Last day of January

WOW, did January ever go out as a beautiful day and great day to ride a motorcycle. Two of the best days of the month were Jan 1 and Jan 31!! My friend Johnny took a day of vacation today and he and I went around 290 miles across Southside Virginia. Started off by meeting at 10 am in Amelia.

Had to take a picture of a US flag - bungee corded to a power pole near the parking lot. Something about this just seemed so down to earth patriotic!!

Just beautiful clear blue skies all days and warm temps! Saw a high temperature of 72 degrees on the bike thermometer.

Johnny had heard about a place in South Boston called Windmill Farm Bake Shop. Reported to be a great place for lunch. This was a solid recommendation, as it was great. I had chicken salad on home made whole wheat bread with a piece of home made chocolate pie for dessert. (Hey, I don't need to say "home made" anymore as everything in the bake shop was "home made" right there at the shop!!). Johnny had chicken salad in addition to a bologna sandwich and the chocolate pie too. It was so rich and so much to eat that Johnny couldn't finish his bologna sandwich! Now if anyone knows Johnny and how he can eat, you know that was a lot! Oh yes, forgot about the potato salad we had too. Delicious!! We both brought home a container of potato salad and a few other goodies to enjoy later with our wives!

We took country roads out of South Boston through Volens and Cody over to Altavista. Took SR 43 from Altavista to Bedford. A GREAT motorcycle road. Very little traffic and lots of nice twists and turns. Headed back on US 460/360. Had one stop for gas and a rest in Appomattox.

Another great day of riding with a great friend. It does seem that every time I go out on my motorcycle now, something happens to my bike!! This time the rubber insert in my footboard broke loose! The rubber mounts just were wore out. (Isn't that hard to imagine on my bike!!)

I guess this can be expected with a motorcycle with 72,000 miles on it and has been to Cape Spear, Newfoundland; Arctic Circle, Alaska; Mt. St. Helens, Washington; Grand Canyon, Arizona and Key West, Florida!! No big deal, I just had to keep my foot on it so it wouldn't blow away on the road. Now I have an excuse to get a nice chrome footboard insert!!!

We got back around 5 pm. Don't really know what the winter weather will be like for February, but December and January has been great here in Virginia for motorcycle riding.

New Year's Day 2012

Had to take a 2012 New Year's Day ride with the weather forecast temps to be in the mid 60's! Decided on a ride through southside Virginia of about 180 miles to South Hill and lunch at the Glass House Grill. Had never visited this grill before. It had some good reviews on the internet so it became the destination of the ride. 


Went with my friend, Johnny. He on his 2008 SE Ultra and me on my 2007 Ultra. We met at a parking lot in Amelia and headed out from there. Just a pleasant nice ride on country roads through towns such as Blackstone and Kenbridge. Beautiful old Victorian house along tree lined streets. Not much traffic, but did see several motorcycles. Don't think we had to pass a single vehicle on the entire trip on the two lane roads! Had my camera today, but didn't take any pictures, so you will just have to use your imagination!


Got to the Glass House Grill around 11:45 am. It was an interesting place actually attached to a 6 lane bowling alley! They had an all day New Year's bowling tournament going on. (I guess that is a big thing to do on New Year's Day in South Hill!). The food was pretty good and the waitress was friendly. The she crab soup was very good and they did have great homemade desserts!


We decided to take a different way back on some other country roads after we gassed up in South Hill. A few miles outside of South Hill heading up US 1 was where things got interesting on my bike!



I had a strange electrical problem that occurred. All of a sudden my cruise control tripped off. I tried to reset/resume and would not work. The red cruise symbol just stayed red. My throttle idle cable had gone bad about 6 months ago and was replaced. It had the same cruise control symptoms and my first thought was that it had gone bad again, but in a matter of seconds my radio cut off and turned back on by itself and then shut back off completely (all blank, no clock numbers even) in another couple of seconds. That's when I noticed my red cruise symbol light went off too. In addition, my horn wouldn't work, my signal lights and brake lights wouldn't work, and anything connected to the auxillary switch on the dash (my Air Zeppelin seat and saddle bag lid latch lights). The only indicator light that was now on for the dash rocker switches was the spot switch. 


Johnny and I had been talking on the CB radio, but that was out too, of course with the radio! I gave hand signals to Johnny and we stopped. I verified all of this stuff not working but did not turn the engine off for fear it would not start back! We decided to head straight back home to my garage with Johnny following me with brake lights and signal lights. I just knew I had a blown fuse, but the stuff affected seemed a little odd to me (I didn't think one fuse would feed the cruise control, horn, signal lights and the other stuff!).


