Slightly damp ride June 23

Today we headed off to Friendship to knock off another county & city on our list.  Got rid of Adams county  & Friendship from our list.  


Pretty much all the excitement happened on the way to Friendship.  First thing was outside of Princeton the traffic came to a complete and sudden stop.  I think I actually heard Ed's tire squeal.  We'll call that heart check #1.  Heart check #2 came a little while later when some old lady decided that the curve in the highway was optional and came heading straight at us.  That was the last heart check for the day.


Animal sightings for the day were plentiful.  We saw 3 brown cranes and I saw 2 white cranes, possibly whooping cranes.  We also saw 2 deer, 5 turkeys and a woodchuck.  There was also a dive-bombing suicidal bird that went after Ed and many, many brown winged creatures that we couldn't agree if they were butterflies or flying grasshoppers.  They felt a lot like grasshoppers when they hit me, but Ed said he thought they were butterflies.


Just outside of Princeton, we did get rained on for about a half hour, but it wasn't bad, just a light rain that was pretty annoying.


The ride back from Friendship was very uneventful.  We had a great ride with lots of hills and curves in the road.  Not a lot of traffic, and riding back through the hills we did get to  see all the crops growing.  Some of the farmers were irrigating and got a little too close to the road so we got to ride through some very brief fake rain showers.  When we were in the open spots, the birds of prey were soaring looking for a meal.  I always love watching them just glide.


We stopped at the Wheelhouse for a bite to eat and they were having a steak fry and had a band.  We didn't have steak and we sat inside and ate burgers.  It was the best bacon cheeseburger I've had in a while, just the right amounts of everything including grease.


200 miles more put on today, and we are looking forward to riding the next 2 days for H-D World Ride June 24 - 25 and getting some more things knocked off our ABC's of touring list.

Fancy meeting you here!

I was hungry for pizza, so we hopped on the bikes and headed over to Waupaca and the Wheelhouse. When we got there, we walked over toward the hostess station and two of our riding/diving friends were just ordering their lunch so we joined them. We got the loaded pizza subbing black olives for green and it was fantastic! We are trying to behave ourselves so we skipped the customary trip through the parking lot to scoops.

We haven't been able to get much riding in this year because it's either been too hot, too cold or too wet. I haven't hardly put any miles on my bike at all :(

Anyway, the ride was great, we stayed off all the major roads, lots of twisting and turning and there were some parts where the only other vehicles we saw were bikes headed the other way! It was like we all knew we could ride that one road. The grasshoppers were out en-force today so my shins were a little sore and my pant legs were kind of gross.

It was just about the perfect temperature, low - mid 70's - I wore my middle layer of the riding system, a t-shirt & jeans and was very comfortable. The wind was a little weird because it would come from different directions but it wasn't strong enough to affect the ride.

I did have a totally new experience today. I ran over the deepest pothole ever and my boobs came right out of my bra. Ed thought it was the funniest thing ever. I had to stop extra long at the next stop sign in order to adjust myself. Not a pleasant feeling at all! I got a headache from my neck getting jammed, but it's all good. Wind in my hair, sun in my face, the ride goes on...

First "official" ride of 2011 is in!

We went riding with our friends Sunday. leaving from Oshkosh, then to Neenah to meet up with everyone, then off via the winding back roads to one of our favorite haunts, The Wheelhouse in Waupaca, and of course, that trip would not be complete without the trip across the parking lot to Scoopers for ice cream.

After stuffing ourselves, we took the back roads back toward Neenah again, winding through the booming metropolises of Poysippi, Borth and Winneconne.

We had pizza for the first time at The Wheelhouse, we had the Jeff's loaded special, but opted for ham instead of green olives, it was amazing with a great balance of toppings to crust and a crispy crust. We also had cheesy garlic bread, which was ok - definitely not one of my favorite versions of that. They had Sprecher root beer on tap which made me really happy since I love that stuff.

Scoopers is an experience all on it's own! If you are planning to have dessert, make sure you leave LOTS of room. They had so many flavors to choose from, and a kiddie scoop there is what some other places call a single scoop. The single scoop is huge, and 2 people could share it. They also let you split a single scoop if you just can't decide what flavor you want.

The weather wasn't the greatest, mid 60's, cloudy, a little breezy, but it was still a great ride. The fact that it was cooler made the travelling on the back roads around the resort areas a lot less congested so we could just take our time winding around the curves and up and down the hills. We had 8 bikes in our group and 3 were women riders!!

Hopefully this is the start to a great riding season - the weather hasn't been to cooperative so far but maybe that will change soon!!