2013 Hot Buttered Goat Rally

Connie and I rode the 2013 Hot Buttered Goat Rally on Saturday, 31 August 2013. The rally was organized by our friend Jonathan “Hammy” Tan, and it was tremendously fun.

The format was a bit different from other rallies, in that each rider could select a start point (we all ended at Yoder’s Country Market in New Holland, PA).

Because we were starting the day in Northern Virginia, and we didn’t want to ride farther north to start, I elected to start at the southern-most bonus location, which was located in Dover, DE.

Instead of a rally flag, we brought a “mascot”, who would be in every photograph with Connie (the usual rule is that if a passenger is riding the rally, the passenger must be in every photograph). Our rally was Connie’s otter that rode with me on the 2012 Butt Lite.

We started at the Dover International Speedway, at the statue of Miles the Monster. We had planned to visit Miles some time back, but bad weather intervened, and we headed back to Virginia (through a thunderstorm). So, it was nice to make the stop this time, and collect the photograph of my lovely and talented assistant, our mascot, and Miles.

From Dover, we rode to Smyrna, DE to find Helen’s Famous Sausage House which, regrettably, was closed for the weekend. The fellow in the red car, below, was just hanging out in the parking lot, fascinated, I’m sure, by suited-up motorcycle riders stopping by to take photographs. Other hopeful patrons arrived while we were taking our photograph; they, too, were disappointed at the closure.

Our next stop was the Reedy Island range rear light (more information here).

Next, we were off to Greenville, DE to visit the sign outside the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory (who knew there was a mountain in Delaware, much less one named Mt. Cuba?) .

A little ways down the road, we were to find a gate with a very nice deer motif (this is the way we like to see deer – frozen in time). The neighborhood behind this gate was somewhat different that the neighborhoods that we would be riding through just a few hours later.

This large, brightly-painted storage tank sits near the Philadelphia city line. We enjoyed the gravel at the parking spot, and the two extra bridge transits we needed to make to get this photograph.

We had all KINDS of fun getting around Philadelphia!

I made a bad turn out of the storage tank photograph location, which sent us south across the Schuylkill River (again), which was okay since we needed to find a spot for refreshment. I didn’t find an on-ramp for I-95, so we were in for a very long slog across town to find Johnny’s Hots (in a truly forgettable part of Philadelphia). Ugh.

From Johnny’s Hots, we needed to head west to find the Turtle Rock Light. To get there, we needed to navigate Philadelphia streets (and I was already off-route, so navigation with two GPS receivers was exciting).

Who knew that Fitz & The Tantrums would be playing on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, at just about the time we were trying to get through that part of town? No wonder all the streets were blocked off!

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were playing somewhere in that expanse of green on the map, below.

Finally! We arrived at Turtle Rock Light (which is a place to which we want to return, because Fairmount Park is a great ride).

Merrymead Farm was our next destination, where we needed a photograph of homemade peanut butter.

Green Sargeant’s Covered Bridge was our next stop. This is also a virtual geocache, so we got a two-fer here.

We headed to Northlandz (more here and here and here) next, to see the train station adjacent to the museum.

We were running a bit behind plan, so we dropped our anticipated visit to the New Jersey Astronomical Association Observatory in High Bridge, NJ and Hot Dog Johnny’s (more here) in Buttzville, NJ. Based on the TripAdvisor® rating (ranked #1 restaurant in Buttzville at the time of this writing), we’ll need to plan a trip to get some dogs and some birch beer.

Our next stop was the Butter Valley Golf Port, where I managed to get a photograph of the wrong sign. Sigh. Connie and our mascot look great, though.

Our next stop(s) were in Boyertown, PA, where we were to take photographs of bears. Lots of bears. We could get one point for each bear, up to a maximum of 30 points. We were able to get more than one bear per minute, so these were much more efficient than they would have appeared.

 

I wanted to make sure we visited this one, which was out last bear of the day.

The Driebelbis Covered Bridge (more here) was our next stop.

The big points (1000) were at Cabela’s in Hamburg, PA. We needed a shot of the goat jumping in mid-air. We must have made quite a sight, striding purposefully through Cabela’s, in search of a jumping goat (and Connie, with her helmet in place).