When I arrived back home, the first thing I did was stop the engine & turn all power off, then back on and restarted the engine. No problems restarting the engine so that was good but, still no radio, horn, signal/brake lights, cruise and aux items. I turned everything back off. The next thing I did was remove the seat to look under to make sure I didn't see a wire broken. I decided to check here first before looking at the fuses. Everything looked good under the seat so I decided to turn the switch back on and presto, everything came back on! The radio came back on with the correct time on it even. I didn't do anything except take the seat off and look at the wires!!


I followed up with some more diagnostics. The check engine light never came on at anytime. I did check for trouble codes and I had two under the TSM/TSSM module: B1121-Turn signal will not flash and B1122-Right Turn Signal Open. Both of these were temporary codes as I cleared them and they never came back. Everything else was clear. I took the bike back out and rode for 40 miles without any problems. Everything seems to be fine now.


I suspect some loose/corroded connection in some connector, but I don't understand what could be common to the horn, signal lights, brake lights, cruise control and aux switch on the bike. This seems really odd. I plan to do some connector checking, cleaning and put dielectric grease on all the connectors I can get to


I really hate these kind of problems that seem to get fixed and you don't do anything (or know what you did) to fix it! Anyway, hopefully this wasn't a "sign of things to come" on my 2007 Ultra with over 71,000 miles for the rest of 2012!! In any case, it was a great ride on some great roads with a great friend for the first day of 2012!

Gloucester & Yorktown

Great New Year's Eve riding day in Virginia!! What a great day for a motorcycle ride. Great weather, ride, roads, friends and food. It was around 65 degrees today. Libby and I left this morning around 10:30am with friend Keith and Rae and Johnny and Pam heading to West Point, Gloucester and Yorktown. Made our first stop at Digg's Seafood in West Point for some great crab muffins and deviled crab. They were really good!!

Headed on down to Gloucester and checked out Johnny & Pam's place on the bay.

Keith and Rae had to head back home from this point and we headed on to Yorktown with Johnny and Pam. Stopped at the Yorktown Pub in the historic waterfront area of Yorktown. Had some great seafood. Only disappointment was that they we sold out of Fat Tire beer!!

Yorktown Pub. A nice very biker friendly place with great food.

Great view of the Coleman bridge.

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 Beautiful waterfront views of the York River

Got back home around 5 pm

Wilmington, NC

Had a great motorcycle trip over the past two days to and back from Wilmington, NC. Did a little over 600 miles. It was cold both morning with temps in the upper 20's to lower 30's with a heavy frost both in Powhatan, VA and Wilmington, NC!

I left on Thursday around 10am and it had "warmed up" to the mid 40's. The heated jacket and gloves kept me nice and toasty. It was a great ride. I took a lot of two land roads, but had to ride I95 for a few miles! The afternoon temps only warmed up to the low 50's so the heated gear stayed on for the entire trip. Only saw a total of 3 other motorcycles on the road. Arrived in Wilmington around 4pm. Had dinner with my daughter at the Copper Penny in downtown Wilmington. It was very good. They, of course, had Fat Tire beer on draft. We had wings for our appetizer and I had Fish and Chips. Nice place. They had a dessert I have to try sometime, called "Soon to be famous" bread pudding. Didn't have room this time, but the next!!

Left on Friday morning around 8:30am from Wilmington. Again, heavy frost and around 30 degrees. Heated gear is great for days like this! Took my time on two lane roads to head over to I95 for the trip home. Stopped at Sheltons Harley Davidson in Smithfield. First time I had visited that shop. Had a cup of coffee and just browsed around. I was surprised to see they had two 2011 Ultra Limited bikes on the floor with a discount of $1,000. I was there for about 30 minutes, had a cup of coffee and only one person in the entire store spoke to me. As friendly as they were, I then could understand how they still have 2011 motorcycles still for sale!! Temps were around 60 by noon so I disconnected all the heated gear. Temps stayed in the low 60's for the rest of the trip. Really felt good and is just about perfect riding weather. Was surprised that I only saw one other motorcycle on the entire trip back and for a Friday!! Got back home to Powhatan around 4pm

A great relaxing two day trip and got in a great visit with my daughter! Gotta do an oil change on the Ultra now and get a 10,000 mile maintenance done. Have almost 71,000 miles on the clock!

