I’ve been feeling a bit of a wuss these past couple of really hot days. I mean, I’m itching to ride that motorcycle of mine, but it’s just been too darn hot. On Monday, Hubby and I spent the day in the air-conditioned truck exploring Shenandoah and Warren counties in Virginia. It was like the old days, before we had bikes, and car rides were all we had as far as options for exploring.
I sort of felt sorry for the bikers that were on the road. Seriously, when it’s 95 degrees, the hot wind doesn’t cool you even one little bit. One of the blogs I read had a good post about hot weather riding. She also had a very cool ice cream truck picture.
We’re hoping it cools off soon. We both would like to get some riding in.
We did do a 225-mile trip on Friday afternoon. We headed west from Romney, went through Grafton and then down around Tygart Lake. (West Virginia has some really nice state parks. The cabin area at this park was gorgeous.)
Our ride would have been longer, but we got a late start since I ended up working after all (I was supposed to have the day off). That REALLY sucks because Friday was perfect riding weather. Saturday would’ve been good, too, but we had other plans for the day.
It’s supposed to cool off some by the end of this week. We’re keeping our fingers crossed…
Yesterday (Friday) was the last day of our Edelweiss Bike Tour. We were all very sad to see the tour end and have to go our separate ways. We met some very nice people and had the absolute best tour guide. I’ll do a more-detailed post on those folks when we get home and I can go through the pictures more carefully and provide a better description.
It’s been an amazing trip so far. From challenging passes to quaint medieval villages, we’ve seen and experienced a very wide variety of stuff.
Hubby and me after conquering the Jaufenpass.
As our tour guide Andy said, the weather in Austria has been very bad. It was still sort of wintry (very cold and rainy) until about two weeks ago. While Monday started out cloudy and wet, it cleared up by afternoon. And the weather has remained dry since then. Yesterday was actually a bit too hot as the region experienced higher than normal temperatures, but we made the best of it.
Look who won the gold medal!
Our first stop was the Olympic Bobsled facility just outside of Innsbruck. Seeing that up close and in person was VERY cool. The picture shown immediately above shows me on the medal stand in gold medal position of course. Notice I wore my fancy assless chaps for the occasion?
After that, we visited Hall in Tirol, a medieval village also just outside of Innsbruck. We proceeded to Achenkirch (still in Austria) for the best lunch EVER (we ate lots of typical Tyrolean fare during this trip, which I will have to describe in a separate post).
Cow! Livestock in this region all wear bells.
After lunch, we headed into Germany for a bit then back to Seefeld in Tirol, Austria, where we’ve been staying.
Riding wise, yesterday was easy. We were all glad, too, because we’d had a very full week of challenging runs. We had to bid farewell to our tour guide, which was sad. Some members of our group had to leave very early this morning, but many will still be here for breakfast.
Speaking of breakfast, I need to end here and get ready. After we eat, we need to pack up our stuff and catch a train. We’re going to Zurich today, where we’ll be staying with the Swiss Family Mac. Hubby and I are both looking forward to seeing our old friends on their new turf!
As luck would have it, this week’s You Capture theme at I Should Be Folding Laundry is “fun.” Since I am currently on vacation having the most fun I have ever had on any vacation, I didn’t exactly struggle for material. Actually, it may even sort of be cheating. Sorry.
Okay, I’m not REALLY sorry. Like I said, I’m having fun. And since that’s this week’s theme, here’s some snapshots for proof…
Passo dello Stelvio
Passo dello Stelvio is in the Italian Alps, not very far from Switzerland and Austria. Actually, we’re staying near Innsbruck, so we rode through Austria into Italy specifically to traverse this pass. We did a little bit of riding in Switzerland on the way back, too.
It Was Cold at the Top
There’s a ski resort at the top. There’s not much snow left, but there’s a glacier, and people are still skiing.
ToadMama After Riding the Pass
I was quite happy to reach the top of this very challenging pass in one piece and without dropping my bike or riding off the side of the mountain.
Hubby was the first in our group to make it to the top.
