Another Sunday—another ride. The calendar goddesses have been very good to me the month of September, as I have gotten to ride four Sunday s in a row. That is coming to an end, but it’s been a fantastic month of putting miles on the bike. This just makes me more sure that I want to own my own bike so that I can ride whenever I wish!!
This Sunday, I set out with my mentor MJ—she decided to ride her Ducati 650 Monster instead of her Road King and she made me lead on our way out to the meet up spot. This is definitely an area for growth, as when I’m in front I have trouble maintaining a consistent speed and going fast enough. But we did make it to the meet up spot.
We met up with the other riders for the day—4 Furies- Kathie (the leader for the day), Lisa, MJ and Caryl and then 3 guests- myself, Kitty and Staci. It was a good group for riding and I was BY FAR the least experienced rider in the group but for the most part I didn’t have trouble keeping up. We headed off towards Wisconsin—twisting and turning our way through back roads and beautiful fall colors. The trees were gorgeous—so many of them turning goldens and reds and oranges and the sun was just warm enough to keep the day from being too crisp.
Kathie led us through Wisconsin to the town of Delavan to Spring Grove cemetery. Apparently Delavan used to be a circus town and many of the circus folk who made it their home are buried in this cemetery. Each circus performer buried there is denoted by a little grave marker bearing an elephant and a number. I assume there is a registry somewhere of who these various performers are, but we did not have access to one. It was completely fascinating.
The cemetery was also home to some other really cool grave markers—metal markers for WWI, WWII, Korea, and the Mexican War. Additionally there were GAR and DAR makers as well as some that I was not able to identify.
But what was really sad (besides all the dead people) was that some vandals had been into the cemetery and damaged the graves—they had pushed them over and cracked some of the headstones and monuments. Some of them cannot be up righted or repaired. I don’t understand why defacing the graves of people who have been gone over 100 years is considered fun or entertaining.
After our graveyard adventure we were starving—I swear some of the stomachs were rumbling louder than the pipes on a Harley. We found our way to a restaurant, and Captain Kitty nearly ate the manager alive when he wasn’t concerned about my onion allergy, but despite that it was nice to hang out and enjoy a leisurely lunch.
After lunch we all rode together for a little while. My biggest scare of the day was when we were taking some wonderful sweeping curves and the seat of the bike shifted way off kilter. I freaked out. The seat has been giving us issues, but I hadn’t had trouble while riding. The shift of the seat and the speed of the curves caused me to panic in my head and it was not god—not good at all. Then we unfortunately ended up in a traffic nightmare where 4 lanes suddenly became 1 and there was a 4 way stop…for about 30 minutes we were in first gear or stopped and barely went more than 1-2 mph. My clutch hand cramped painfully!
Finally we headed home—a jaunty ride down 176 to I-94 with MJ in the lead- on the Ducati. She goes really fast on the Duc. We were chasing daylight but still managed to make it home before dark.
Miles for the day: 220
Total: 1592
RSS Feed