Hank's Smokehouse-Massanutten

The weather here in Virginia has been gorgeous this November! Another beautiful day for motorcycle riding. Libby and I rode up to Massanutten to eat at Hank's Smokehouse. We stopped at Cuppa Joe's coffee house for a break and a coffee going up.

I really don't remember the leaf color staying so nice in Virginia for so long as it has done this fall. Really pretty!

Hank's Smokehouse was just as good as the reviews!! I had the Texas smoked brisket with whiskey BBQ sauce and Libby had the roast beef.

What a meal. We were two happy campers!!

And we got a great place to park too!!

On the way back we stopped at Cuppa Joe's AGAIN, but this time for ice cream! We took advantage of the lounge chairs outside the restaurant and enjoyed the sunshine and warm air!!

Did "discover" a couple of interesting things on the way back about 10 miles from our home. One of the WORST highway construction events you can encounter is a highway road painting truck!! I also now know that these "things" go only 10 mph. It took us almost an hour to go the last 10 miles on US 522 coming home! You couldn't pass the paint truck and traffic was backed up as far as we could see. Not really a big deal on a day like today and after a great ride with my wife and meal!! We took our time, relaxed and watched the leaves go by as we were in 1st gear going 10 mph!!

Also went over 70,000 miles on the odometer of my 07 Ultra coming back. Gotta schedule a 10,000 mile maintenance soon!

Took a pic in our front yard after we got back as the leaf color in the setting sun was gorgeous here too!

Nice ride out to Appomattox, VA today. Temp was around 70 degrees. Just a beautiful fall day in central Virginia. Leave color is at it peak now here in the central part of the state. Stopped at a Sheetz station in Farmville to get a cup of coffee.

Saw this Landshark van parked there. Reminded me of Key West!

Headed on over to Appomattox, VA and stopped at several of the Lee's surrender locations at the National Park.

The leaf color was just beautiful!

GREAT motorcycle trip today out to Urbanna, VA to the Urbanna Oyster Festival (http://www.urbannaoysterfestival.com/) with wife Libby and friends, Johnny and Pam!! Left this morning around 9:30 with the temps in the 40s but clear blue sunny skies!! Chilly ride, but well worth it. Very smooth ride into Urbanna with no traffic and a great place to park in a CORN FIELD!! At least we had the whole place to ourselves!! (When we came back in the afternoon the entire field was filled with cars and other motorcycles beside us!)

We had about a quarter mile walk into town with great scenic views of the harbor along the way!!

 A nice lady took our picture on the bridge by the harbor (funny, I didn't know Johnny was taller than me! He will do anything to get one up on you!!).

Anyway, on to the downtown festival for some great seafood, entertainment, parades, etc.!! Libby and I both had a cup of delicious crab bisque!! It was very good.

Next was the oyster fritter sandwich. It was HUGE and Libby and I split one. This was a seafood lovers paradise for sure!!

The "highlight" sandwich was Johnny's soft shell crab sandwich. As usual, he "sweet talked" the lady making the sandwiches and ask her to make him a "special" one. Well she did. She put FOUR soft shell crabs on his sandwich. Needless to say, Johnny was a very happy man with that!! (Of course, what is funny is that he doesn't look happy in this photo until he took the first bite (then it was "love at first bite" and he was very happy with a great big smile right after this photo was taken!!)

Libby and I couldn't resist the homemade cinnamon rolls with coffee. Don't these look good (they were even better than they looked!!)

We also had some great entertainment from a blue grass band while we ate.

They even had quilts which Libby loved to see and talk to the ladies who made them.

Lots of beautiful old houses in downtown Urbanna that we walked by.

The walk back out of town to our motorcycles was very nice with beautiful views of the water.

On our way back, we couldn't pass up Digg's Seafood in West Point for one of the great Crab Muffins!!

Pam was so excited to get to stop at Digg's Seafood!!

For those of you that have not experienced a Digg's Seafood Crab Muffin here is a picture. It is just as good as the picture makes it look (maybe even better!!)

We had a nice relaxing time outside Digg's finishing off our muffins and a couple of Deviled Crabs too before we made the return trip back home!! WOW, are we ever stuffed, but it was so good!!

Just another GREAT day of motorcycle riding with great friends and my wife. A great destination in Urbanna and West Point. I think we have found another (at least) annual trip!! We got back home around 6 pm

Great ride today out to the Northern Neck area of Virginia with my wife, Libby and friends Johnny & Pam. Did about 250 miles. Left this morning around 9:15am with the temperature around 40 degrees but it warmed up into the 60s in the afternoon. Headed down to Tappahannock and had lunch at Lowery's Restaurant (http://www.lowerysrestaurant.com/).

