Club ride tale from Sunday June 4th

[wilsons]

This was written on the day of the ride on Sunday, June 4th, 2006.

 

7:40am, I woke up in anticipation of the monthly ride with the fellows from Greater Cincinnati BMW Riders Club. Got myself, and gear ready. My Destination? Lawrenceburg Indiana at State line Restaurant right off of I275 on US50. It's an easy 30mile ride for me from Reading Ohio, across Ronald Reagan HWY, down I275 and off the Lawrenceburg Exit. I rolled in a few minutes before 9am, and saw a whole load of bikes in the parking lot. I immediately thought: "man we're gonna have a crew on us today!". I met a few new people today, Richard, Joe, John, Jeff, and a a bunch of others I can't remember now, but I know their faces! I also saw a few other faces I met on my first club ride, Michael, and Ken. Our leader for the day called in and couldn't make it so we had to make due without his expertise, on the ride that he setup for us! The two leaders we had did a great though! Anyway, as I digress a bit. Breakfast was awesome, I had my usual, 2 eggs over easy, bacon this time, and toast with homemade strawberry jam. Just like Mom makes. It was really good!

 

After breakfast I walked outside with the camera to grab a few pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I was doing so I noticed Ken helping a guy with a bike issue. Some fellow on a Honda Shadow had stalled his bike on the road and couldn't restart it. As it turns out we all had thought he had ran out of gas. After putting the bike on reserve, and swooshing the bikes remaining fuel around the bike finally started. I offered to run down with the guy to make sure he got there okay. He said thanks but he should be okay. So, Rich, and I rode down anyway to get gas to see if we could find him and make sure he got there okay anyway. We didn't see him so we assumed everything was fine. We stopped to get gas ourselves, and headed back to the restaurant. After everyone was done eating, about the time we got back, everyone got their gear on and off we went on our adventure!

 

I'm not all familiar with Indiana roads but I can tell you that we traveled many well maintained, twisty roads. I had to be pretty careful as I had a new back tire that was put in just the day before. My old (barely used, 2000 miles) tire had a nail in it! Aside from that, I had such a blast on these roads, even though I was pretty conservative. We made a leader change going down, well, lets just say half way through. I believe we were going down Route 62 when we turned left on 129? Or something? Shortly after we made a stop to round up all the guys that where a little further back (we had a fairly large group) and to take a break. I also took advantage of this time to grab, yes you guessed it, more pictures!

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the little break, I was, as I'm sure everyone was, having a great time enjoying the fresh air and scenery. I myself, however, had the luxury of listening to some of my favorite music while on my ride. It sort of enhances my riding experience being able to tie some music in there with riding down the road. Just think of a song that really gets you in a mind set that allows you to concentrate at the task at hand. Well, I have a whole bunch of those, and it made my ride all the more interesting. After running through more, I felt very tight, twisty roads, and me hugging that double yellow line a little bit more than normal, we ended up in Madison IN. Okay, so I got out of my comfort zone a bit, but thats how you learn, right? Just hopefully not the hard way. So in Madison, we parked on Main St, the whole lot of us, and took a much needed break. By now it's about 12:30pm. We all needed to stretch, get water, and of course, nature was calling. Some even got ice cream cones, as shown in, you guessed it, my onslaught of pictures! Hey, if I get too crazy with all these pictures just slap me and maybe I'll return to reality. Maybe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smile for the camera ladies!

 

 

After we got ourselves collected we began to talk of where to go next. Others where going to split off, and take different routes. So others followed the leader back up the river to Aurora and to Lawrenceburg, I think. Others went their own direction, and me, I wanted to do lunch somewhere. So that was about it for the club ride with the big group for myself. Ken decided that he was going to ride back around his home area, and do lunch at this place thats on a farm. And Jeff tagged along because he was heading home that direction too.

 

For the life of me I cannot think of the name of the place (Ken you can chime in anytime here ) Very neat place. Closest thing I've seen like it is the Buffalo Farm back at home in Edinboro PA. Probably better, since its on a State Park, and just awesome scenery with the river and all. The people were really nice, and there were a lot of bikes there. Pretty popular place for riders to visit. You give them your order and as your looking around you notice that its like, there house. It probably is or was at one time. They make all of your food on the spot there, and it was very very good. Their dogs were rather friendly too, and wanted my turkey sandwich. Shortly after I was done with lunch I got on my own way, back kind of the way we came, but I turned right on 338, and headed through Union KY back up the interstate. I also took the long way home. I rode a total of 230 miles today. I loved every minute of it, and wanted to do more, but rest assured, there will be other days!