Ain't No Iron Butt Rider!

The snow is here. Won't be any more riding for many months to come and as my husband likes to say, we are now in the season of P.M.S. (parked motorcycle syndrome). PMS makes HUBBY cranky - how ironic is THAT?

The last ride of the season occurred on a blustery and cold Saturday and was my longest ride, so far. Bundled up with multiple layers and waterproof mitts over my gloves, I set out with hubby on a two hour ride to Leamington. Our destination was a downtown restaurant and our goal was to meet a group of riders all coming from different directions, specifically for the ride and to eat, a Ride-To-Eat or RTE. (I'm learning all kinds of jargon with this motorcycle thing.) This particular RTE has been scheduled for the first Saturday in November for many years and was "on" despite the weather.

Leamington is west of our home and our route took us south toward Lake Erie, then west and yes, right into the prevailing wind. This wasn't my first ride on a windy day but it WAS my first ride on a 90 kph highway straight into the wind coming off the lake. So here's me, on my dinky little bike with no windshield being repeatedly buffetted from the front and side, watching for traffic coming up behind me, hunched over, wondering what the HELL was I thinking!

By the time we reached Blenheim, about 90 minutes into the ride, I was stiff both from the cold and from trying to make myself less of a target for the wind and I needed a bathroom break in a bad way. I just had to stop and pulled off into a Petro-Canada station, parked the bike and waited for hubby to realize I was no longer behind him. It didn't take him long and as it turns out, he was just about to pull into a Tim Horton's a little further up the road. Good. Better choice, anyway.

Coffee for T and a hot chocolate smoothie for me (you gotta try those - they're absolutely delicious) and bagels with cream cheese all around. Warming up and sipping my drink, I had a decision to make. Had I had enough of the cold and wind or did I want to slog it out and make it to the lunch? Hubby wondered the same thing. I felt a lot better after the break and decided I felt good enough to give it a go. I could always turn around if I couldn't fight the wind anymore and at least it would be at my back on the way home.

It wasn't much further to Leamington and pulling into the restaurant parking lot, I was happy I hadn't abandoned the trip. I certainly had my doubts about continuing, though, when it began to hail in the Tim Horton's parking lot just as we got ready to leave!

We were the last of the group to arrive but were still in plenty of time for a hearty lunch and conversation and a chance to rest and warm up. I even managed to be awarded a prize of a two-piece rainsuit for being designated the newest rider. What a pleasant surprise!


We made it!

Why is it that any ride home seems to take longer than a ride TO somewhere? Our ride home was no exception and the last 20 minutes or so were pretty tough. The sun was going down steadily and the cold was creeping in and I was sorely thankful to see our last turn appearing around the corner. My feet were numb, my fingers stiff and my body felt cold and abused and I realized fully why my husband has every possible mode of electric heat hooked up on his own bikes! AND, oh man, was my hynie aching! There was no comfortable position to be had for the last 45 minutes of that ride. Scootching forward didn't help. Tilting backward didn't help. Sitting up straighter didn't help. Gritting my teeth, I had to wonder how on earth riders survive 1000 mile DAILY rides for 11 days straight competing in the Iron Butt Rally (ironbuttrally.com) but that's a whole other story!

Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, In the Dark

What ARE dreams, anyway? When we drift off and go to sleep do our minds go to work rehashing and reorganizing, placing the events and feelings of the day into their respective storage boxes, cleaning up the mental hard drive like defragmenting the computer? Or, does our life energy, fed up with this "life" thing, take a vacation and rejuice by inventing new adventures it enjoys more? Don't know, but I do know that owing to my recent close encounter with pavement, my dreams have been filled with more of the same in different locations, different circumstances, same result.  I wake up with butterflies in my stomach, telling myself to stop thinking about it.  

Like every mistake, I learned something from it.  There was sand and gravel spewed all over that corner and I made the turn too fast for that degree of traction, even though it didn't feel that fast. Simple. Know what to do in future. Do it right next time and get on with the business of riding.  

Getting on with riding was what I had in mind when I asked hubby to take a ride with me last week. The only problem was it became a late-day ride and by the time we were moving, it was dark. Well, OK, I need to learn to ride in the dark, too.  

Riding in the dark, I was reminded, is not like riding in the daylight (Einstein moment, here).  I can't see all that far ahead at night, even with the high beam lights on and given my ride always starts on pothole-ridden and uneven-surfaced dirt roads, not being able to see what's coming can be an issue. Once out on the pavement, I encountered another issue. I don't want to drive as fast in the dark, at least not on my motorcycle. Hubby, who was leading, had to stop to wait for me several times so I didn't get lost too far behind him. After the third stop and wait, I was told I needed to keep up and should be riding at least 10 kph over the limit. But I wasn't comfortable riding over the speed limit and not knowing if and when I was going to encounter the dreaded traction-reducing gravel, again. Hubby said I was going to get run over. That didn't sound so good; didn't feel so good, either.

