My weekend started off early Friday afternoon with a text from my friend Beth. She wanted to know if I would be interested in taking a ride out to Foxburgh. I have been there before on the bike so it wasn’t a difficult decision. Sure. I work in Grove City which is on the way to Foxburg. Rather than ride home to West Middlesex and then back past work, I would just meet them at the Sheetz in Harrisville. I would need gas anyway. The only catch was that Bill, Beth’s husband, didn’t get off work until 5 pm. No biggie. I could find something to do out this way until they got here. I didn’t want to eat dinner yet, because there was some discussion of possibly eating at or near the Foxburg area. I grabbed a snack at Sheetz to tide me over until then. We met as planned about 6:20 or so at Sheetz.
Beth’s friend Sandy came with them. Bill has a full dresser that carries passengers much more comfortably than Beth’s 250 Rebel or my Magna. We met as planned and continued out Rt 58 to Foxburg. We all needed to eat so we tossed around the idea of eating at the Allegheny Grille right along the river. After checking out the menu’s, we had the hostess show us to seats out on the deck.
Our waiter’s name was Flip (short for Phillip the III). Flip was a pretty cool guy. He took our silliness in jest and seemed to enjoy waiting on folks who weren’t so … straight laced. We enjoyed our food as the sun set over the hill. We stopped in the chocolate shop for a bit then hopped back on the bikes to head for Emlenton Truckstop “Home of America’s Worst… errrr… Best Apple Pie”. We ate dessert there. I hit home shortly after ten o’clock.
I got up Saturday morning with a few chores in mind to complete. Chores complete, one of which included a ride to the Mercer County Sherrif’s Office to renew my concealed carry permit, I stopped at my usual lunch haunt, Hogan’s Heroes Sub Shop. I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at home doing odd things. It was fairly warm… Ok, Hot… so I had been giving thought to taking an evening ride somewhere. I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go.
I got another text from Beth that evening. They wanted to ride up to Linesville Spillway. Sure, what the heck, I wanted to go for a ride anyway. It was a rough evening on the bikes. Maggie has been having issues with her carbs every so often. She takes occasional fits of shutting off at low idle or when coming to a stop. She was running rough all day. I really need to get those carbs torn down and cleaned.
Bill’s bike had a howling sound coming from the back end. We decided his back tire was low. No problem, there was a Sheetz not too far ahead. He could air it up there. Like many Sheetz air stations, the hose had seen better days. Instead of putting air into the tire, it let more air out. Bri was riding with Bill so there was no way he should be riding double on 30 lbs of air. I knew there was a Country Fair up the road that I thought had air. I road up to be sure so that we weren’t running Bill’s tire any longer than necessary at unsafe pressures. Tires aired up, we continued on our way.
We arrived at the Spillway around 7 or a little after. I walked over to the concession stand, surprised to find it still open, and bought a bag of fish food. I have been going to the Spillway since I was a little kid. I shared my fish food with a couple of toddlers just to watch their faces light up as the carp scrambled to get their fair share as the pellets hit the water. We spent quite a while at the spillway. It was a nice evening. A breeze was blowing off the lake.
We discussed dinner before we got back on the bikes. Again, our sideways sense of humor showed. Someone, Bri I think, suggested somewhere in West Virginia and that started the silliness. We ended up stopping at Pizza Hut in Greenville. Another dark ride home and another enjoyable ride.
Sunday, I had planned on riding the WMVFD Poker Run. I woke up about 6 am with my back and neck throbbing. After feeding Tink, I laid back down. There were storms moving through the area with heavy rain. Already sore, I decided it was best not to ride in the rain. Had I already prepaid for the event, I probably would have gone. My rain gear works pretty well. I didn’t do much all day. I think it was about 6 ish when I finally decided to go get something for dinner. The rest of the night was quiet. Chatting on the computer, playing with Tink and watching some of the shananigans that were going on at the Olympics.
Folks thought I’d miss being at the track every Saturday night. To be honest… These past few Saturday’s have been great. I can do something with friends if I want or I can do nothing at all and my clothes and atv aren’t getting ruined by the dirt and crap from the track. I think it was a good choice. That being said… Lunch is over so I guess I should get back to chasing purchase requests. ~Cappy