Day Seven

Gosh, it doesn't seem possible that we've been on the road a week already. But today is the seventh day, so a week has passed. We've ridden just over 1,200 miles and had rain only part of one day. We experienced some fairly cool temperatures, but no cold temperatures. The bike and trailer have performed almost perfectly. The only blemish has been a high beam bulb blew out on the first day of the ride. I usually carry a spare, but the last ride we did encountered the same problem, and I forgot to replenish the spare with some bulbs I bought for the earlier BMW. These bikes love to snack on headlight bulbs. Otherwise, the bike and trailer have been perfect.

Having the trailer is great when touring. So nice to simply throw things into it and still have space to spare. But we are filling it up with things along the way. 3 bottles of wine today. A framed picture yesterday. I worry more about weight than volume. I don't want to overload the bike...

Today we rode up the eastern side of Lake Seneca, around to the town of Geneva, then east to Lake Cayuga, then south along the western edge of that lake back to Watkins Glenn. 

Oh, I almost forgot-- the first stop was at Watkins Glenn International Speedway. The track is the grandfather of road racing tracks for motorcycles and sports cars. In fact, this week the Porche auto club is holding a rally or meet in the region, and Porches are commonplace here at the moment.  

We were able to enter the Speedway and ride to the first grandstand and look around a bit. No one else was there, so we climbed the grandstand to see the view. Pretty good for a road course. We were able to see 4 grandstands, which is more than most road tracks. The track itself is narrower than I expected, especially with NASCAR using it once a year. It was neat to see a track I've heard of since a boy.

From there, we did the rest of the ride described above. We stopped at only one of the many, many Vineyards along the lakes. Since I had to handle the bike and don't need an accident or DUI, we did one wine tasting only. All six wines sampled were great. Very, very good. So good that we bought three bottles, one of which was another reisling ice wine (at half the price of the bottle bought in Canada).

The weather was mixed sun and clouds with temperatures in the mid 80s. Not HOT, but fairly warm in the bumblebees. The forecast was wrong; it called for rain, so the weather was good.  One interesting observation. In Geneva, which is located at the northern end of Lake Seneca, we noted a distinct drop in temperatures along the way. It was cooler because the wind was blowing from the south, up the entire length of the lake. The evaporative cooling from the last effect was very evident.

It was yet another good day!  

Tomorrow, to Vermont