I had started this ride with the intention of regaining some of the confidence I had lost when I went down and here I was, losing even more. I was seriously considering turning around and heading home and letting hubby continue on his own. I didn't; figured it was better to face the fear and keep moving. Hubby did offer to change the route, to shorten it quite a bit and stay off the busier roads as much as possible. That felt better. I was willing to stick it out, now.  

The advantage to dirt roads is the lack of traffic. The disadvantage is the lack of lighting. Pick your devil. I prefer the former and proceeding at what must have felt like a walking pace for hubby, we travelled the countryside in pitch darkness except for our own lights and the occasional highway light when we crossed the paved roads.

Not a long ride, this time, we stopped for supper at a small restaurant just north of London and enjoyed a relaxing meal. Getting something to eat was one of the motivations for the trip and it felt good to sit and regroup for a minute. Riding the back roads was a good idea and by the time we were ready to make our way back, I was feeling more in the groove. 

The ride home involved a few more paved roads and traffic and a side detour along a road that eventually ran beside the Thames river. At one point, hubby pulled off the road into what looked like the opening to a dirt trail that was disconcertingly similar-looking to the "mud-pit" road of our last ride and thinking he meant to take us down this road I looked at him incredulously and said, "In the DARK?!". Turns out it wasn't even a road. It was a short path right into the river!! Hubby just wanted to have a look at the water for a second. Phew!

I did manage to get way behind on the last leg of our ride when hubby was able to get out into traffic quicker than I felt comfortable. No big. It took some of the pressure off of keeping up and since I recognized where I was, the rest of the ride was pretty good and I caught up pretty quickly.

Taking the dirt roads close to home faster than I usually do, I thought the front end was wobbling more than I had experienced to date and wondered if the shop had missed something when they realigned the front wheel after the low-side fall last week. I was feeling a bit like I did on "mud-pit" road. No incidents, but I was glad to be passing our mailbox and parking the bike in front of the garage, once more.  

I'll be postponing any future night riding until I've had more daylight sojourns. I need to feel more natural on the bike and get used to how it moves and responds to the terrain; also need to feel more comfortable in traffic and at higher speeds, especially if I am to be riding with Mr. Speed (hubby)!  

Flying High and Riding Low

What a day!  A late October riding day jam-packed full of new experiences.  I knew, waking up that morning, that it would be a great day for a ride. It was also the weekend my husband had rented the wood splitter to finally take care of the TWO piles of wood that had been sitting for months, too big to add to the wood pile. It was a good day for splitting wood, too so it had to be done and I figured with the two of us at the job, there should be plenty of time left in the day for a good trip on the bikes. So, once the wood was split and stacked, I gave hubby a hint by pulling my bike out of the garage and getting it warmed up.  "Want to go for a ride, do you?", he asked with a smile. Rhetorical question. But where? I know the roads in our area but I know them from a driving perspective versus a riding one. My husband, on the other hand, has a far greater mental picture of the roads and routes that make riding interesting (and less congested - something which appeals to me while I'm building my confidence).  "I think I can get us to Port Stanley on mostly dirt roads.", was his suggestion and "Suits me just fine.", was my response.  

Port Stanley is about an hour's drive away, on the shores of Lake Erie.  It's a quaint little town filled with the boutiques and small shops you would expect to find in such a spot and there's a beach side restaurant right on the sand that became our destination du jour.  

It was a bit of a blustery day but not so windy that riding was difficult and as we made our way down our road, I wondered what the day's ride would bring. I found out pretty quickly. Remember Black Jack Drive from an earlier post? Remember how I said it was a pretty easy ride? Well, Black Jack Drive is a different road after it rains and we had a LOT of rain the day before. Rain makes Black Jack slick, muddy and slippery and I got my first lesson in dirt riding without so much as a "head's up" from hubby. Probably a good thing I didn't have time to think about it; likely would have cancelled that little adventure.  

Dutifully following hubby's path down the road, I suddenly found my front end disconnecting from my back end and correcting for that with my heart in my throat and my stomach in knots, found the front end instantly hopping in the opposite direction and sending me off the road entirely and into the grass, over several tractor tire ruts and (phew!) back into some semblance of a straight line.  I just had time to regain a bit of composure before I was sea sawing the bike a second time through more mud, ruts and slime to reach the end of the road and pavement.  Thank God I've ridden horses, was all I could think as I promptly yelled a "Did you see THAT?!" at hubby, happy I managed to stay on and upright.  Thought for sure I was going to be writing a story about eating mud after that!  