This was THE coolest riding day ever for both of us.
Hubby with the pass behind and below him.
The road actually winds down the side of the mountain below where Hubby is standing.
My bike perched atop Passo dello Stelvio.
This last shot is the only artsy one I took specifically for You Capture. If you want to see what other folks did for fun this week, be sure to visit Beth’s site.
Remember the lovely ALCs I posted about? Well, Saturday with temperatures in the 60s and LOTS of wind, I actually strapped those bad boys on and went riding. And you know what? They were awesome. Comfortable AND warm. I was very glad to have them.
Water treatment system.
While Hubby was busy installing our new water treatment system on Saturday, I went for a little ride. I did 113.5 miles total, which isn’t a lot, really. But I was gone for about 4 hours.
Why so long? Because I had my camera with me, silly!
So I was actually able to stop and take pictures of stuff like a pretty mountain lake, and a strange standalone silo, and a scared cow, and a country road, and…
Wait, wouldn’t it be more fun if I just showed you the pictures?
Remember, I was by myself and I didn’t take a tripod. It was windy, too. Far too windy to just sit my camera on a rock or something for a self-portrait. So no new shots of me looking bad-ass in my ALCs, but I did get some nice scenery pictures.
There’s this one country road I’ve been wanting to check out for a while. It’s impossible to tell on any of the maps whether it is gravel or not, so we hadn’t included it in any trips. But I’ve been wondering. So Saturday I headed for Wardensville, West Virginia and Trout Run Road.
Turns out, it was a great motorcycle road. Now if only it hadn’t been windy, I wouldn’t have had to worry about finding downed tree limbs around every blind curve. I never did encounter any really big limbs, and I got some nice pics, if I do say so myself.
Trout Run Road at CR-16.
If you followed the Trout Run Road map link, you’ll have seen that it runs through part of the George Washington National Forest. When I stumbled upon the Trout Run Campground, I just had to check it out. Why? Where there’s a campground, there are usually toilets. And a girl in the middle of the woods is ALWAYS happy to see one of those.
A campground I stumbled upon.
It was actually a cute campground. There’s a lake (pictured below), as well as a pond, which I never actually saw.
Rockcliff Lake at Trout Pond CampgroundNature trail near the lake.
I was only at the campground briefly, but it really did seem like a nice spot. There’s a picnic area, playground and swimming beach in addition to the hiking trails, camping and fishing.
I'm guessing there was a barn attached to this silo at some point, but it's LONG gone.A cool old barn alongside the road. I think this was along WV-29 between Hanging Rock and Rio.Looking west at the WV-29 OLD 55/259 split between Baker and Rio.Scared cow. It really freaks them out when you actually stop, dismount and walk toward them. Trust me, I know. I've done that quite a few times. I like cows.Just another old barn along the road.
As you can see from the pictures, it was a pretty blue-sky-and-white-puffy-cloud-day. The wind made riding a bit uncomfortable, mainly because of all the pollen, dust, grass clippings, bugs, etc. blowing through the air and, in some cases, up my nose and/or in my eyes. But it was still a nice. day.
At the risk of sounding like a real whiner, I have to say it was hot yesterday. According to the Weather Channel, it hit 91 degrees.
It was too hot for a motorcycle ride. For me anyway. Because I hate being hot. The air may have “only” been 91 degrees, but it felt hotter inside my helmet.
My head was sweating. I HATE that.
Maybe later in the year 91 degrees won’t feel so bad. Maybe by then we’ll have had time to acclimate slowly to the increasingly warmer temperatures. But when the HIGH swings 40 degrees in mere days, from 50 to 90, temperatures in the 90s feel damn hot.
Speaking of damn hot… it appears my post about my ass-less leather chaps was quite popular. So popular, in fact, that I felt a follow-up was in order.
Unfortunately, it was too hot to wear them yesterday while riding. But I know y’all are just dying to see what they look like, right?
Oh come on and just admit it.
