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WDGAH WDGAH
Here are some of my pics and stories from the event and my pre / post ride. I had about 911 miles for the weekend, 247, of which, on my plugged tire, but more about that later.
Friday, Sept. 8thI decided that I wanted to get up to the tenth anniversary of We Don't Give A Hoot a day early. Hawk Chris was telling me that the bar-b-q at Brian R's house was a great way to meet up and hang out with a lot of the other VFR guys.
There weren't many others riding up from the Central Mass area, so I got in touch with WildBill04 and VFRDylan here on VFRd. They were going up from the New Hampshire coast, and since I was going to get near there told them about my route. I had a few things that I needed to take pictures of for a Scavenger Hunt and wanted to take a nice scenic ride up there, so I killed two birds with one stone.
I jumped onto the highway for 40 miles and then transferred onto Rt 125 North.
I arranged to meet Bill in Epping, NH at the McDonalds at 8:40. When I pulled in, I noticed about 20 black harley's and mixed into the bunch was an asphalt colored VFR, decked out with GPS, Staintunes, side bags and heli bars. He said he could hear my V4 rumbling in and thought I had 'tunes on until I showed him the gut job. The "Wild" man said they sounded cool and I felt pretty good about my $60 exhaust job.
Bill took point and I followed him North to meet up with VFRDylan and his yellow Y2K at Rt 16, aka the White Mountain Parkway. I had never met these guys before, but we rode together like we had for some time. It's great riding with people who ride well and know the back roads.
Bill took us around the lakes region and Lake Winnepausakee. He pulled into a little cut off where I snapped this picture of them and their bikes.
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It was kind of funny that we had three VFR's and not one of them was red
From there, the three amigos rode north along Rt 16 to Conway where we stopped in at White Horse Press and checked out some of the books and gear there. It was a candy shop for us, but we only managed to spend a little over $150.
Our next stop was the highest mountain in New England, a place that is proud to claim the worst weather in the area. It also holds the highest recorded windspeed of over 220 mph.
Mt. Washington is found at an eleation of 6,288 ft and is made of lots and lots of granite. The weather there was a comfortable 51 degrees and we had a view of everything for hundreds of miles.
Here I am at the summit.
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WDGAH 4 Me at the Summit of Mt. Washington
Besides the auto road and the hiking trails, the mountain has a Steam powered, Cog Railway that slowly brings people up the mountain. You can see the smoke from miles away and the engineers are covered with soot. The road is mostly paved, but toward the top is about a mile of hard packed dirt. Here are some pics from the ride up and the Cog.
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WDGAH 2 WildBills04 on his Asphalt climbing Mt. Washington, the highest peak in New England
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WDGAH 3 VFRDylan and WildBills04 at the top of Mt. Washington
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WDGAH 5 Cog coming up the side of the mountain
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WDGAH 6 Cog coming up Mt. Washington
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WDGAH 7 Cog Railway - Mt. Washington
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WDGAH 8 WDGAH
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WDGAH 9 Mt. Washington
After getting our "This Bike Climbed Mt. Washington" bumper stickers, we rode back down 16 through the fast sweepers and back to Conway where we came to our next part of our ride.
[image: kanc-1-800.jpg]We were enjoying the ride so much that we only made one stop to walk into the woods to catch a view of Sabbaday Falls. Dylan showed us the area and the walk back through the woods.
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We left the falls and headed west enjoying the sweeping hairpins and fresh paved road sections. (I'm hoping that Travis has video for us later.)
We continued on NH 112 to the junction of NH 118, another must ride road if you visit New Hampshire. We climbed up and down the White Mountains making thunderous harmonies fly from our three tailpipes. (Dramatic, huh?)
At the end of 118, we joined up to 25 and went to Warren, NH, where there is a rocket in the middle of no-where. New Hampshire is the home state of Buzz Aldren.
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Somehow, I missed your bike in the pic, Dylan.... sorry.