Figuring the rest of the ride would be easy compared to the slippery mud of Black Jack Drive, I concentrated on riding with what little traffic we encountered and enjoyed what was left of the fall leaves.  The livestock feed corn is still in the fields and will be for several weeks, yet, until the moisture is low enough to harvest and at one point we found ourselves on a narrow dirt road with corn rising on both sides of us, almost 8 feet high, walling us in. I've never walked a corn maze but I wondered if it felt similar.  It was neat.  

We had been riding for nearly half an hour with several stops and turns steadily moving further south and slightly to the east, following mostly dirt roads, as was the plan.  We had encountered almost no one and I was feeling pretty strong and gaining confidence and thinking I was doing well UNTIL I saw where our path was leading. Part of our route, (yes, the one chosen by my supposed-to-be-looking-after-me husband) included (unbeknownst to me) a little-used section of road that I now saw (and too late to say anything about it) was Black Jack Drive times 100. What a mess! The mud I had managed to maneuvre the bike through earlier paled in comparison to what I was riding through now. The road was FULL of deep ruts. The mud was soft and wet and offered little traction and watching my husband slide HIS bike all over the road did not inspire confidence as I did my best to control my bike behaving the same way. I didn't think it was possible but I was very glad to have had a taste of this before being immersed in split-second steering corrections and trying to maintain my balance on a machine that was moving like a drunken sailor. It took little more than 5 minutes to get through the muck but it felt like 50 to me and I totally amazed myself by getting through it without going down. What a blast! It was so much fun! I couldn't wait to do it again on the ride back home and I could see why people deliberately ride trails filled with this kind of stuff. Woohoo!!

The wind had really picked up and it was overcast as we pulled into the restaurant parking lot in Port Stanley and driving 'round to the back of the building, we were treated to a sight I had never seen. I thought I was watching two people flying kites at first. Then I saw the short surfboards. These two were using huge kites attached to a body harness to catch the wind and surf the waves! It was amazing to watch. Kite-surfing? I don't even know what it's called but it looked like a lot of fun (if you have the upper body strength to prevent yourself from flying right across the lake!).

     
Pointing to the mud on my pants!                         



"Kite-surfer" getting air.

After lunch and a break from the wind inside the restaurant, we were off on the return trip through the downtown to the nearest station to gas up (first time for this, too - had been using the gas cans for the lawnmowers until now).  It was good to get more experience in close traffic while it wasn't too busy. Taking a slightly different way back out of Port Stanley, through a quiet and tree-lined, curvy subdivision, we arrived back at "mud-pit" road (for lack of a better name) and my second "attack". It was even more fun the second time!  And I managed to stay vertical this time, too. That felt great!  

Following a more serene section of road, hubby wanted to stop to snap a few shots and asked me to drive back up the road, turn around and ride back. OK, no  problem. There was a wider section of road back a bit with a little puddle on one side that would make a good turn-around area. Only, it wasn't such a little puddle, at least not in depth. Once in the puddle, I realized it was about 2 feet deep with a foot of gooey mud in the bottom and about 8 feet across. I was in good; water flying up inside my pants, down into my boots, onto the back of my jacket from the back tire. I had visions of sinking deeper and deeper and having to pull the bike out manually. Concentrating on not getting stuck I didn't realize I had pulled in the clutch and was racing the engine. Letting the clutch out a bit too fast and with more gas than I needed, I lurched out of the mud and the puddle, bounced over more tire tracks (what's with all these tire ruts right where I need to ride??) and back onto the road.  THIS is what dirt riding means!  Too bad hubby was out of sight and missed the photo-op.  

There was lots of learning on this ride and one of the biggest lessons came on one of the last turns toward home. We were making a left turn off a paved road onto another paved road when I suddenly found myself sliding on my left side ON the pavement with the bike on ITS left side; both of us heading for the shoulder and the ditch if the speed had been high enough. Thankfully, it was not. And thankfully, I knew I could pick the bike up because hubby made me do it in the safety of our yard the first day we brought it home. It's a bit of a heave but I can do it on my own. So, wondering how the hell that happened, I got myself and the bike back up and with the bike turned off and resting on the sidestand, I mentally surveyed the damage (both to myself and the bike). 

Even though I had to have been going fast enough to go down, I couldn't have been going too fast since I was in one piece and the only part that was the least bit sore was my right wrist, presumably hit by the right handgrip. Yay for 1000 denier cordura and body armour! The bike SEEMED to be OK other than a few scuff marks until hubby arrived and noticed the front wheel was sitting at an odd angle. Do I ride the bike home or get the truck and drive it home? Luckily, we were able to reset the wheel by stabilizing the tire between my knees and feet and forcefully pushing the handlebars opposite to the twist.  It appeared that the forks had twisted within their supports rather than bending which would have been tres bad.  

Pulling into the driveway and returning the bike to its spot in the garage, my mind was flooding with all that had happened and even though I had my first experience with "going down", I was filled with good feelings and thankful for the awesome day.