A Ride Report

I've been lax in making ride reports lately.......partly due to the good weather which makes it harder to sit inside at the computer, but mostly due to laziness.  I have actually got Orv and Ross to do a couple of two-day rides with me so that we could expand our horizons a bit with different roads.  The dry, warm spring and summer has meant that all of our normal one-day ride routes have been done, and done again. 

Before I get into writing about our second two-day ride, I want to mention a one-day ride I took with Ray and some of his friends that Carolyn and I met at his "end of summer" party.  I only have one picture from the ride and that is of the group before we left:

Ray and his girlfriend Ellen are second from the right and the guy to the right of them is a Canadian acquaintance of Ellen's who was passing through the area and attended the party.  The guy standing behind the immaculate red Triumph Sprint managed to drop the bike at an intersection during the ride and cracked the fairing.......it's going to be an expensive day for him.  We started late and rode a long way, which meant I didn't get home until around 7:30.  I actually would have been home earlier were it not for an incident that would have made for some interesting pictures for this blog had I had my phone with me to take them.  However, my phone was in my jacket on my bike while I was locked inside a service station.  It happened this way:  Ray and I had split from the Portland contingent of riders and had stopped to get gas at a station in Stevenson, Washington.  After I paid with my credit card I went to go into the station to use the restroom.  Just before I went inside a guy pulled up in a pickup truck and went in ahead of me.  I thought he was going to beat me to the restroom, but he went into the service bay part of the station instead.  So I did my thing, and when I came out the door was locked.  I guess the guy was the manager of the station and he was closing the place and didn't notice I came in behind him and went into the restroom.  I banged on window and got Ray's attention but other than laughing at me there was nothing he could do.  In desperation, I used the station's phone to call 911.  I didn't  really consider my situation to be an emergency, but couldn't come up with any other ideas.  The 911 operator sent a Sheriff's officer to the station and she called the owner who came and let me out after about a half hour delay.  I always had the final solution of throwing a car battery through the window, but I didn't like that choice either. 

So, on to the two-day ride with Ross and Orv.  Our plan was to ride some back roads up to the Olympic Peninsula and around counter-clockwise to an overnight in Forks.  These were not very curvy roads, but the scenery was great and the weather was about perfect.  At one stop along the Puget Sound I got this picture which is a good shot of Orv's new Ducati Scrambler in front of my equally new Honda CBR.

We took highway 112, which runs alongside the Strait of Juan De Fuca:

Eventually we arrived at our motel in Forks.  What a dump!  I had searched all the motels in Forks and this was the cheapest one, but it was not cheap.  Still, the pictures of the room on their website made it look pretty nice........LIE!  I should have known when talking to the manager on the phone, who was obviously not a native English speaker, that things might not be so great.  It was a kitchen unit (with no utensils), and the sink had a massive and strange looking spider that had Ross freaking out.  That was just before he ran into the flying bugs of unknown origin in the bathroom.  Here is a pic of the room:

No, we didn't all sleep in the same bed.  There were two more beds to the left of this picture. 

There was a grocery store next door, so we went over and got a six-pack and some popcorn and had a post-ride snack on the porch:

I thought the unpainted patch of siding was a repair, but Carolyn thinks it had been a window that became too much trouble to maintain, and I think she might be right.  We did get to park the bikes under cover so they had no dew on the seats in the morning:

Oh, and the TV didn't work so I got the manager to come over and after a half hour or so of rebooting the satellite feed he got it going. 

Another view of the joint:

Despite everything, the beds were comfortable enough and the shower had plenty of hot water with adequate pressure, so things could have been worse and I got a good night's sleep.  Next time, though, somebody else picks the motel. 

We continued on down the coast, passing the Olympic rain forest park, and riding through some really lush, forested area right on the ocean:

I got home with over 600 miles covered and a good ride with good friends.  I tried to talk them into a three-dayer I have planned, but I don't think it is going to take.