I interrupted the bike's hibernation last week

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

Temp went up to almost 60, so I cleared away the junk that had accumulated around the bike in the garage, started it up, and put some miles on. Beautiful day.

Now the ground is covered with snow again, the the bike is stone cold, waiting for real spring. Anything above 40 degrees, and I'm happy. It should be soon. Dang groundhog.

:hi:

[ThomWV]

1. Argggggg

I got to ride both monday and tuesday of last week, only in town where the roads were dry. Outside of town the snow melt was going on fast and the roads were very wet. It was nice while it lasted. I got in one day in January but it was very cold. So far I've been able to ride my bike every month I've owned it, which can be tricky in West Virginia.

Soon it will be warm. I was talking to a neighbor boy a couple of days ago; he's trying to get up the money to trade his Sporty (2008 1200 Nightster) for a new Dyna. They have a silver one marked way down at the local dealer and the boy has flat fallen in love with it. I asked him if he was interested in taking a long ride down into the southern part of the state for a couple of days just to look around and he was real interested. I did it a couple of times last year and enjoyed the hell out of of, camping at state forest sites (real cheap and stunningly beautiful with the added advantage of nearly no people during weekdays). Thinking about Sturgis again, but after McCain showed up there last year I just might say to hell with it. A camping trip up to Nova Scotia has been stirring around in my mind for a while now. Who knows? Gotta ride!

Hail to the Chief.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

2. Dry? I never said the roads were dry

That would have been nice, but no, the bike and I caught plenty of spray from puddles and traffic, with all the melting. The bike was clean before hibernation, not so much now. When the weather warms up again, I'll hit it with S100 and that should help.

Hitting all that spray was annoying, but after reading other threads, I'm just glad I didn't hit any birds!

:hi:

[ThomWV]

3. You know what was the worst thing here? All the trash on the roads, gravel and salt.

There are just tons of shit on the roads, left over from snow treatment mostly I guess. Also, and this is one that will sneak right up on you, this is the time for the growth of pot holes. Every spring our roadways really start falling apart, that and there are a lot of sort of mini-landslides and an awful of of fallen rock on the roads, particularly country roads. Its one of the pecularitys of West Virginia roads is that very many of them are cut into hillsides running essentially parallel with valleys. The result of that is one side of the road will have a cut vertical rock face and the other a drop off. Frost heaving in the spring causes lots of rock to pop out of the face side and onto the roadways. So its not uncommon, particularly in the spring, to come around a corner and find a half dozen rocks the size of a football or bigger laying all over the road in front of you. Never pleasant.

Oh, and the damned birds* ....

* not really, you can't immagine how bad I felt about killing that hawk.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

4. We don't have rock slides in SE Michigan

unless you count the sport of curling.

But when the banked snow starts to melt, the captive beer and wine bottles are free to roll around.

Yeah, salt. My bike, my helmet, jacket, boots, all covered with salt. I need to clean it all, but the bike has no chromed parts, so no big hurry. Still no warm-up in sight for the next week or so.

Occasionally I get a chance to polish chrome or paint on the '73 BMW R75 I picked up last fall. Maybe that'll get on the road soon, too.