Hey kids… sorry for the delay. I’ve been busy, not motorcycle busy…. just busy. Busy is good, most of the time. Other times it’s that annoying-God-this-can’t-end-soon-enough kind of busy. Despite all of the busy that has been happening around the Days-I-Ride camp…. I’m not getting anything done….. not even riding. Ugh.

The sad truth is it’s been two weeks since I last rode the bike. While I was on vacation and out of state for a week, in the middle of that two week period, I’ve been back for 4 days and I still haven’t started the bike. In my defense, it has been crappy raining out and I have been sequestered indoors doing menial indoor tasks and my life sucking regular employment.

Speaking of life sucking employment. Sometime in 2000, a Dilbert comic came out which put a visual to the aforementioned phrase. It sums up the general feeling we get nearly every work week at about 2:30 in the afternoon each day.

To this day, 18 years later, my good friend Steve and I still chuckle over this and have a good laugh over the memories. Back then I didn’t have a motorcycle (sad times, I know), so my only form of release was my mountain bike or my road bicycle. BUT, then like now, the weather really determines what you will do if you allow it to.

I’m allowing it to…. and only because I am a self proclaimed fair weather rider.

There was a plan. Not a great plan, but a plan none the less. The plan involved the vacation on the Blue Mouse Ranch and having the bike with us so we could enjoy some of the fantastic roads in and around Otsego County/Cooperstown. Back in the day, when I had my Sportster, once a year I would load it in the back of my pickup and spend a week riding around the area.

But, now that I have a much larger bike and no pickup, so loading it in the back is not possbile. Putting the Heritage on a trailer would be great….. if I had one. While I asked around to borrow one, the logistics of picking up an offered bike trailer weren’t there. So there was only one option. For this trip, we had to take two cars. My wife in her Honda Pilot and all the dogs, me in my Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk with my cat and all the weekly supplies. We would drive up and the next day I would unload the Jeep and drive back to New Jersey and ride the bike back to the Ranch. Which I haven’t done yet. It would have been a 560 mile day, half on the bike. Needless to say, I was looking forward to that.

Did you ever look at a weather forecast and think that the powers that be new what plans you had and molded the weather around those plans? I have. The 10-day forecast prior to the trip has us all believing we were going to be in for a week of clouds and sun in the 70’s and chances of rain were sparse with 30% chance one or two days at best. The day we were leaving the forecast changed… seemingly over night as if we were in another region, another country, another planet.

The day we left, Thursday night amid sprinkles of rain. Friday the 31st was to be sunny and mild…..Turned out to be periods of rain and high winds. Upon arrival and continual checking of the weather through that night and most of the Friday, late in the day I made the command decision to abandon going to get the bike. A good decision as we later learned and realized.

As it turns out, owning a small farm and a remote off-grid home has its perc’s. But one must also understand it is a tremendous amount of work. And there is… always… work. This trip would be no different. We’d start at 11 a.m. every day and not finish until it got dark around 7:30 p.m. every day. There would have been no time for riding. Sigh….

But, probably if I had the bike with me and the weather was iffy, I would have rode it. It did indeed turn out to be iffy. The only time it rained was most of the day Saturday the 1st,  Wednesday night, Thursday night and a little Friday. But, it down-poured on Saturday evening when we left to come back to New Jersey. Good thing I was in the Jeep.

If I’m out riding and I get caught in the rain…. Oh well. But making the mistake of believing what the professional well paid weather guessers say really annoys me. So I either suck it up and ride no matter what or adjust my plans to suit what the liars say.

I think I’ll do a little of both.  How about you?