Riding in Maine... Last summer I had a wicked time up there too. Was going to the Maine state rally in Ellsworth. Was actually something of an odd trip the whole way.
Left Joplin (southwest) Missouri and rode to Duluth the first night. Crossed the int'l border in to Canada after what had been a beautiful first day out only to have my first "incident" of the trip about an hour in to the second morning. Was running maybe 1500 feet behind this mini-van with a cargo carrier on top. Had even watched the cargo carrier just because it didn't look quite right. Then, suddenly, whoooosh, the thing comes straight back off the mini van, lands in the lane and slides perfectly straight for about a second, then explodes open and there's shirts and clothes and towels flying everyplace. I'd already swapped lanes to avoid hitting the container. I think I'd done that even before it hit the pavement. But I still don't know how I got through without picking up somebody's underwear in my face.
And then it started raining. Rained all the way across Canada to Montreal where I dropped south back in to NY to take a US highway across VT, NH and Maine on to the coast. On the morning I left to head out across VT, NH and Maine it was still raining. Sometimes harder than hell. But hey, it's just rain. That was until I got in to Maine a ways and ran in to road construction. Knew it was going to be ugly when I saw the sign that read "Danger, no pavement next three miles."
Sure enough, two lanes, narrow lanes, all mud, lots of traffic. I dropped back 1/4 mile behind the car in front of me just to keep from getting more stuff pitched all over me. But even keeping upright was sometimes a chore when you were going through the same muck that the heavy equipment was going through at pretty much the same time.
Finally got through the mess and at the next gas stop off and began to peel off the rain gear only to see that with all the mud thrown everywhere I looked like the Pillsbury Dough Biker. And you just about couldn't find the bike for all the gook caked on it. I was actually really glad it did continue raining for another hour or so just to rinse both of us off a little bit.
That same trip went up toward Caribou one day and came out of a little store to see a Moose apparently wanting to get amorous with the bike, hit tons more rain coming down the Atlantic coast and then west across US 50 in Virginia and WV on the way home where a deer decided to walk out in front of me. Then finally laid the bike down, in the rain, in Paducah, KY when a woman in a Ford Explorer pulled out in front of me on US 60 in town. Broke my nose, my left shoulder popped out and than back in as I rolled at the end of my slide and picked up a fair amount of rash. But the bike and I both slid good and straight. The bike was about as unhurt as it ever could have been after sliding on the crash bars for 125 feet. Had to have a couple fireman responders help me bend the front crash bar back forward so it was no longer covering the rear break pedal. But that's the only thing that had to be done to the bike to make it ride-able to finish getting on home that afternoon.
Joplin and home was another 375 miles or so from Paducah but the accident happened at about 10:30 that morning. Police were done with us by 11:30 (the lady got a BIG ticket). In that hour I'd shaken the kinks out and made sure the bike was ok to travel; and was finally home that night about 7:00. Of course all the way across southern Missouri it was raining, pretty hard for about half the trip, and cold (about 55 most fo the day) and foggy about a third of the way. All in all it was two weeks out on the bike and about 7000 miles and, like all trips out on the bike, I had a great time [smiley=laugh.gif] .
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Topic: Let there be rain! (Read 2611 times)