Wednesday – Veneta, Oregon
Another rest day, another ride 😕
I had a bit of trail mix bar for breakfast, I will need to buy more soon 🙂 That is Al’s truck there, a diesel CAT, great idea especially as it has the checker plate box behind the cab that holds the Goldwing when they move 🙂 I plan on getting a closer look at that system at some stage over the next day or so.
I headed to the library in Veneta just after 9 but when I got there I found it was not open until 10. This only stumped me for a few minutes, because I then found a shady spot and the library WiFi link and sorted out some emails etc and started posting a blog entry. I was up in the door entry, the only shady spot near the signal 🙂
Once they had opened I went inside and found a more comfortable spot, plus some power and then got stuck into more emails. I had quite a few things to sort out which I managed to do while uploading photos and posting etc. I managed to just get finished, with some minor hiccups when Chainsaw turned up, so we went for a ride.
They had planned a ride that would take in some country roads, hopefully amongst the twisties, we were only going for a short stint to start with as we would have lunch soon, I know I was starving by now. At one stage we had another rider tacked onto the back of Chainsaw, but lost him somewhere.
We stopped at a place near Curtin, it looked like they were setting up for a fair or something and the diner looked closed! But, just as we pulled up the owner chap came out and opened the door, so we went in and I had some nice BBQ wings for lunch.
The owner said he has bought all the fairground equipment and is restoring it and they can be used, so I guess a work in progress 🙂 After here we headed east towards the coast, it was a pretty well straight run, but we had some nice roads to look for.
The road was not as straight as the tracks make out, I lost satellite signal a few times, so it was confused 🙂 Now, in the following photo, although blurred by speed, is a suicide squirrel, it is in the other lane, these are what they are called before they turn into squidgees!
They are called suicide squirrels due to their tendency to run out into the road, stop, turn around run back a few feet, turn around, do the same again and they do this extremely fast! Now I know why so many turn into squidgees, because no normal driver would try to avoid the silly things, because they have no idea where they are going. Anyway, I try to avoid them if possible, but not to the extent of running off the road or out of my lane though 🙂 I was leading at this stage, only because we were trying to locate specific junctions on the map, so we could take the correct roads. I am not sure if this is a good idea, relying on my GPS, it has a history 🙂 But, being in front meant I could be a bit more aggressive through the corners without using the brakes for a change and actually lean over a bit 🙂 So, I did 8)
I did find a nice place to pull over just for a few photos of the wing and Harley
Al mentioned later he had scraped his floorboards through some of these corners, way to go Al, did Ann dig you in the ribs when that happened, I reckon not, Ann would have been enjoying the ride 🙂 There was a nice scenic view from up here, but we headed off again, you can tell the season is changing, lots of leaf litter and pine cones in the road, just enough to keep you honest through the corners 🙂
The road slowly became narrower and more enclosed, hopefully not another goat track day, surely not!! Sorry for the blurry pictures, but you will get the drift, I am having a lot of trouble now I cannot see the view screen, it may have to go!!! These are actually the best, I deleted the rubbish ones!
While going through this section of forest, the GPS kept saying turn right at different junctions, when I looked up these roads tracks, you could see they were nearly grown over and were just fire trails, not the ideal conditions for those behind me, so I kept on going although at two bars of fuel, it was becoming a possible issue soon as well! Lead on GPS, well we eventually came to an intersection that was paved, so this is better than those others, there was also a plaque explaining about a big fire, I had seen the title and thought ‘burn’ meant stream, as in a Scottish stream, but it was interesting.
After this point I let the other two go in front, I was now down to one bar on my fuel gauge and probably should scrape 50 miles out of that, if I slowed down, so tail end charlie duties for me. The GPS had me about 53 miles from a place that looked like it had fuel, so I needed to nurse the bike for a while.
A funny thing happened though a few miles or so down the track, because I happened to glance at the GPS and it now said 27 miles to Veneta, so somewhere in the past few miles was a piece of road that was incorrect in the database, a pity I missed the transition, I could have marked a correction and sent it in! Never mind, we nearly got back to Veneta when we had to stop for a peacock crossing 🙂
So, after fuelling up we headed for a beer, and the place was aptly named 🙂
We only had the two before saying farewell to Chainsaw, nice to catch up with you again m8, maybe back in Oz next time eh! After that I went and checked a few emails for an hour or so before heading back and finding Al stoking the BBQ and cooking pork chops, good tucker that, especially when they have been defrosted correctly hey 😉
While this was happening I did some running repairs on my boots, the sole was coming off, so a generous application of glue and some lekky tape and Bob’s your uncle 🙂
So we had a nice supper, a few more nice beers and a few more nice rum and cokes.
It was a reasonably late night, we got on like a house on fire. Al had mentioned about a wharehouse sale in Eugene, he had a free ticket and I could go look for a camera if I wished, so that was doable, I could head in early before the library opened at 10am 🙂 Tomorrow I was planning on spending all day in the library and catching up on the blog, this seems to be a common theme and I can live with that, although if I leave it too long, then sometimes, certain parts of that day are missed out, but that’s life 🙂
Day 127 miles and 204 km
Trip – 35,793 miles and 57,603 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
TravellingStrom 