Go ahead and say, “I’ve got to see what this idiot looks like in these ass-less leather chaps she keeps prattling on and on about.”
Periodically, I do poke fun at people on my blog. I try no to be too mean about it. And I poke fun at myself sometimes, too.
Like now, when I reveal the pics I took of myself yesterday. The pics I took actually wearing my fancy new chaps…
And you thought "hot" was referring to temperatures!
You may notice the dogs in these shots. That’s not because I wanted them there, it’s because I can’t do anything without my girls by my side.
See? They really are ass-less!
They are called assless for a reason. Now, at the risk of looking slightly pornographic and extremely silly, I just could NOT resist this shot…
Lovely' eh? This is why I need a wide motorcycle seat.
Also, just for you, I assembled all three pics into one nice little collection…
One Not-So-Hot ToadMama
I may not be afraid to poke fun at myself, but you may have noticed the size of these pics. The resolution is low so that, if anyone decides to plaster these lovely images anywhere for the entire world to see, they won’t be life-size shots.
Recently, a self-proclaimed left-brained photographer left a comment right here on this very blog. Which is awesome. I love getting comments from new readers. Anyway…
Me being me (I am afflicted with CRS syndrome), I couldn’t remember if left-brained is more analytical or more creative. I was headed to the kitchen for some pretzel nuggets, i.e., lunch, so I popped in to ask Hubby.
“Do you remember…” I began, “which side of the brain is analytical and which is creative? You know, like what kind of person is right-brained or left-brained?”
He sort of rolled his eyes, sighed theatrically (after 17 years he is completely used to me asking weird questions) and said, “I don’t know which one is left-brained and which one is right-brained. All I know is that no brained is called a Terry.”
It’s a good thing I wasn’t already eating a pretzel nugget, I may have choked at that one. Yeah, it was a little mean. But it was also pretty funny (and appropriate).
In all honesty, I wasn’t going to share that little gem of a story here on the Blog. But it slipped. (Here’s a link in case I got you wondering about the left brain/right brain thing.)
Every now and then, Hubby comes up with some pretty good stuff.
Like one year after Thanksgiving. It’s typically my job to decorate for Christmas and his job to box everything up post-holiday. He’s very careful and neat, too. After I’d taken my snowman cookie jar out of its box and carefully removed it from its plastic bag, I found a hand-written note that said something like, “Help me! I can’t breathe!”
Okay, that wasn’t hilarious, but it struck me pretty funny at the time.
This next story is funnier…
If you read my blog a few posts ago where I mentioned our upcoming motorcycle tour, you know I had to buy a pair of leather chaps. I’ve been wanting some for a while. They help keep you warm AND are safer for motorcycle riding. But I just hadn’t taken the plunge.
There’s a joke in our family about these things. At Christmas a few years back, Hubby was pretty excited when he received a pair as a gift. Shannon’s ex, Daniel, found it hysterical that Hubby had gotten ass-less leather chaps for Christmas and was happy about it. That’s because Daniel was picturing this sort of man in ass-less chaps.
Ever since then, we never just call them chaps. How boring! We always call them “ass-less leather chaps.” And yes, once I’d placed the order for a pair of my own, I was pretty excited.
Every day this week, I’ve been asking, “Did Fed-Ex come yet?” The answer was always no.
Finally, today, while I was on a phone call, they arrived. Hubby was kind enough to collect the box from the Fed-Ex dude. He even delivered it to me in my office and put it face down on my lap.
The Long-awaited Package
“Oh, look. The box says stuff like ‘leather’ and ‘hawk’ and ‘outlaw’,” I said. I have a biker image to uphold you know.
Then I turned the box over.
Check Out the Hand-written Message
Now THAT was funny.
I was going to share a picture of me wearing them (I HAD to try them on), but they looked really dorky over my baby-blue flannel PJs…
I sort of felt sorry for the bikers that were on the road. Seriously, when it’s 95 degrees, the hot wind doesn’t cool you even one little bit. One of the blogs I read had a good post about hot weather riding. She also had a very cool ice cream truck picture.