What a great lunch of shrimp, crab, crab soup with all the fixin's and delicious rice pudding for dessert. Great food and great friends to enjoy it with. It don't get any better than that!! The restaurant had a Mynah bird in a cage that could really talk and whistle. Johnny had a great time with the bird and with a group of women eating at the restaurant. He made their day with his and the birds whistles!! They were so happy they were hugging each other and everybody!!

We headed on out in the afternoon to tour the Northern Neck area. I had got a route from the site (http://www.openroadjourney.com/loadroute.asp?rid=2544) to ride. As I left the parking lot of Lowery's Restaurant there was quite a dip at the edge of the road and I dragged on the bottom of my bike. I have a center stand so I thought I just hit it which I have done before. The bike felt a little odd so I called to Johnny on the CB to pull over a couple of block from the restaurant to check my bike out. I thought my center stand spring had let it fall, but no I had a FLAT REAR TIRE!! My first flat tire in well over 100,000 miles of motorcycle riding. Just knew there was a nail/screw in the tire so as I rolled the bike back, Johnny looked at the tire to find the puncture, but nothing could be found. (Didn't get a picture but it was kinda funny with Johnny laying down behind my bike while I moved it back and forward!! I am sure some people passing by wondered what was going on with those motorcyclists!!) We then thought maybe the bead got broken as I ran across the dip at the edge of the road coming out of the restaurant. Funny we pulled over at a gas station, but only the gas pumps were open the station was CLOSED!

I have always carried a small air compressor (http://www.amazon.com/Slime-40020-Top-Off-Inflator/dp/B002ZC1EOM/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1320276397&sr=8-12) that I bought at Walmart for about $10. It worked great and pumped the tire back up to 40 pounds in just a few minutes. I let it set and checked it a couple of times and looked like it went down about 1 pound each time I checked it. I drove around the block and checked it again and it was down about 5 pounds so there was definitely a problem!! We rolled the bike back and forth again checking for a puncture but nothing! I finally put a wet finger on the valve end and I could feel and see bubbles of air escaping from the valve stem!! Looked like the valve was loose in the stem. I have always carried a valve stem tool in my tool bag (they are very small) but apparently it had fallen out at some time in the past as I have never needed it before. Johnny took off on his bike and stopped at a tire store a few blocks away in town and they loaned him the tool. (As is normally the case a locksmith stopped by in his van and offered assistance. He was sure he had something in his van of lock tools that would tighten the valve stem, but Johnny had already left to find one. Regardless, the locksmith stayed with us until Johnny returned and he was sure the tire was fixed! People like that are so nice!) Johnny brought it back and I tightened up the valve stem and refilled it with air. The problem was solved and the tire held air!!

We continued on our route cutting several areas short so that we could get back home before dark. It was a great ride though some beautiful country roads along water and autumn leaves. We got back home at 6:15pm as the sun was setting!! The main morale of this trip is to always check and make sure you have a tire valve stem tool in the tool bag and to check the tightness of the valve stem every time you check the air pressure!! Regardless, a great fall motorcycle ride through some beautiful country, great food and GREAT company with the wife and friends!! It don't get any better than this!!!

Ride to Graves Mountain

Great ride with my wife to Graves Mountain for the annual Apple Fest (http://www.gravesmountain.com/appleharvest.htm) with Johnny and Pam this Saturday. A little cool in the morning but warmed up very nice for the afternoon as well as during the visit at the Apple Festival. We stopped at a neat little coffee shop on the way up, a "Key West style" coffee house near Palmyra, VA. This brought back some memories of our trip together to the real Key West in June!

About half way, so the break was welcome to warm up to some hot coffee. Johnny even took the opportunity to relax in the hammock!





We took all two lane roads and what a great ride it was. The leaf color seems to be really late in Virginia this year. Leaf color was still very spotty. Looks like this coming weekend will be the peak for at least east of the Blue Ridge. The Apple Festival was fun with some great food!

 The Brunswick stew and BBQ was very good. Tried to save room for some Graves Mountain apple covered funnel cake, but no one could do it. Johnny did have a piece of apple pie though and we brought back some caramel kettle korn!!


A lot of motorcycles there for the third weekend of the Festival. We plan to make this an annual event in the future. Great time, great ride, beautiful day, good food and great company!