Italian Exotica

Ray sent out an email checking to see who wanted to ride yesterday.  It being a Sunday I would be violating my "no ride on weekends" rule again, but it has been a long time since I rode with Ray and with his current job status he can't take off during the week, so I went for it.  His friend Jeff came along also:

Jeff on the left, Ray on the right

I first met Ray maybe ten or more years ago.  Ross and I were out working on trail maintenance and Ray came riding by and stopped to have a chat.  We told him we belonged to a local club that adopted the trails in the area, and were two old retired guys who spent a day a week working on them.  Ray sounded interested and said he would like to help.  Ross and I had heard that story before, but Ray meant it, and began working with us and riding also.  At the time his private business allowed him to take off work pretty much it seemed whenever he felt like it, so it was a perfect match.  It wasn't long before he really got into it and would often even come up to the woods by himself to do some work.  In fact, as Ross and I got older and weaker, Ray was the guy who got the job done.  At first it seemed we were also pretty evenly matched in riding ability, but I think he got better and I certainly got worse, so that by the time I quit dirt bike riding it was no contest.  We had some good times on the trails while it lasted, though.

Ray is also meticulous in his choice of equipment and his care and maintenance of it.  He also seems to avoid Jap stuff and goes for the high-end bikes like KTM, Triumph, and Aprillia  (and a Polaris quad, once).  Yesterday he and Jeff were both on Aprillias, an exotic Italian-made sport bike.  Only other motorcycle enthusiasts are familiar with the name.  Here is a picture of Jeff with his:

Weather conditions at the start of the ride were crappy, and I mean really crappy!  It was misting at my house when I went to get the newspaper before breakfast, but by the time I was ready to leave home, it was just heavy overcast and I figured that down towards the Columbia gorge where we were going to meet  up it would probably be dry and maybe even sunny.......wrong!  It started raining as I got about 10 miles south of my house and rained off and on for the next two hours.  Even as we headed east through the gorge, it continued to rain until we got to Stevenson, and since none of us had rain gear on, we got soaked.  As they say in the Northwest about summer, though, "at least the rain was warm".

East of Stevenson it dried out and eventually became sunny and warm, and ended up being a nice day and a great ride.  One of the Good Roads that was our destination was the Appleton highway.  I love this road for its curves, good pavement, low traffic, and good sight lines.......it has it all.  There was a post last year on this blog where I had a video of Joe and I riding the Appleton highway, and I have another one from yesterday:

These videos probably all look the same to people keeping up with this blog, but the thing to notice about this one is how fast those Aprillias accelerate away from me after each turn.  I was flogging my little Ninja as hard as I ever had, but the only time I could get close was in braking for a curve.  It was great fun!

After we had lunch in Glenwood we rode back down to highway 14 where I split off to go to Hood River to a bicycle shop to get a new headset bearing.

In the past week I have ridden three of the best street rides in the area.......Cougar to Randall, Longview to Tillamook, and Klickitat/Glenwood.  That's over 600 miles of Good Roads.