We were way behind schedule and wanted to make it to the bar-b-q at Brian R's house, so we shot up Rt 25c, another pretty good road to Rt. 10 South. We saw our first LEO of the day aiming at us when we made the turn, luckily for us, Dylan has a LEO eagle eye.
After a U-turn and finally finding the correct road to Brian's place, Dylan led Bill and I to a driveway of VFR's
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WDGAH A count of 40 bikes in Bryan R.'s driveway and 35 of them were VFR!
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We all BS'd, shook hands, ate hot dogs, burgers and brats, OH MY. Chris (thx1139), Martina (Martinka), Travis (Y2KVFR), and lots of others were there. I was an idiot and didn't take photos of some of the individual bike, but there were lots of 4th and 5th gen VFR's there. Many of the people there were on the VF/VFR list and I hadn't spoken with many of them, but everyone was very cool and the talk was all very positive of the weekend.
As darkness began to set, little by little we made our way toward WDGAH headquarters, aka Fireside Inn, in Lebanon, NH
[image: HighwaySign.jpg]The place is amazing and for a great cost of $90 a night for the group rate, it's a bargain. Indoor pool, hot tub, breakfast, fireplace, and tons of parking.
OH Yeah... it's near Seven Barrels Brewery which we invaded each night to celebrate and drink some of the local flavors.
[image: l358-06192002-880.jpg]After 325 miles, some good times and good beer, I decided to get some shut eye. Early morning planned with lots of riding for Saturday.
Saturday, September 9, 2006Today was the official day of the We Don't Give A Hoot rally, so a morning full of breakfast, 8:30 group pictures, then figureing out of group rides was all on the menu before our dinner reservation at Lui Lui's Italian restaurant.
6:30 am and I can't sleep. I hear Dylan stirring on the other side of the room as he got up to get ready for breakfast. I flipped on the television screen to see how the Red Sox lost again.... grrr.
We get our stuff ready for the day and head to the lobby for breakfast. The hotel puts out a nice buffet of eggs, bacon, potatoes and other great, feel-good, get-the-day-started food. The lobby is filled with VFR people filling up on coffee and eats. A couple of guys are making their way through already wearing their 'Stichs and leathers carrying tank bags and rain gear.
At 8:30, photo time begins and all of the bikes get moved into a straight single line. The view of all the bikes lined up mirror to mirror is about as long as a football field.
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WDGAH Are you the guy that had the red VFR or the yellow one?
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Most of the people there had been to the area and knew others from prior years. The knew where to go and who they were riding with. As for me, I didn't know anything. All I knew was that I needed some gas. After pictures and while people started to leave, I decided to run to the bank and get some go-go juice for the bike. When I returned, there were only a couple of groups left. One was headed to western Massachusetts and I had been there before, so I asked the other group if I could tag along to some of the best parts of Vermont and New York
The group was kind of big, having six people. They were Rob from Virginia, Dwayne from Vermont, Dave, Jeromy, his wife Chris and I. Rob was the man with the plan and had a GPS system to help guide the way. Since we had never ridden together before, he wentover a few group procedures and then we were off. To be honest, I don't know all of the roads we rode. All I know is that I did my best to keep up with Rob on his VFR and Dwayne on his classic Magna V65. These guys rode the hell out of their tires and the bikes loved it. We took some really twisty back roads along a river up to Rochester, VT. It was a very fast 70 miles that I think we did in about 45-50 minutes. We didn't hit any traffic, see any LEO's and best of all, not a single traffic light! When we arrived in Rochester, I finally got a chance to take a few pictures. We saw another group hanging out and we took a little drink break.
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From Rochester, we head north up the scenic part of the absolutely-must-ride-road of Vermont 100. The road was filled with motorcyclists and we buzzed by them like they were standing still. While flying around at 75-90 mph, I took in the scenery, quickly albeit. It was absolutely breathtaking riding through the valley's of the Green Mountains. If you come to New England, you need to ride here.
