Summer recap .....

Hi fellow bikers ….. I know it’s been a while since my last post.
It’s late November and we had our first snowfall yesterday. I winterized the bike a few days ago, Seafoam in the tank, rubbed a light coating of lube on exposed metal parts, hooked up the battery tender and have it sitting on a “PepsX” stand to keep the wheels off of the ground. Also put some steel wool in the pipe ends and air intake to keep the mice out and aired up the tires. I put the cover on her and will take a peek every couple of days. Those of you who live in a climate that can ride year round don’t know how
lucky you have it.

Here’s a recap of my Americade trip, in early June my buddy who rides a
HD Night Rod and I made the trek from Michigan through Canada over to Lake George, NY for the Americade Rally. If you’ve never been to the Lake George area and upstate NY, you are missing out on some great roads and scenery. Since this was our first Americade we chose not to pre-register for the tour rides and do our own and get a lay of the land so to speak. When we left Michigan there was a light drizzle falling lucky for us it tapered off by the time we got to Niagara Falls. We had lunch at the Hard Rock Café and checked out some of the sites before crossing the bridge over into NY. The traffic wasn’t bad and we made good time. We decided to stop for the night in the Fingers Lakes region at Canandaigua Lake. We looked at the map and decided to stay off of the NY Thruway and take Highway 20 east until we could find a route that would take us north and then east into Saratoga Springs where we would be staying for the week. As soon as we left Canandaigua it started raining pretty hard, we took our time and it finally stopped raining for about an hour and then off and on until we arrived in Saratoga Springs. We unloaded our bikes and then took the 30 minute ride up to Lake George to the Americade check in. After visiting the vendor tents it started raining again and we picked up a great rally map and headed back to the hotel. We found a restaurant near the hotel that we could walk to and took the map to plan for the next couple of days. Although the weather was pretty cool for June and was going to rain off and on we were excited to explore the area. The map had a listing of some great routes that included Vermont and the Adirondacks area. We decided to check out Vermont for the next day’s ride, after crossing back into NY from Vermont at Chimney Point we stopped at Fort Ticonderoga. When we left the fort we traveled south on Route 9N, this is a great twisting road that runs along the western shore of Lake George. We made other day trips that were equally enjoyable. Everywhere we went the locals were very friendly and we saw just about every kind of bike you could imagine, Customs’, Harley’s, Honda’s, BMW’s, Triumph’s, etc. On our departure day we decided to take I-87 north and then cut over and ride through Keen and into Lake Placid for an early lunch. We asked a few locals for a route to get us into Canada and we ended up crossing at Cornwall. We rode a few more hours and saw that the sky to the west was turning very dark and a storm would be upon us, so we found a hotel room just east of Toronto. After parking the bikes and getting something to eat the storm hit and it was pretty bad, there was a tornado warning and tree limbs and branches were falling down near our bikes and the parking lot. After the storm blew through we went out and cleared off the leaves and small branches that were on the bikes. We got up early and headed out, after making the split from the 401 onto the 402 we traveled east towards Michigan and soon caught up with a group of about 20 other riders. We rode with them all the way to the Blue Water Bridge and spoke to a few of them while we were waiting to cross over. They were from Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa and one guy was from Montana. They had attended the rally also. All in all it was a great trip with great people and great routes / roads to ride. The only downfall was the weather and we all know that there’s not much we can do about that. Since I’m more of a warm weather rider (80 – 95 degrees) is my favorite riding weather, I think it might be time to head back south and do the Honda Hoot in 2008.

Until next time, stay safe and get out and ride!!!