29 Aug 2009
Posted by Dave under Dave's Thoughts,Family,Mobile Blogpost (iphone)
It is a beautiful morning, so Brenda and I got up early and hit the road on our motorbikes before the day got busy. We’ve stopped for lattes in Langdon. Of course, chai latte is the official beverage of the motorcycle road trip, but I suppose that new riders need to work up to that lofty height of consumption. Brenda is drinking a regular latte with soy – it’s beyond the pale…
29 Jul 2009
Posted by Dave under Dave's Thoughts,Family
For my birthday this year, my brother-in-law Barry invited me to go on a motorbike ride to the Ponoka Vintage Motorcycle Rally along with his brother Ronny. “Sounds good”, I thought, and the plans were made to be in Ponoka on the weekend of 25 & 26 July.
Except that, a couple of days before the event, Ronny had to cancel. Since there were three registrations bought and paid for, we had to find another brother, and fast! So we decided that the sensible thing to do would be to promote Brenda to Honorary Brother. The ceremony was quick and fairly painless.
Brenda’s Mom and Dad were available to look after the kids, so away we went on our bikes early Saturday morning. We met Barry in Innisfail and then had a big brunch at a restaurant in Red Deer. We finally rolled into the Ponoka Stampede grounds just after noon. A little too late to join the poker run, but that was OK, since the day was hot (32 °C) and that gave us plenty of time to check out the vintage bike show and shine, to ride down the road and see the classic car show and shine, and, most importantly to check into our hotel and cool off in the pool!
We had a fantastic steak dinner and then afterwards there was an “Engine Blow-up” 50/50 contest where some guy ran a poor old 2-stroke dirt bike at fulll throttle until the engine quit. For $3 you could buy a ticket and guess how long the engine would run – some guy won $80 with his guess of 41 seconds. I missed by miles, guessing 33 minutes.
Many of the motorcyclists attending the rally just stayed in tents at the stampede grounds, but we wimped out and stayed at the local Super 8. However, we looked pretty smart about 5:00 am when there was a mighty crash of thunder and the skies opened up with a deluge of rain. Thunder is definitely the sound of money well spend on indoor accommodations! The rain lasted until just before we had to head back to the grounds for the mega-pancake-and-sausage breakfast. The rest of the day was mixed sun and clouds with no more rain to be seen.
Brenda and I headed back home by late morning on the Sunday to relieve Opa and Oma – it was a great trip. It was Brenda’s first real road trip and we covered about 500km in all.
28 Sep 2008
Posted by Dave under Dave's Thoughts
… for riding!
This has been the second of two glorious fall weekends in southern Alberta. I’ve managed 50% of this years mileage on my motorcycle over the past 9 days. Last Saturday (20 Sept) I went for a double header with 2 different groups of riders out in Kananaskis around Bragg Creek and Turner Valley – 465 km in all. This weekend I went out and rode the Highwood Pass loop on Saturday (27th) with some of the same guys and a couple of riders I’d not met before, that was about 360 km.
Today was my friend Sean’s birthday (Sean: don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone that you are 40 now) so we took the afternoon and rode out to Bragg Creek and did a couple of passes up and down Highway 762 before stopping for chai in Bragg Creek. Chai is the official beverage of motorcycle road trips and the little coffee shop in Bragg Creek makes quite good chai. After a bit of a break we headed back to Sean’s place via Black Diamond and Okotoks (about 270 km), arriving just in time for Sean’s surprise birthday party!
There can’t be too many more days like this left before the snow flies, so it’s nice to be able to get out and enjoy them.