We were pressed for time, so we dropped our planned visit to It’s Just BBQ in Orwigsburg, PA. That left Roadside America as our last stop.

We made it to Rally HQ with a few minutes to spare, and had a very nice meal at Yoder’s Country Market in New Holland, PA, with the other riders.

We overnighted in New Holland, then headed for Northern Virginia on Sunday morning. We had a great time!

14 July 2013 Ride Report

I’m trying to get out on a long ride at least once a month, and with Butt Lite 7 (VII? Se7en? IIIIIII?) on the horizon for next summer, there’s some serious training to be done.

This weekend’s ride was also designed to get into cooler temperatures, by riding into the hills of West Virginia.

We headed west, out I-66 to US-48, then into WV. We had a very nice late breakfast / early lunch at Sunset Restaurant in Moorefield. There was a group of riders there, enjoying a meal. There’s a very large chicken sculpture right across the road from the restaurant…we didn’t stop for a picture (this time).

I wanted to take a side road, skirting south of Petersburg to get a little different scenery. It had been a long time since I’d been on that road, and it was nice to see not much has changed.

We picked up U.S. 220 just south of Upper Tract, WV. Just shy of Franklin, we turned west onto U.S. 33 – this is a great motorcycle road. We rode south on WV 28 until we got to U.S. 250, then we turned east through Monterey, VA. I’d like to come back to explore Monterey one of these weekends.

We stopped for some ice cream and soda at the Tastee Freez in Churchville. There were other bikes there, as well – usually a good sign.

We picked up I-81 at Staunton, and rode north to New Market, where we took U.S. 211 east to Warrenton. As much as I enjoy U.S. 211, the route along U.S. 33 and U.S. 250 is really better.

From Warrenton, we picked up U.S. 29, and wound up in a big traffic jam in Gainesvillle. Ugh. We took U.S. 15 north to get around that, and headed back on I-66 all the way home.

It was a great ride!

Elevation profile:

Flower Sniffing – 8 June 2013

I wanted to get a little riding in this weekend, and the weather cooperated perfectly. Friday featured a thoroughly miserable frog-strangler (that I endured, so I could get the left combo switch replaced – the windscreen switch gave up on this one), but Saturday was oh-so pleasant.

I was so soaked on Friday, that I left all my gear in the bathtub to drip “dry” a bit. I got a characteristic late start….

Connie wanted to check out some of the locations we’d visited on our recent ride to Camden, NJ and Philadelphia, PA, so we headed northeast on the Baltimore Washington Parkway and I-95. I-95 is pretty boring, and uninspiring, so I wanted to get over to U.S. 1 just north of Baltimore. We picked up U.S. 1 in Bel Air, MD, and continued northeast. I’m fascinated by the Conowingo hydroelectric dam, so it was nice to see it in the daylight, and from a direction opposite our usual track.

I did a little research on Mexican restaurants in West Chester, PA and we stopped at Don Gabriel’s for lunch, based on recent Yelp reviews. It was forgettable. We did get a little more riding around West Chester, which was one of our goals for the day.

I also wanted to see the American Helicopter Museum and the QVC studios, both of which are located adjacent to the nearby airport.

We then headed east to check out the area around St. Joseph’s University, and to ride down City Avenue in Philadelpia.

We rode down a side street, and found some truly amazing and HUGE mansions.

We turned northwest at Bala Cynwyd, and rolled through Ardmore. We saw several more really big private schools / universities as we headed out of town.

We stopped in Pottstown, PA for a Dairy Queen visit, very near the Limerick nuclear power plant.

I wanted to ride through French Creek State Park to see the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site (we’ll be back to see them earlier in the day) – we found some amazing roads through this area. Well worth a return visit!

It was getting late in the day, so we headed west through Lancaster County (another place we’re going to spend some time exploring) to pick up I-83 south at York, PA.

It was yet another beautiful ride!

Ride Report -- 10 May 2013

The Big Money Rally is rapidly coming to an end, and I needed to scrounge up 28 points to be a finisher this year. I planned a route that would take me south, somewhat west, then north again. That route would net 19 of the 28 points needed, which was very good. I ended up having to make a trip over to Joint Base Andrews, however, that soaked up two of the hours needed for that ride.

