Is a motorcycle ride on your bucket list?

My friend Marie is an amazing woman. A few months ago we were talking about our bucket lists, and she mentioned that riding on a motorcycle is on her list. Today was the day, and here you can see Marie suiting up and getting ready for her first ride.

I wanted a picture before she put on the helmet so we could see the big smile!

I barely remember my first motorcycle ride, since I was about 6 years old when an uncle took all the kids at the family reunion for a short ride around the field. Fast forward to college, when Mike borrowed his friend Duncan's motorcycle a few times to take me for rides around Burlington. I remember sitting on the second story porch over the front door of the sorority house, hearing the motorcycle coming down South Willard Street, and the excitement of hopping on behind Mike and getting away from studying for an hour.

Marie's friends and neighbors were thrilled that she was on a motorcycle, and she had a lot of fun telling them about the experience. It's not often a 70-something woman has the gumption and spirit to get on the back of a motorcycle, but Marie has a zest for living that won't be stopped. Next on her bucket list:  a ride in a hot air balloon.

I'm not sure who had more fun today - Marie or Mike!

First time at Americade

Americade, an annual motorcycle extravaganza in neaby Lake George, NY, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Mike and I cleared our Friday afternoon schedule so we could ride over, weather forecast for severe storms be damned. The motorcycle weather gods were with us today as we only walked through a light sprinkle at the Expo even though menacing storm clouds were looming on the horizon.

The closer we came to Lake George, the more bikes we saw until bikes seemed to take over the road almost completely.

I love to go to expos at marathons, talking with the vendors and searching for the latest running gear. Today was Mike's day to wander among the vendors selling leather clothing and gear, helmets, gloves, sunglasses, custom artwork for your motorcycle, tires, jewelery, and anything else 'motorcycle' that you can imagine. He specifically wanted to find a waterproof bag to fit on top of our tailbag, giving us a bit more baggage space for our trip next month to Missouri for the BMW motorcycle rally. He settled on a bag from Twisted Throttle that we tied onto the tailbag with bungee cords. Perfect! The only downside is that I no longer can get on or off the bike by swinging my right leg up and over the tailbag - a tricky maneuver on the best of days and made more difficult after a couple of hours on the bike when my legs get a bit cramped. Now I have to hang onto Mike's shoulder and carefully slide my right leg through the space between Mike's back and the tailbag. As long as we're parked on a level surface, I can manage. When the bike is parked on a bit of a slope, Mike has to help haul me onto the bike. It may not be ladylike, but then I guess riding pillion on a motorcycle isn't really ladylike anyway!

We took the back roads home, deciding that Route 4 southeast in Ft. Ann looked like it might head back toward Vermont and home. We wound through hilly, rural Washington County for miles, surrounded by open pastures, farmers mowing hay, and fields full of corn just starting to sprout. The Adirondacks towered over the farmland to the west, and we periodically glimpsed the Vermont Green Mountains to our east. Names of the towns started to sound familiar:  West Hebron, Argyle, Belcher. As we swept around a tight curve we saw a sign for the Bedlam Corners store and thought about John Katz, a local author who lives in this area. We couldn't pinpoint our location on a map, or even tell you the way to get back home to Manchester. But we were familiar with the general area and knew that by continuing to head south and east we'd eventually stumble onto roads we knew. Sure enough, a few hilly, curvy miles from Bedlam Corners we saw a turn for Salem, a New York town not far from Manchester.

We stopped for an early dinner at Kevin and Mike's Place II , a combination local bar and fantastic family restaurant in the middle of North Bennington, VT. There was the usual Friday night line at the door for seating in the restaurant, so we sat at the bar. Wearing motorycle pants and carrying high-visibility yellow motorcycle jackets is a great way to start up conversation with people who start off as strangers and end up as someone we hope to meet again.

The weather gods stayed on our side on the way home. The roads and fields were filled with puddles from a recent hard rain, but the only wet that hit us came from the spray kicked up by a pick-up truck on the road in front of us. Mike solved that problem by passing the truck, and we rode home under clearing skies.

Today was my first experience with a motorcycle rally, and we're looking forward to the BMW rally in Missouri. First we need to plan our route to get there!

Moose sighting!

We were riding along rural Route 12A just out of Roxbury when I saw it:  a young moose standing in a marshy area by the side of the road. A woman in a Subaru was already stopped and outside her car, taking pictures. Mike rode past - until I pounded him on the shoulder and yelled "Moose!". We turned around and slowly approached, hoping we wouldn't scare him off. I guess moose aren't afraid of loud motorcycles because he calmly stopped and watched us before he high-stepped off into the woods.

