Concours14, New York trip (posted from Ten West coffee shop in Mansfield, PA)
(this post covers 2-8 November)
************************************
Wednesday, 8 November-
Today I headed out. My plan was to rejoin Route 6 in northern PA about where I had left it two weeks ago. I spent a few hours working my way across the southern tier of New York after just turning off at one of the exits and heading ‘sort-of’ in the right direction. Before long I was hopelessly lost but all I had to do was keep driving and eventually I came out to a marked road and could find it on the map. My route took me out 417W which my atlas showed as a scenic route and that was indeed the case (if you don’t count the fog). At Wellsville, NY I turned south toward PA and was soon in Galeton, then at Colton Point and the Grand Canyon of PA. The state park campground was closed but I did walk the Barbour’s Rock trail loop. I liked the walk but could hardly see anything in the Grand Canyon; it was filled with fog. But as I drove out of the park, a perfect four-point buck crossed the road ahead of me and climbed the bank, then stood there in a picture-perfect pose. I then took a turn-around through pretty downtown Wellsboro and went on the Mansfield and the local Wal-mart for the night. This evening I watched 'Hellboy'-- and liked it!
**********************************
Tuesday, 7 November-
Today my nephew had a day off so we hit four geocaches and checked out a couple of gun shops. Our first cache was practically a drive-by, an instant find near the road. Our second was supposed to be tougher but we got very lucky and found it right off. The third took us down a muddy trail with the GPS pointing into a swamp but we just had to be patient for another access path to open up. But it still had a little trick for us—we walked right under the box with our eyes glued to the ground for clues while the box bungied to a tree-limb above us silently chuckled. My eagle-eyed nephew found it on the next pass. Our fourth for the day was in a little park and we noticed a mommy with two kids and a stroller near the little trail where we had to enter the woods. We found and logged ourselves into the cache and on the way out we thought we’d better say something to ‘mommy’ so she doesn’t think we’re in there retrieving a drug stash or something. We asked if she had ever heard of geocaching. Her face brightened up and she said “I THOUGHT that’s what you were doing when I saw you carrying the little box (the GPS).” Good. We don’t need any cell-phone calls to the local law-enforcement guys about two ne'er-do-wells acting suspiciously in the woods at the local park.
That evening we had dinner at my niece’s home. Somehow I again got separated from the herd again and found myself ‘dancing’ in the most hilarious jump-around-shake-your-booty fashion with the two kids (the sixteen-month-old is actually very good!). Everybody else soon joined the party and we all had a good laugh.
**************************************
Monday, 6 November-
This morning we went out to breakfast in preparation for a day of geocaching. My nephew picked out a couple of geocaches in Ontario County Park for the four of us (my brother, my nephew and his wife, and me). We had a nice warm day and found the first geocache without much effort—it wasn’t far from our parking spot. But the second one was a different story. We knew the GPS showed that it lay about a mile-and-a-quarter away down the Finger Lakes Trail. But those were as-a-crow-flies miles and our walk on the FLT was anything but a straight line. We eventually passed a sign saying we were now two miles from the park and we still had another half-mile to go. But what we didn’t know going in was the trail dropped pretty steeply in the last mile—steep enough that we kept sliding in the leaves covering the trail. We didn’t have much trouble finding the cache but we all knew it was going to be a struggle getting back up that long, long hill and back to the car. And it was. But all we really had to do was slow down and keep putting one foot in front of the other and somehow it all worked out. Actually, after the first mile back up that hill, the rest seemed easy. But GiddyUp wasn’t real fond of the climb.
That evening my brother had to work and my niece was busy with the sixteen-month-old so my sister-in-law and I took the three-year-old to dinner at ‘Sticky Lips’, a very good little bar-be-que restaurant in Rochester. All went well until I decided I’d better carry the three-year-old down the steep stairs of the restaurant as we were leaving. She screamed bloody murder. And then she sceamed even louder-- MUCH louder, attracting the attention of everyone in the restaurant. Of course I wasn’t going to give in to a three-year old (due, I believe in retrospect, to my lack of experience) and so I hung on tight. For a moment it looked like the other patrons were going to attack me for mistreating the little angel. After we were safely home I asked her what the problem was. “My mommy knows I’m big enough to walk all by myself and I won’t falled down.” Duly noted, angel.
