WDGAH X - Ride Report - Part 2 - long

Riff Raff's Rides, Copyright 2006
WDGAH 10 - September 2006

Day 3 - Saturday, September 9

One scratch and one add to the day's grouping in the
morning. Larry Sherman's wife Marlene wasn't feeling
well and elected to stay at the hotel (until the
bronchitis forced her to make a hospital visit). Larry
joked that he had to go thru three interviews to ride
with me (Pat does most of the vetting). Wayne Beaver
joined up, we'd ridden together in May at COTU so I
had a good feeling for the group's composition, though
the amount of gear on Larry's bike gave me pause. GPS,
IPOD, camcorder, radar detector, kaon dispenser; my
fears that he would be forever getting ready to leave
after each stop proved groundless. A group picture of
most of the machines materialized out of the morning
fog in the parking lot.

Good Karma - I offer the following illustrations of
the concept as applied to motorcycling:
The first 25 miles of the day's ride started out on
fresh, smooth, pavement with no traffic to speak of.
Scenic river views graced us on the left until the
first turning and then the views didn't matter as the
asphalt assumed a more attention absorbing aspect.
When reality finally intruded in the form of a couple
of slower cages close enough to the next junction that
I didn't want to risk splitting the group up between
vehicles by starting to pass them, the new road
surface ended.

Reaching another junction in the middle of a
construction zone with no signs indicating the route,
I caught the flagger's attention in time to voice a
query, to which the answer and a wave through came
without having to stop at all.

Approaching Smuggler's Notch, after slogging through
the tourist traffic of Stowe, we broke free in time
for an unobstructed pass through the pass.

At WDGAH 5, my first experience with VT 232, it was a
tantalizing twisty road rendered ridiculously painful
by frost heaves. (Some roads are afflicted with them
running parallel to the flow, they aren't as
bone-jarringly bad as those with the perpendicular
ridges - 232 gets a heavy mix in both directions.)
Hoping to find better conditions six years on, I put
it on the day's plan and had partial success, gaining
more good karma, but it was a more personal rather
than group blessing. The upper half of it was still
crap, but I enjoyed a short stint of jockey mode,
adding arthritic knee suspension to the mix to get my
butt off the seat and let the bike have it's way
beneath me. Passing traffic under these conditions
would require a longer clearing than normal, and such
stretches not in abundance. Is was particularly
fortuitous then that appearance of the lone car I
encountered, and a long enough bit of straight-away,
coincided. Almost immediately after that my tires
kissed newly laid asphalt and my knees rejoiced.
Another short straight came and went with no on-coming
traffic, so Wayne's image soon returned to my mirrors.
The others weren't able to clear the cage clog until
just before the next junction.

After fueling and then parking the bikes out of the
way for a short break just prior to 232's mixture,
another VFR pulled into the edge of the lot, two-up. I
assumed they were other non-hooters, but that turned
out not to be the case. They didn't need fuel and
seemed to be doing a map check or were waiting for
someone else to come along. After a couple of minutes
they pulled out alone. We passed them on the side of
the road at the edge of the town and they fell in
behind us. Twenty-five miles later, we stopped for
lunch in Wells River, VT and they stopped as well. We
introduced ourselves to Maine-bound French-Canadians
Francois and his lovely companion Guylaine. It was
hard to tell who was more surprised, us for finding a
VFR unaware of the WDGAH clan, or them at discovering
they were transitting ground zero of the most
concentrated gathering of VFRs in the Northeast. The
six of us had a pleasant lunch and since we were all
aiming for a ride on NH 118, we started out together.
Since they had further to go, Francois opted for the
more direct NH 112 approach and split off as we looped
further north and east via routes 117 and 116. Those
roads were suffering a bit from a few winters of abuse
and the rough pavement combined with wetness from the
rain that passed through while we were dining (most
excellent karma) slowed us down a bit. Things improved
markedly after we gained 112 and I was wishing I had
chosen the more direct path as well, but unbeknownst
to me at the time, the gods were still smiling upon
us. At dinner later, I found out that the untravelled
portion of 112 was really crappy, the recent
resurfacing had started right where we picked it up.

While being unable to walk on water, or ward off the
encroaching clouds whose appearance was making the
ability to amble across aqueous avenues highly
desirable in the near term; more evidence of living in
a state of grace today was presented at what was the
most perfectly timed rain-gear stop I have made in
twenty-seven years of riding. Heavy moisture seemed
unavoidable, so I pulled off onto a sandy side road
and canvassed the group about desires to continue
riding the back roads in the rain or not. The
consensus was that if(when) the rains came, we would
call it a day and slab back to the hotel. Thunder
close at hand provided an exclamation point to end the
discussion (we had just passed a fireworks display,
but this was no puny little skyrocket). I about to
declare myself ready to go when I realized I hadn't
shifted to my clear face shield. I debated the need,
but the overcast was dark enough to make that the
prudent choice, so I stripped the just applied rain
cover off of the tank bag and performed the swap.
Wayne followed suit and boy were we glad we did. The
first pellets (drops just doesn't do them justice)
arrived as we pulled away and within fifteen seconds
the whole world went wet. Had we been any later
leaving the sandy road, we would've needed knobbies.
Gusty winds accompanied the initial deluge and I would
have stopped if any overhead cover was about.
Fortunately we were mostly headed into the wind, so we
plodded ahead and soon enough the monsoon morphed into
a more moderate shower we could motor through without
undue strain.

The final blessing on a great day's ride was a vibrant
full-arc rainbow gracing the hills to the northeast we
neared White River Junction on I-91 to complete our
jaunt.

We were back earlier than usual and after the
performing obligatory chain rituals and helping Wayne
load his SV in the truck, I chilled in the room for a
bit before dinner. Wayne learned the lesson to always
load up before doing dinner and drinks at a prior
rally. He was lucky to find one person left in the
area the late-morning after a long session at the
Seven Barrels.

Dinner at Lui Lui's was good and the comaraderie was
great as usual. A benefit this year was that the noise
level was not quite so ear piercing because most
people actually shut up and listened to Dave Gannon's
condensed version of the roots and history of WDGAH's
past.


Days 4 and 5
The return trip was a relaxed two day ride with not a
lot of commentary worthy observations and no attempted
homicides, so I'll put this story to bed. The winter
program should see an accounting of this year's COTU
ride and I may get around to establishing a web site
to post related photos to.

Cheers,
Greg



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