The impetus for today's ride is part of Mike's search for his Ryan ancestors. He and his dad tracked down the death certificate of Mike's great-great-grandfather, also named Michael, in 1896 in Warren. Mike called the Warren town clerk for directions to the three town cemeteries, and we were off.

Spring has been teasing us since early March. First we had sun and temperatures in the 80's, followed by rain, drizzle, gray skies, and cold weather - too cold and damp for me to be on the BMW. Finally it's mid-May, the sun was shining and the temperatures were climbing into the 70's so we set off north toward Warren on Route 100. Lunch was at our favorite Rochester Cafe housed in a building dating from the mid-1800's. Mike loved the tuna salad on a grilled croissant and I tried the goat cheese/veggie wrap. We couldn't pass up a chocolate milkshake made from the 1940's soda fountain!

The large cemetery next to the church in Warren was easy to find, and we spent some time wandering among the gravestones, looking for Michael Ryan.

People have been buried in this cemetery since the early 1800's, but no Ryan was to be found. Mike's somewhat sketchy directions "Main Street turns into Brook Road, which turns into East Warren Road - look for Dump Road or Roxbury Mountain Road" led past fields backed by the Green Mountains with views of Sugarbush ski area.

After a couple of wrong turns we found the second small cemetery, and then stumbled on the third and smallest cemetery next to the East Warren General Store, which is now a community food co-op. We didn't find any gravestones for a Ryan, so decided to continue our ride on the back roads over Burnt Mountain to Roxbury. The road changed from smooth pavement to washboard-bumpy dirt, hard-packed and smooth dirt, and finally more pavement - all typical for mountain roads in Vermont.

Soon after we rode down into Roxbury and turned onto Route 12A was when we spotted the moose.

The ride home was quiet compared to the day's earlier excitement. We rode along winding and sparsely traveled 12A past the Fish Hatchery totally demolished by flooding with Tropical Storm Irene last September, through tiny Braintree to the junction with larger Route 12 in Randolph, and then onto 107 through Bethel. The roads through this entire area are a patchwork of new pavement put in place since Irene, areas of loose gravel where construction is ongoing, and miles of rocky, tree-strewn riverbeds newly carved out by the storm that drowned southern Vermont in over 14 inches of rain.

Our circular route joined up with Route 100 in Killington, south through Rutland and then further south on Route 7 back home to Manchester. I kept eyeing ice cream stands longingly, but Mike was in rhythm with the bike and the road, and we rolled home without stopping. 6 hours, 186 miles, lunch, 3 cemeteries hunting for an unknown relative, mountain views, meadows dotted with sunflowers, and a moose. Not bad for a Sunday afternoon's ride!

Spontaneous ride

When was the last time you jumped on your bike for a spontaneous ride?

It seems that everything in my life is planned and scripted. Work schedule, appointments, exercise schedule and a lengthy to-do list mean that Mike and I only fit in a bike ride when we plan it in advance. We pull out our calendars, check the weather forecast, and eventually agree that if everything works out, we can go for a ride on Saturrday at 11:30.

Today, spontaneity ruled.

Mike was working in his upstairs office, I was sick of spending the day on computer tasks, and sunshine beckoned. A quick "do you want to go for a ride?" turned into "let's go, right now!".

No matter that I had chicken and steak thawing in the fridge for dinner. Work was put on the back-burner, the kitchen floor can wait another day or two (or maybe week or two) to be swept, and the temperatures won't drop for at least another 2 hours. We were out the door in less than 10 minutes, heading toward the back roads of Dorset and Rupert.

A quick ride through Manchester on Route 30, turn onto Dorset West Road to enjoy a lightly traveled side road, and finally a left turn onto Route 315 that twists up over Rupert Mountain and down into West Rupert led us through newly plowed farmland and small clusters of houses in quiet villages centered by a white-clapboard church with a cemetery next door.

Route 315 becomes Route 153 when we cross into New York. If you miss the sign welcoming you to New York, you wouldn't realize you were in a different state. The state lines are blurry in this rural area, where kids living in Vermont go to high school in New York  because it's closer than the nearest Vermont school.