**************************************
Sunday, 5 November-
Today I loaded up Mocha Joe and headed north, bound for my brother’s house near Rochester, NY. It’s about a five-hour drive and a very scenic one, particularly along the Susquehanna. Once above Mansfield I noticed the trees no longer have any leaves at all except in a few patchy areas, quite a difference from just two weeks ago when I was a few miles west of here in the Pine Creek Valley. I made it to his home by about 1430. My niece has two young children, a boy of sixteen months and a girl of three-going-on-fifteen. The three-year-old somehow separated me from the rest of the herd (of grown-ups) and before long we were making pretend-soup out of the population of her doll house, were changing Barbie into her swimsuit to take a swim in a pretend-pool made out of a doll-blanket, and went to visit the three-year-old’s pretend-friend named John Mayer who lived in the next room. “Hello, John Mayer, where are your toys? And where are your babies? Don’t you have anything to eat? Would you like to come over for some soup?” And so we made another batch of soup.
*************************************
Saturday, 4 November-
Today I spent all day on the web reading quite a variety of things. I’m still working my way through the various message threads on KTOG.org and KTRange.com. I also did quite a lot of reading on TheHighRoad.com about gun safety and gun laws. I also enjoyed watching a lot of videos on youtube.com and video.google.com. I went in with the idea of finding some videos about stances and techniques for my pistol but somehow got sidetracked into air and motorcycle crashes, ultralight aircraft, gyrocopters, hang-gliders, jet-propelled-radio-control model planes, video-camera-equipped model rockets and radio-control model helicopters. BOY, there’s a lot of stuff out there.
That evening we watched another batch of Desperate Housewives episodes. They’re very funny but do require a healthy dose of ‘suspension-of-disbelief’.
************************************
Friday, 3 November-
Today I drove into Eastern Market hoping to find some tabouli/tabbouleh and maybe even some falafel. And sure enough one stand had both plus several types of bean salads. Labashi will like that! On the way home I stopped at the video store and scanned the shelves for some new series to try. I picked up the Grey’s Anatomy box since I’ve heard it’s the top TV series but I don’t think I’m into hospital dramas. I had a similar thought about Desperate Housewives but I’ve read some good things about it lately so thought we’d try it. At home we kicked off the evening with the Desperate Housewives pilot and quickly were hooked—right after the narrator commits suicide. We watched two more episodes after the pilot and would have gone for another but midnight was approaching.
************************************
Thursday, 2 November-
Today I spent much of the morning blogging then drove down to York and Dover to three gun shops for miscellaneous cleaning supplies and to check out their inventories of used guns, mostly out of curiosity. I’ve been looking for some type of deep-sided tray to use for cleaning the pistol at the range to keep all the parts in one place and hopefully avoid losing any of them if I happen to drop something during dis-assembly and think I’ve found something that will work. While in town I rode over to the cycle shop to see if my clutch-lever safety switch has come in but no luck there. I did have a nice long conversation with the service manager about the new Concours14 coming out in the 2008 model year. My Concours is a classic in that the first bikes of that design were sold in 1986 and they’ve changed very little since. Kawasaki has finally gotten around to an update and is basing it on their new Ninja, the ZX-14. That bike took the title of world’s fastest production motorcycle from the Suzuki Hayabusa. My current Concours has a modified Ninja 1000 engine and the Concours14 will have similar mods done to the Ninja 1400 for mid-range torque and driveability. It will also be thoroughly modernized with fuel injection, ABS, variable valve-timing, theft-deterrent ignition, petal-type disc rotors on four-piston radial brakes, etc. The rumor is the new bike will sell in the ‘twelves’. That will probably mean I’ll just stick with my Concours classic but we’ll have to see what kind of reviews the new one gets. The service manager tells me he already has deposits on two of them even though the price has yet to be announced and it won’t be showing up until the 2008 models come out.