I deleted a four-point trip to Momma Rosa’s in Gretna, Virginia to get some time back. That left me with 15 points for the day, which wasn’t too bad.

As you can see, I got a much later start on the day than I should have to get this much riding done. Also note that it was 63 deg F…it would get to 90 deg F (or warmer) during the ride. Wow. Summer’s here (already).

The ride south was all slab, but I this was a rally-like run, so I needed to get south to start collecting bonuses.

The weather was really good, and since it was a Friday morning, the traffic was heavy but moving very fast. I tucked myself in amongst the I-95 crowd, and moved along.

Today’s ride was to be a LOT of rural road riding after the slab south. I was destined to ride through a lot of older, rural settlements.

My first stop was to Grandpa’s Kitchen in Littleton, NC. Littleton is an interesting place…one of the thousands of interesting places I get to see on the bike.

Note the flying pig on the sidewalk. For such a small town, there was a lot of traffic on the main drag.

Next stop: Boydton, Virginia (which, incidentally, is the home of a Microsoft Data Center). The coordinates I had loaded for the Boydton Volunteer Fire Department were off by quite a bit, so I did a little riding around Boydton to find the right location.

From  Boydton, I headed north to Drakes Branch, Virginia.

From Drakes Branch, I continued north to Meherrin, Virginia, birthplace of Roy Clark.

Then, on to Burkeville, Virginia. A local resident came over to see the bike, and to chat a bit. A drawback of a full-face helmet is that small talk is tough.

Here’s the Dillwyn, Virginia Fire Company’s building:

My last stop of the day was James Madison’s Montpelier.

From Orange, it’s a short ride home.

Saturday, 27 April 2013

Connie and I needed to do a little practice riding in advance of this year’s Mason Dixon 20-20, so we planned a nice Saturday ride. It was a great excuse to knock out a few more Big Money Rally bonus locations, along with a few Tour of Honor memorials.
We got a nice morning start, heading up I-295 / MD-295 through Maryland and the District of Columbia under a cloud-less sky. Road conditions were okay (I travel part of that route every workday, so I know where the worst potholes are located), and traffic was light for a Saturday morning.

Our first stop was the Caesar Rodney statue in Wilmington, Delaware, for a Tour of Honor memorial. We’ll be back to find his grave in Delaware for a future bonus location.


After Wilmington, we had a nice ride up I-95, to two stops in the Philadelphia, PA and Camden, NJ area.

Our stop in Philadelphia was to the Korean War Memorial.

The stop in Camden, NJ was to the Merchant Marine Memorial. The memorial is very close to the berth of USS New Jersey (BB 62), on the Camden waterfront.

Connie wanted to see a bit of Camden, so we took a somewhat circuitous route back to the bridge. We didn’t get to see ALL of the sights, but we saw quite a few.

From Camden, we headed west across the bridge, then west to our next stop – West Chester, Pennsylvania.

We found a bit of really bad traffic on the way to our next stop, so we took a bit of a detour north – up through an area that was known as Rittenhouse during the early days of Philadelphia. This is one of those locations that’s worth a return trip.
Our next stop was to a virtual geocache in West Chester, PA. West Chester was a happenin’ place while we were there – lots and lots of people on the streets, with quite a few sidewalk restaurants and a general welcoming feel. This is another place to which we want to return.

We next visited the Haym Solomon Memorial Park in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the location of Jim Croce’s grave.


We continued north to the rugged highlands of the Gettysburg-Newark Lowland Section.

There, we were destined to find the Spring Mountain Ski Area closed, regrettably, for the season. I thought the Tiki Bar was a nice touch. We couldn’t afford the time needed to completely scout the place, because we had to get back on the road.

Our original plan had us heading northwest to another ski area, but we were running out of daytime, so we headed for our last scheduled stop – an eatery in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. In yet another twist of fate, we arrived too late to visit “The Very Best Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, Steaks in Pottstown since 1921”. Next time, as “they” say.

Aside from a stop at a Jimmy John’s for a sandwich, it was time to make tracks for home. What a great ride!

Report: Virginia's Traffic Loopholes Lead To Unsafe Conditions

Report: Virginia's Traffic Loopholes Lead To Unsafe Conditions

I can hardly wait to read this year's report. Its arrival will be reported, once again, by WAMU 88.5.