Salem, NY, boasts a stoplight where 153 intersects with 22. We head south on 22 into Cambridge, and tired of the busier 2-lane highway, I suggest to Mike that we turn off in White Creek onto a road I believe leads to North Bennington. As Mike always says, roads around here have to lead somewhere, and we followed NY 68 up and down rolling hills through more open farmland into White Creek and finally into North Bennington. We ride more slowly, giving us the opportunity to notice groups of daffodils blooming around the base of an abandoned farmhouse, cows grazing in newly green fields, and the smell of fresh dirt and manure.

North Bennington, population around 1,400, is busy with people driving home from work. Kevin and Mike's Place II is a popular restaraunt/bar, and since it's early we sit at the bar to order dinner and watch sports on the large TVs lined up on the wall. We don't linger over dinner since we want to avoid the rapid drop in temperature sure to come with dusk, and I pull on an extra sweater under my jacket as we get back on the bike.

We've ridden this route hundreds of times, but tonight Mike sticks with the theme of taking side roads whenever possible.Instead of staying on 7A all the way to Manchester, he turns off on Dunham Road in Arlington. It's a dirt road that twists and turns along a swampy area to our left, with scattered houses and steep forested hills to our right. At a couple of points Mike slows down to make a blind corner, just in case a car is coming from the opposite direction. The road narrows quite a bit, and it's easy for a car to take up more than its share of the road. Dunham Road ends at River Road, leading us along the BattenKill back to Manchester, with views of Bromley Mountain in our sight most of the way home.

A little under 3 hours after we left home, we pull into the driveway. We'll have to plan to be spontaneous more often.

If it's sunny and above 60 degrees, it's time for barbecue!

March teased us with hot temperatures and the promise of an early Spring, and then April roared back with cold, rainy, gray weather. The BMW sat in the garage, waiting for the sun to return.

It seems that many of our favorite rides involve food, and today was no different. We started with a plan to eat a late lunch at Curtis BBQ in Putney, home of the best barbecue we've found in the Northeast.

We headed north on Route 11/30 into Londonderry and through Chester before turning onto Route 103 on our way through Rockingham and Bellows Falls, ending up on Route 5 to Putney.  The damage caused by "Irene" - Tropical Storm Irene that lashed southern Vermont the end of August, is evident everywhere a stream or river travels near the road. People usually visualize mountain ranges covered with pine and hardwood forests when they think about Vermont, but they forget about the vast amount of water that is drained through these mountains. We didn't have much snow this winter, and Spring has been unusually dry, leaving the streams and rivers much lower than usual but showcasing the gravel, boulders, and huge trees that were hurled by Irene.

Usually when we pull into Curtis Barbecue we're greeted by a parking lot full of motorcycles, pick up trucks, and cars with license plates from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Today we were only the second bike in the lot, parking next to a Harley owned by a friendly guy from Springfield.

This is only the third weekend Curtis has been open this season, but everything looks familiar:  the menu featuring pork and chicken, potato or cucumber salad, and lots of paper towels to soak up the BBQ sauce.

We listened to acoustic guitar music while we enjoyed lunch, and then went in search of ice cream for dessert. We took the circular, long way around route back home riding through busy and congested Brattleboro then along Route 30 along more open and rural countryside into Newfane. How a business called The Creamery can't have ice cream on the menu is beyond me, but they didn't so we rode on, still in search of dessert.

Since we ride along Route 30 from Brattleboro to home fairly often, Mike took a detour from Townshend into Grafton, a beautiful old Vermont town that gives meaning to the phrase "you can't get there from here". Grafton isn't on any direct road, and in fact we rode on over 10 miles of dirt roads that have been repaired since Irene cut Grafton off completely. We rode through wide stretches of forest and farmland before turning out onto - paved - Route 30. 

Still without ice cream to finish off lunch, we turned into Zoeys deli in Manchester, hoping to try their new gelato. One of the staff was hanging up the 'closed' sign as we pulled up to the door, so we kept going to our old stand-by:  Ben & Jerry's outdoor stand owned by our friend John. We joined the everpresent line of customers to order Chunky Monkey and Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch ice cream.

Lunch finally complete, we headed home a couple of hours ahead of the rain. 120 miles in a 3-hour ride on familiar roads to a favorite lunch stop was a great way to spend a sunny, warm April afternoon. Forsythia is blooming, the trees are starting to bud, and farmers are just starting to think about plowing their fields. The weather forecast for tomorrow is more warm, clear weather and Mike is planning to ride the BMW to a meeting in Massachusetts. I wonder if he'll find ice cream for lunch?