of something like $20-$40. Free drive-through flu shots for the masses, just come and get in line. So, there Katrina and I sat. And sat. And sat. Of course, the problem was that after a half-hour you really had no idea how much longer it would take, and you didn't want to piss away the time already spent. Then once we finally got into the parking lot, we were trapped in a staging area and couldn't get out if our asses caught fire.

At this point, I realize that if they had told every taxpayer in Lehigh County that they had to appear there, or could pay $20 to waive it, there would be 15 people there, and the county employees would have had Aerosmith at their Christmas party. But give away a $20 flu shot for free, and the whole county comes.

Lesson learned.

So, Donna got in a nice ride. After our ordeal, Katrina and I did manage to get my car waxed while I did two oil changes. You know, the crap that you realize in the middle of winter that needed to be done, and you really need a nice day to do them?
She does look pretty good cleaned up, don't she?



Also going back to an old post, Katrina's reward for the hard work was her first lesson driving stick shift. We'll spare the details, but suffice it to say we'll need a few more lessons. She'll get there. And she has pictures of herself driving the Mustang, so she's excited. Daddy rocks.

Lastly, all was not lost after all. Because Cowboys-Eagles was Sunday's late game, we had taken another day off Monday just in case. And wouldn't you know it, the weather is supposed to be almost as good :-). Details to follow.

My Name is KevAndDonna, and I'm an Alcoholic

It has been duly noted long ago that Kev and Donna are not good at sitting still. We actually do spend time doing things other than riding or drinking, but you'd never know it by reading our blogs. Then again, do you really want to read, "today we did 4 loads of laundry, took the girls driving, went to a soccer game, then came home and logged in to work to catch up on stuff before making supper and watching Desperate Houswives."

Didn't think so.

Okay, maybe some stories about us teaching our daughters how to drive would be entertaining. But this isn't KevAndDonnaAndCourtneyAndKatrina.

So in our defense, the last post had absolutely no mention of brewed or distilled beverages whatsoever. This one, conversely, is nothing but, and here the bikes stayed parked all weekend. Actually, that wasn't the plan, but that's how it worked out.

Our HOG Halloween party was last weekend, and the theme was a pajama / slumber party. Donna's idea was to be my teddy bear and I would be the little boy with the blankie. We went to the costume shop with that as a primary, but alas, the teddy bear didn't fit. So, aww darn it, we had to move to Kev's idea, which was Hugh Hefner in his smoking jacket and pipe and his bunny on his arm. Donna was in reluctantly (or at least having given the appearance of reluctance...) with the proviso that there would be no overt sluttiness, especially with Kevin's mom expected in attendance. We hit the target with a (semi-) tasteful fairy costume in pink, and ditched the wings in favor of a set of bunny ears. The killer, though, was the stop-traffic shoes: clear spike heels laced in ribbon all he way up those sexy calves. Jesus, if my tooth fairy looked like that I'd have been on my 5th set of dentures by graduation.

Since we had the accessories found and bought, we just rented the jacket again for this week and reinvented the playmate with an unused costume from last year. And since this was a Kid Free Weekend (every 6 weeks for us) we maximized our investment by finding a party on Friday night. (Remember the 'not sitting still' part?) In between there was the bike raffle Saturday morning.

So the schedule went like this: Friday night, get home from work, get dressed, go party. Get home late, get up, get showers, stop at the Harley dealer for the Halloween sale on the way to the bike raffle. Drink free beer until someone else wins the bike. Leave, go grocery shopping, go home, recall it's a kid-free weekend, get another shower, and get dressed for Halloween for the third time. Party with our rowdy friends to Donna's favorite band, and drink free beer. Get home late.

Sunday morning, we actually did get up early for the Philly toy run, but it was raining at 5 and the radar promised no improvement down the Turnpike. We heard a couple bikes rumble past, but we figured we were being guided from above to rest. And the house was empty...