(this post covers 2-8 November)
************************************
Wednesday, 8 November-
Today I headed out. My plan was to rejoin Route 6 in northern PA about where I had left it two weeks ago. I spent a few hours working my way across the southern tier of New York after just turning off at one of the exits and heading ‘sort-of’ in the right direction. Before long I was hopelessly lost but all I had to do was keep driving and eventually I came out to a marked road and could find it on the map. My route took me out 417W which my atlas showed as a scenic route and that was indeed the case (if you don’t count the fog). At Wellsville, NY I turned south toward PA and was soon in Galeton, then at Colton Point and the Grand Canyon of PA. The state park campground was closed but I did walk the Barbour’s Rock trail loop. I liked the walk but could hardly see anything in the Grand Canyon; it was filled with fog. But as I drove out of the park, a perfect four-point buck crossed the road ahead of me and climbed the bank, then stood there in a picture-perfect pose. I then took a turn-around through pretty downtown Wellsboro and went on the Mansfield and the local Wal-mart for the night. This evening I watched 'Hellboy'-- and liked it!
**********************************
Tuesday, 7 November-
Today my nephew had a day off so we hit four geocaches and checked out a couple of gun shops. Our first cache was practically a drive-by, an instant find near the road. Our second was supposed to be tougher but we got very lucky and found it right off. The third took us down a muddy trail with the GPS pointing into a swamp but we just had to be patient for another access path to open up. But it still had a little trick for us—we walked right under the box with our eyes glued to the ground for clues while the box bungied to a tree-limb above us silently chuckled. My eagle-eyed nephew found it on the next pass. Our fourth for the day was in a little park and we noticed a mommy with two kids and a stroller near the little trail where we had to enter the woods. We found and logged ourselves into the cache and on the way out we thought we’d better say something to ‘mommy’ so she doesn’t think we’re in there retrieving a drug stash or something. We asked if she had ever heard of geocaching. Her face brightened up and she said “I THOUGHT that’s what you were doing when I saw you carrying the little box (the GPS).” Good. We don’t need any cell-phone calls to the local law-enforcement guys about two ne'er-do-wells acting suspiciously in the woods at the local park.
That evening we had dinner at my niece’s home. Somehow I again got separated from the herd again and found myself ‘dancing’ in the most hilarious jump-around-shake-your-booty fashion with the two kids (the sixteen-month-old is actually very good!). Everybody else soon joined the party and we all had a good laugh.
**************************************
Monday, 6 November-
This morning we went out to breakfast in preparation for a day of geocaching. My nephew picked out a couple of geocaches in Ontario County Park for the four of us (my brother, my nephew and his wife, and me). We had a nice warm day and found the first geocache without much effort—it wasn’t far from our parking spot. But the second one was a different story. We knew the GPS showed that it lay about a mile-and-a-quarter away down the Finger Lakes Trail. But those were as-a-crow-flies miles and our walk on the FLT was anything but a straight line. We eventually passed a sign saying we were now two miles from the park and we still had another half-mile to go. But what we didn’t know going in was the trail dropped pretty steeply in the last mile—steep enough that we kept sliding in the leaves covering the trail. We didn’t have much trouble finding the cache but we all knew it was going to be a struggle getting back up that long, long hill and back to the car. And it was. But all we really had to do was slow down and keep putting one foot in front of the other and somehow it all worked out. Actually, after the first mile back up that hill, the rest seemed easy. But GiddyUp wasn’t real fond of the climb.
That evening my brother had to work and my niece was busy with the sixteen-month-old so my sister-in-law and I took the three-year-old to dinner at ‘Sticky Lips’, a very good little bar-be-que restaurant in Rochester. All went well until I decided I’d better carry the three-year-old down the steep stairs of the restaurant as we were leaving. She screamed bloody murder. And then she sceamed even louder-- MUCH louder, attracting the attention of everyone in the restaurant. Of course I wasn’t going to give in to a three-year old (due, I believe in retrospect, to my lack of experience) and so I hung on tight. For a moment it looked like the other patrons were going to attack me for mistreating the little angel. After we were safely home I asked her what the problem was. “My mommy knows I’m big enough to walk all by myself and I won’t falled down.” Duly noted, angel.
