Our First Harley Weekend

As I mentioned in my previous blog, that weekend was anything but mundane. Rick and I and a few of his buddies took a motorcycle trip to Toppenish in eastern Washington. It was the "spring opener", whatever that means. We met up at a couple different places, stopped at a couple taverns on the way and took about 7 hours to make a 170 mile trip.

I'm learning about the whole biking world in little bits. You stop often to warm up, rest your butt and relax the vibrating. I imagine the driver needs to rest their driving hands as well. And the best place to do that is a tavern for a quick brewski. It was interesting also to see the reaction from observers, being dressed all in the black leather, like true biker scum. I noticed everyone looking at us at intersections, on our noisy Harley and in our leather and goggles, etc. We got lots of waves and thumbs up. One old guy yelled at us that we were "lookin' good!"

The ride out was nice, the weather was good, the roads were dry. One of the bikes had a problem though, when it would crest a pass it would spew oil out the breather. Anyone behind them got sprayed with oil. So they had to stop and let it cool, then we could go again with no further problems until we had to crest another pass.

We stayed in a nice motel in town, unlike the one we stayed in in Walla Walla. But the town itself was a far cry from Walla Walla. There's really no reason ever to go to Toppenish for anything other than some event as we had. It's known as the "town of murals". There were interesting historical murals everywhere. That was interesting to look at but not enough to be a reason to visit. You could hear sirens all the time, and they weren't at the biker event.

Speaking of the event itself, we only got to go for a very short time, one evening for a couple hours only. It was interesting people watching. But we missed most of the games, parade and other events. What was left was mostly just a lot of people milling, visiting, drinking, etc. No trouble, just goofing around. One thing was kinda comical. They sold beer and had a "beer garden" which you weren't allowed to leave with your beer. But everyone who was at the event brought beer in with them and drank everywhere. Silly.

Saturday morning we all planned a ride to a nearby site, Stonehenge. It's a replica of the one over the "pond" in the UK. On the way we got the chance we were waiting for. We finally hit some 4 lane road so I got out my camera and passed our other riders and got shots of them as we passed. Then we slowed and let them pass us and took more pictures. Just a few minutes after taking those great shots I got to experience something for the first time, and on my first bike trip to boot - a bike accident. The oil spewing cycle did it again and as usual he was up front again. He pulled off and the following bike did also but too fast and it forced the guy behind him off the road and into the gravel. They were almost stopped but caught on the edge of the pavement and fell over onto the asphalt shoulder. Ouch! The EMT and police ended up coming out. She just had a bad case of road rash all up her leg (she was wearing shorts and sandals) and he broke 3 ribs. The bike survived fairly well. Turns out the driveway we were all hanging out in was the fire chief's son's place and he let the damaged bike stay there, one less hassle for them to have to deal with on that particular day. It wasn't pleasant but it could have been so much worse. We went to the hospital until we found out everything was taken care of and continued on our day.

The Stonehenge was interesting but not nearly as photographic as the surrounding area. It was overlooking the Columbia river and flanked by orchards and vineyards. Across the river were train tracks with what looked like long toy trains traveling on them. There was a town with a beautiful bridge crossing the river and Mt Hood was beyond that. A photographers' heaven.

On our way back from our trip we stopped at a few more spots for more photo opps. A burned out woods with thick greenery below gave the right amount of contrast and then a graveyard of rusted out model A's and T's was quite the sight as well. You can check out all these sights on our smugmug site by clicking on the "my pictures" link at the top left of this page.

I'll pick up the next day in my next blog, it took me almost 2 weeks to get this one done! Check back in soon!