We quickly made it up VT 100 to the intersection of VT 17. We stopped off for topping off the bikes and to talk with a few guys sitting there from the "hoot." Rob then says, "RT 17 can be very tricky. It's filled with lots of switchbacks and extremely tight turns." Boy was he right!!!! I hadn't been on a road like this since the time I went through the Black Hills State Park in South Dakota. Rob led the way and I took the shotgun position as the Magna Dwayne was riding just didn't have the lean angle for the road. Dwayne let me pass and Rob and I carved our way to the top, feet draggin through the turns and nearly draggin' pipes. When we reached the top, a bunch of Harley riders were checking out the view and turned their heads around to see Rob and I in a deep lean thundering back down the mountainside. BTW, Robs bike sounds awesome with his Remus Carbon Fiber on the end. My gutted stock exhaust was also screaming in VTEC mode, so the thunderous noises from our bikes were catching everyone's attention.
We came to the end of 17 at around 12:00 and I could feel my stomach grumbling. Apparently everyone else was feeling the same thing, because we stopped at this local sub shop where they served the biggest sandwiches! I saw mine and said, "holy sh--! That's a medium?!" Apparently the other guys were thinking the same thing, as none of us managed to eat our half subs.
We also met up with a few other guys along the way. A couple of these guys were veterans to WDGAH and had multiple bikes. There was a new Paul Smart Ducati, a late 80's Bimota, Ducatis, Moto Guzzi and Aprilias. The only non VFR bikes from Japan were a GPZ1100 and a SV650, which Chrissy was riding.
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WDGAH WDGAH
After lunch, we were on the other side of the Green Mountains pointing our front fairings towards New York State. We started picking up the pace even more than what we were doing before, as the roads straightened up. Rob picked the pace up to well into the triple digits as we flew down some quiet, country roads. We crossed into New York via a huge bridge, unfortunately I wasn't able to grab a picture.
In New York, we traveled alongside the river, winding north back and forth. We passed a car show of Packards with shiny chrome and pristine colors. This is where I got lost following behind Rob and Dwayne. I had no clue where I was, and kept saying, "I'm just following the guy with the map" as we kept motoring through this amazing part of the country. We then came to a stop sign where Rob said, "OK, this is going to be one of the roads we do twice! This road was about 10 miles long of up and downs and tight switchback corners. A Dodge Ram hogging up the road didn't want to let us path, but the minute that the road became a little straight, they were able to sneak by. Rob and Dwayne began pulling away from me... their track day experiences were shining here. I finally found a passing spot and drove past. I came to a corner where a couple of the other "Hooters" were pulled off the road inspecting their bikes and a VStrom pulled out in front of me. I followed him for a short while, 'til he pulled off to the side to let me by and get back up to speed. I rode to the end of the road, smiling all the time and saw Rob and Dwayne already stopped, off the bike and helmets off. I had a grin on my face saying "lets do it again!" David showed up next with Jeromy and Chrissy following right behind. Right about then, the thunder from something else came through the air, 'cept it really was thunder.
Dark clouds were over head and rain started coming down. We decided to ride the road one more time, but we had to slow down due to the rain pouring on us. The rain was dripping into my visor it was coming down so hard. We rode south to Ticonderoga and catch the ferry back across to Vermont. The rain still pouring on us. We waited in line to get onto the ferry for about 5 minutes when it arrived. Car after car climbing aboard, and then it was full. The young girl filling the ferry up holds the 5 cars in front of us and motions for us to fill in around the cars, so on we go! We had a great time on the ferry as it was relaxing to get off of the bikes and shoot the bologna. We did have a near mishap as David put his bike on the center stand. The wet ferry caught his footing and the bike tipped onto Rob's VFR almost causing a domino effect to my bike and Dwayne's. Luckily David held the bike and only the bar end hit the seat.
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WDGAH WDGAH
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To Be Continued... hopefully soon
Sunday pictures:[image: gallery_7184_2132_25392.jpg]
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Floating Bridge Located in Brookfield, VT
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