Another Sunday Ride

This weekend has been the best weather of the year.  In fact, it was down right springlike on Saturday with a high near 70 degrees.  It is the duty of retired folks like Carolyn and I to stay home on weekends to help reduce congestion in the stores and roads for the working stiffs.  So we generally use weekends to get house chores done, plus we don't like being out with the masses of traffic either.  We each had a big job to do this weekend.  For Carolyn it was cleaning up the gardens and for me it was starting on replenishing our firewood supply. 

After a long winter, pathways and garden areas need to be cleared of sticks and leaves and some plants pruned to make way for spring growth.  This is Carolyn's rig for hauling stuff to the "bio mass pile". 

Raking

Lifting

Dumping.  Pile just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

While Carolyn is doing that, I'm working on some alders that had broken their tops off during a snow storm that loaded them with more weight than they could handle. 

Loading the trailer with firewood rounds  It takes a strong back and a weak mind and unfortunately I'm pretty weak in both areas. 

Full load headed for the woodshed

Yes, we each have our own quad.  I originally bought the one that Carolyn uses to work on motorcycle trails.  It was much easier to carry tools on it than a motorcycle.  Once Carolyn saw how useful it was for gardening, that was the end of the wheelbarrowing for her, and I had to get another quad for myself. 

Once I get up to the woodshed, I hook my Ipod into my speakers and get ready to bust some wood.  Rock musicians sometimes call their instrument, especially if its a guitar, an "axe".  So here I am up on the stage, playing star again.  (Bob Seger, "Turn the Page"), with my axe. 

If you think I'm acting like an old fool, well..........sue me.  Your turn may come. 

Getting down to business

The load split, ready to stack

One row done, five more to go. Four and a half cords in each side of the shed.  This half of the woodshed will be wood burned in the winter of 2013-14.  Next winter's wood is in the other half of the shed drying.  People ask me why I don't get a wood splitter and make life easier, but the actual splitting part is the part I like doing with an axe.  It's the bending, lifting and stacking that I would like to avoid and a splitter doesn't do that for you. 

Anyway, after a day and a half of this, we were both tired and sore and ready for a ride in the nice weather, so we quit and I got the bike ready for two-up riding. 

First, I swap the nice light, slim stock seat

for the heavy, ugly, high dollar comfortable custom seat

Add one full turn of preload to the rear shock spring

five clicks of rebound damping

A little chain lube, and we're good to go

We rode around the county exploring some roads we hadn't been on before, and stopped to take a few pics of the East Fork of the Lewis river, which was running at full song with winter rain and snow melt runoff.

In late afternoon we stopped in the Moulton Falls Winery to visit our friends Susan and Joe, who are in the process of getting this winery and tasting room up and running.  Here they are behind the bar:

The tasting room is a converted horse arena that they have remodeled themselves with a lot of help from Joe's brothers, one who lives in Arizona and the other in New York. 

We met other friends there and had a glass of wine and some snacks:

Notice the TV on the wall in the background?  Joe was playing a video I made when he and I and Orv went on a ride a couple of years ago

Joe has two BMWs and an Arlen Ness Harley chopper.  That's more motorcycle excess than I have seen in a long time:

The bikes obviously don't get ridden much lately due to the Winery taking all of Joe's time.  We have some plans for this summer, though. 

We got home before dark and it was nice to do some two-up riding with my long time "co-rider".  



Sunday Ride With Friends

I don't usually ride on weekends, but the weatherman promised a nice day yesterday, and it was the first in quite awhile, so Ross and Orv and I went for a little 180 mile or so road ride.  Still lots of snow in the mountains, so we had to pick a low elevation route, and Orv led us on one of our favorite winter loops north of Woodland.  This route runs through farm and timberland in a little known area of Washington with small towns with names like Castle Rock, Vader, Boistfort, Winlock, Pe Ell, and Toledo.  Unlike the big cities everywhere, these small towns don't seem to change at all, at least in the time I have lived here. 

Here's a pic of Ross and Orv as we were taking a lunch break in Toledo:

Ross (left) and Orv

Both these guys ride Triumphs, but not the old kind like I have in my living room

I started riding with Ross on dirt bikes shortly after I moved to Washington in 1995, when I joined the Jones Creek Trailriders Association motorcycle club.  The JCTRA "adopted" a local riding area and did a lot of trail maintenance for the ORV trails that were on state land.  In our Western Washington semi rain-forest, trail maintenance is intensive.  During the summer months, stuff grows so fast that it constantly has to be trimmed back from the trail to provide clear line of sight and prevent "face slappers".  Then during the winter water damage and tree blow-down has to be dealt with.  I had come from a desert riding background, where we NEVER did trail maintenance.  Ross retired about the same time I moved up here and we started riding and working on trails during the week.  Carolyn was still working every other week down in California, so it was not unusual for Ross and I to ride one day of the week and work another day.  We started expanding on the trail maintenance theme and began to search for old logging skid roads that we could convert to trails to connect with existing trails and expand the system.  It was the golden era of my dirt bike riding.  We got to where we could ride 60 miles on prime trail without running over the same section in the same direction.  Between the riding and the working, it was also great exercise. 

 Then it all started to go downhill, mostly due to intensive logging of the forest.  The trees were mature and ready for harvest, so one by one our trails were obliterated or converted into modern 50 ft wide rock logging roads.  It got to the point a couple of years ago where we could hardly get 25 miles of riding in, and that would take some laps around the same loop plus some fire roads to get from one tail to another.  But nothing stays the same, and I was getting ready to move on to dual-sport riding and exploring larger areas.    

I remember the first time Orv rode with Ross and I.  Orv had strayed from riding dirt bikes and had got into snowmobiles for awhile, but was wanting to get back into dirt bikes.  He bought a bike just like I had and Ross brought him out to ride with us one day.  After unloading the bikes, the first trail we got on was my favorite trail.  It was an old logging railroad grade that was fairly steep uphill, but with sweeping curves and a fairly wide tread, plus some water bars to jump.......perfect stuff for this old desert rider.  I knew every inch of that trail and the best line to pick at any moment.  I took off in the lead with Orv right behind me........and he stayed right behind me.  It didn't take too many times of him riding with us before I realized I had probably been holding him up.  Then I learned he had been the Oregon state enduro champion, not once, but twice, and that explained it.  Orv could ride. 

Orv also retired and started working on trails and riding with Ross and I.  The rest of the JCTRA members started calling us the ORG's, for Old Retired Guys, and we were presented the following plaque for our service: