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...

Yo, Adrian

Workin' is for suckers!

KevAndDonna had some extra PTO to burn before the end of the year, and we put aside an unscheduled day for that bolt from the blue when the weather is supposed to be perfect for riding and we sit looking out the window. Even in the winter you get those surprise days, but as the corollary to Murphy's Law states, the odds that this will happen on a weekend is nowhere near as good as 2 of 7.

Last weekend, that day looked for all the world like the coming Thursday, and with the year-end craziness right around the corner, we put in our PTO first thing Monday. I will say at this time that the weather never did get as sunny as the forecast called for even that very morning. But we stayed dry. And Donna got to try out her new 'lectric gloves.

Philly is home to what is allegedly the largest rolling toy run in the country. Of all the things we've done, we've never been to that, so we were going to try like hell to get there on Sunday. This made it an easy decision to take an old horse-and-buggy road down to the COBL and take Donna on a cheesesteak tour while scoping out the rendezvous point for the run.

I will say at this time that I can take you to any number of places in the Lehigh Valley, including J's Steaks and Subs, and get you a better cheesesteak than you will get in the streets of Philly. But I had to prove this to Donna, and it's kinda fun to be elbow-to-elbow with a bunch of lunch-bucket types and have 'em trow da food at youse when it's ready. We were going to be in the neighborhood, so...

First stop was Tony Lukes, down near the stadiums, where you order and they take your name and give you a slip. And you wait. About 5 minutes in, they called for Adrian, and we wondered to each other if the dude just did that for posterity purposes, or if it was actually his name. There are a LOT of Italians in South Philly. Anyway, we got an American Wit, and it was no better than decent in our humble opinions. Next, we headed up 10th St. to Passyunk Ave., home of both Pat's and Geno's. Since we'd already split one cheesesteak, we just ordered a Provi Pizza Wit from Pat's and skipped Geno's. We did go over and look at his choppers, though.

On the way out, we did a flyby of Independence Hall, and tipped our cap to ol' Billy Penn on our way around City Hall. Up past the Art Museum (Rocky Balboa nowhwere to be found) and thru Fairmount Park to Donna's test for the day. Parking at Pat's, her foot slipped in the busted macadam and loose gravel and she almost dropped the bike right there in that sorry-assed torn-up street. But my girl's not just good looks, and had the strength and skill to save it. That' wasn't the real test. Now, in Fairmount Park, Lincoln Drive was milled, still wet from the runoff of days of rain, and packed with traffic. For a couple miles, it's a 20-mph speed limit thru some crazy blind hairpin turns in a city park. But none of those SUV drivers wanted anything to do with 20.

Of course, by now we know that Donna will prevail, and prevail she did. In a few more minutes, we were headed up 309 just in time to beat the evening rush. Fuggedaboudit.

Recuperating

We're back home, a little worse for wear, but all smiles nonetheless. And, my bike has proven itself to be fixed, so I guess I replaced the right part. Now I just need to figure out where my gas mileage went...

The weekend started off a little sketchy; we rode back to my apartment to get some stuff I forgot, and ended up riding into rain. Then, we barely kept ahead of it once we did turn around and get headed south.

It seems that every ride we go on, Donna ends up having to pass some kind of test. Dirt roads, nighttime rain, gale winds, whatever. I test her. This time, I pulled the secret cord and launched my helmet and rainsuit bag into her path 5 minutes after we took them off. She aced again (as usual) and so did the pickup truck behind her, but 10 minutes later we were again trying to ride out of rain. It worked, and we didn't end up putting them back on.

Saturday was a cloudy, rainy day, and we gave up on Chinconteague after getting no further than Ocean City H-D. We instead went to the Maryland end of Assateague Island and ended up in the middle of a bicycle race. We get ourselves into the weirdest stuff...

Friday night, Donna had her party hat on pretty good and I rode us home. Saturday night, we were within walking distance and it was me who was throwing them back pretty good. We hung out with the band between sets, and did some quality drinking. By Sunday morning, Donna was getting a pretty good cold or something (Please no Swine Flu!) and wasn't sounding too good. We were both pretty much glad to get home. By then it was getting pretty chilly, too, so we were glad to rinse the salt off the bikes and curl up under a blanket watching football.

Damn, we are good together.

Crabby

What a good call that was. We rode out of rain somewhere down the PA turnpike, and made it here to Ocean City, MD around 4. It was 80 degrees yesterday and should hit that again today. We rode home from the Purple Moose last night at 1 am, and it was still 75. Overnight is supposed to be in the 30s in Wellsboro, PA, where we initially planned to go.

We came here to settle a bet, the payoff of which was a dinner of steamed crabs. So after we checked in and cleaned up, we found a crabhouse and had a good time smashing the little buggers with our wooden hammers.

And also tonight, we're going to see my buddy Crabby play next door at Fager's Island. He's one of the old CDNOW crew, and Bigg Romeo is still Philly's Hottest Party Band! We saw a chance to take advantage of the synchronicity, and booked the last room in town a few blocks down the street. So it's a Crabfest all the way around for KevAndDonna this weekend.

We're having a great time with our bonus summer weekend here. We are just so good together, it really is pathetic. We're going to get on the bikes and head down to Chinconteague to see the ponies, and when we're tired of riding we're going to hit the boardwalk for a little before getting all cleaned up for our night out with Bigg Romeo.

Also, it's cruiser weekend here, and there are a million cool cars running up and down the main drag. People are lined up and down Coastal Hwy in lawn chairs, and every parking lot looks like a car show with paint shining and hoods up. Again, we lucked into something cool we had no way of expecting. Too cool. We won't even get around to the Oktoberfest festivities at the convention center and the boardwalk.

The backpack containing my laptop fell off the bike Thursday night, and then fell off the couch in the room when we got here. It does not work. So... this is being written from the hotel lobby. No pics here, and this will be the last post until we get home.

Wingin' It

Here we are again, doing what we do best. Getting on the bikes and making it up as we go along.

This weekend was planned 6 months ago as a final getaway in Wellsboro, PA with a couple people we know and a bunch we don't from the bikerornot.com network. Once the early weather forecast stopped swinging wildly from one extreme to another, it settled on cold and wet and began to deteriorate steadily from there. We said from the outset that we could handle one or the other, but a high of 50 and a POP of 75% counts as both. Sunday morning we would be clear, but with frost on the pumpkins. See ya.

So we have just now settled on Plan E, which couldn't be more opposite from the autumn chill ,brilliant fall foliage, and scenic beauty of the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania that we'd been looking forward to all these months. But, it will be an unexpected bonus weekend of fun nonetheless. We know what it is, but you will have to check back to find out. It actually fills in a block that we'd been meaning to get to all summer; that's all we'll say.

Hell, the leaves will still be here next weekend, right?