Rides

A day in the rain in the Adirondacks.

340 miles, over 6 hours on the saddle, to Lake Placid and back

This is my VFR, meeting up for the ride. Yes, there is a missing part...

I wrote the following on the ott-motorcycles.ca motorcyclist discussion board, a couple of days before the ride:

In preparation for my sport-touring ride of June, I need to log in a few long rides, in order to get my arse to fit the seat of the VFR (or the other way around) and double-check that the ergos are good for mutliple 800+km days. Call this the Corbeau Non-Posing, Bring-Chain-Lube-in-your-Tank-Bag  Ride...

Three guys answered the call and were willing to be part of the RAW Club (Ride in Any Weather) as the weatherpeople were calling for rain followed by showers for most of the day, with a temperature in the mid-forties up in the northern Adirondacks. This would be a great way, before the National, to test out my rain suit and the so-called weatherproof Joe Rocket gloves I have. I also wanted to know if I needed to pack my jacket liner or if I needed to buy a heated vest.

After meeting up Kevbo on a SV650S and Bentup on his trusty FJ1200 we set up for 60 miles of slab, and a heavy easterly cross wind. (We picked up Atomic and his EX500 along the way)

Crossing the border was rather smooth, but then again, since I cut off my ponytail, I no longer look like a Raul, the Columbian drug runner. It had started to mist, you see. I switched from my leather gloves to the JR ballistic ones, as they're warmer and the air temperature gauge of my VFR was telling me 6C (which is about 42.8 F. The temperature gauge doesn't switch off metric.)

Just after crossing the border, before switching gloves and the digital gauges to miles and MPH

Grab your map of upstate New York.

We took from Ogdensburg Hwy 68 East, through the village of Canton, home of the St-Lawrence University. Nice little Main Street, for those into that. Then, 68 gets progressively turnier, with nice sweepers, showing the promise of more interesting turns. Those arrived shortly after we got onto 56, in a southeastern direction. Very nice turns, some posted at 15 mph but most at 25 to 45, no traffic to speak of, great asphalt...

20 miles later, we went East on 3, towards Tupper Lake, where I put on my two-piece Rhyno rain suit. My boots are Sidi's Strada Evo Tepor, and according to the Italian manufacturer, the Tepor lining is waterproof...

Thank goodness for the crappy weather, for there wasn't much traffic on Hwy 3 between Tupper Lake and Saranac Lake. Those villages, along with Lake Placid, can turn into parking lots on a sunny summer day... We made our way, after two gas stops, to the home of the 1932 and 1980 Olympics. We ate at the Great Adirondack Steak and Seafood Company. For the record, the food ? Philly steak sandwiches for some, a Club for me, was far closer to "Good" to "Great". America, the Land of the Hyperbole!

Look at the nice Euro-style parking!

Looking at the map, we noticed a faint squiggly line named Hwy 99, running between Au Sable Forks on 9N, and Duane Center, on 30.

To get there, we had to take 73 to Keane - great road - and then 9N through Upper Jay and Jay on 9N, which was even better. (And this is not American Hyperbole! That road follows the Au Sable river (or Sandy, for the French-language-impaired).

What the map shows as 99 is indicated as Franklin County 86-or-something. But far more interesting are the historical markers for the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike, a road "under construction from 1829 to 1832. Cedar mileposts were set along the entire route with numbers cut into the wood. The entire route is currently maintained," wrote the Town of Franklin historian, but some might dispute the "currently maintained" part.

I didn't because I had a ball. The first half of that road, 15 miles, between the Au Sable river and Hwy 3, is narrow, curvy, and, in the middle, when one is furthest from civilization, covered in chip seal. It goes through the hamlets of Black Brook and Union Falls, place names you only discover by zooming way in, in Streets & Trips. The second half, 99 proper, 20 miles, had the same chip seal but so much sand it looked like the many, many, many kids could not get to sleep over there. The curves were posted as 25 mph but we were taking them at 20 mph, because the only place without sand was the two tire tracks and doing the usual "outside-inside-outside" line that David Hough writes about would have meant going on the sandy part twice at every curve.

Was it a nerve-wracking, butt-clenching, stressful experience? Not for me, once I stopped thinking about the cost of plastics on my VFR. I just picked the right gear (second, mostly, sometimes first or third) and faced the challenge head on. We went through Loon Lake and other deserted hamlets.

We then turned north on 30 and its good sweepers, all the way to Malone, to 37 up in Mohawk country and the bridge that would take us to Cornwall, and then, 60 miles later, home.

Home was, in total, at the end of a 6 hours and 45 minutes moving time and 340-mile day, most of it in the rain, and including 100 miles, tops, on freeways. Other stats include 2 hours total stop time, plus about 30 or 45 minutes for lunch, when the GPS was turned off. My new Garmin V was great for pinpointing our position and confirming that we were on the right track. I had to stand on the pegs to see it, though: it's on a RAM mount, which is bolted at the front of the tank and with my extension on the tank bag, I can't see the GPS. Time to replace the 3" RAM piece with the 5.5" one.

My invisible GPS:

If, at lunch, my back hurt at the shoulder blades, by the time I got home it felt fine. My arms were stiff, though, and my wrist kept telling me my body had not (yet) adjusted to the VFR's riding position.

The rain suit did just fine, the boots as well. The gloves, only so much. While my fingers remained warm, they also felt a bit damp, which tells me those gloves won't survive a two-hour torrential downpour.

All in all a great day, despite the bad start. I did feel it the next day, like one feels after the first day of skiing in the season. Which makes me wonder how it will be when I go on my long tour to Colorado, less than a month from now...