**************************************
Sunday, 5 November-
Today I loaded up Mocha Joe and headed north, bound for my brother’s house near Rochester, NY. It’s about a five-hour drive and a very scenic one, particularly along the Susquehanna. Once above Mansfield I noticed the trees no longer have any leaves at all except in a few patchy areas, quite a difference from just two weeks ago when I was a few miles west of here in the Pine Creek Valley. I made it to his home by about 1430. My niece has two young children, a boy of sixteen months and a girl of three-going-on-fifteen. The three-year-old somehow separated me from the rest of the herd (of grown-ups) and before long we were making pretend-soup out of the population of her doll house, were changing Barbie into her swimsuit to take a swim in a pretend-pool made out of a doll-blanket, and went to visit the three-year-old’s pretend-friend named John Mayer who lived in the next room. “Hello, John Mayer, where are your toys? And where are your babies? Don’t you have anything to eat? Would you like to come over for some soup?” And so we made another batch of soup.
*************************************
Saturday, 4 November-
Today I spent all day on the web reading quite a variety of things. I’m still working my way through the various message threads on KTOG.org and KTRange.com. I also did quite a lot of reading on TheHighRoad.com about gun safety and gun laws. I also enjoyed watching a lot of videos on youtube.com and video.google.com. I went in with the idea of finding some videos about stances and techniques for my pistol but somehow got sidetracked into air and motorcycle crashes, ultralight aircraft, gyrocopters, hang-gliders, jet-propelled-radio-control model planes, video-camera-equipped model rockets and radio-control model helicopters. BOY, there’s a lot of stuff out there.
That evening we watched another batch of Desperate Housewives episodes. They’re very funny but do require a healthy dose of ‘suspension-of-disbelief’.
************************************
Friday, 3 November-
Today I drove into Eastern Market hoping to find some tabouli/tabbouleh and maybe even some falafel. And sure enough one stand had both plus several types of bean salads. Labashi will like that! On the way home I stopped at the video store and scanned the shelves for some new series to try. I picked up the Grey’s Anatomy box since I’ve heard it’s the top TV series but I don’t think I’m into hospital dramas. I had a similar thought about Desperate Housewives but I’ve read some good things about it lately so thought we’d try it. At home we kicked off the evening with the Desperate Housewives pilot and quickly were hooked—right after the narrator commits suicide. We watched two more episodes after the pilot and would have gone for another but midnight was approaching.
************************************
Thursday, 2 November-
Today I spent much of the morning blogging then drove down to York and Dover to three gun shops for miscellaneous cleaning supplies and to check out their inventories of used guns, mostly out of curiosity. I’ve been looking for some type of deep-sided tray to use for cleaning the pistol at the range to keep all the parts in one place and hopefully avoid losing any of them if I happen to drop something during dis-assembly and think I’ve found something that will work. While in town I rode over to the cycle shop to see if my clutch-lever safety switch has come in but no luck there. I did have a nice long conversation with the service manager about the new Concours14 coming out in the 2008 model year. My Concours is a classic in that the first bikes of that design were sold in 1986 and they’ve changed very little since. Kawasaki has finally gotten around to an update and is basing it on their new Ninja, the ZX-14. That bike took the title of world’s fastest production motorcycle from the Suzuki Hayabusa. My current Concours has a modified Ninja 1000 engine and the Concours14 will have similar mods done to the Ninja 1400 for mid-range torque and driveability. It will also be thoroughly modernized with fuel injection, ABS, variable valve-timing, theft-deterrent ignition, petal-type disc rotors on four-piston radial brakes, etc. The rumor is the new bike will sell in the ‘twelves’. That will probably mean I’ll just stick with my Concours classic but we’ll have to see what kind of reviews the new one gets. The service manager tells me he already has deposits on two of them even though the price has yet to be announced and it won’t be showing up until the 2008 models come out.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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