Almost Heaven...

Thanks to my comrade in arms, Christopher Key at The Barbaric Yawp for helping to figure out how to get pix back on the site.  The Loserland way doesn't work anymore.  This does, though I have yet to figure out how to get copy to one side of the pic as I used to be able to rather than the way it comes out now.  Small steps, Ellie, small steps...

As you can see, Father Bojangles has been on the road.  Yesterday, Rick, Rob, Smiley, and I hit the road for southern West Virginia and Snowshoe Resort for the West Virginia State H.O.G. Rally.  It was a spectacular Fall day.  We left at 7:30AM in bright sunshine and crisp, cool, air for the two and a half hour ride through some of the most magnificent mountain scenery you can imagine.  Even though it is early September, some of the trees were beginning to show big splashes of bright orange against an electric blue sky.  Words can't describe the feeling about being out on the road on the bike with three good friends.  As the saying goes, "If I have to explain it, you won't understand."  We laughed, we honked, we blew out the tubes.  We were like four boys playing hooky.  The restrictions of the work place (which we were all playing hooky from) were way behind us and the open road lay ahead.  And we had it all to ourselves.  Not another soul on it.  We stopped for fuel and breakfast at a greasy spoon in Parsons, WV, which Rob said had the best pancakes in the world.  He was right.  We sat, we ate, we laughed some more and got back on the road again.

We arrived at Snowshoe about 10:30 and spent most of the morning and early afternoon prowling around the vendors' sites and looking at all the bikes.  Being borderline geezers, we checked out the chicks as well.  Took our free chance at the balloon toss for $1000, and didn't win (who cares?).  This thing was cool.  A sophisticated version of a device we had when I was in college, which a friend of mine made with a couple of pieces of surgical tubing and his girlfriend's bra, used to lob water balloons incredible distances.  This one didn't use a bra, but the principle was the same.  We had to lob a water balloon into a bucket a good distance down the hill from where we were to win the grand.  Yeah...one good shot to try to hit the bucket, and then the college days came back and we just lobbed 'em to see how far we could get.  Boys never change.

After lunch and more vendors (found a great Harley wings patch for my leather vest which got sewn on on the spot) we hit the road for home as clouds rolled in.  By the time we had gotten north a few miles we were getting up into the clouds and the mist created yet another Fall spectacular.  Riding through the woods with the clouds at the tree tops and the mist in the air made the greens more emerald and the oranges mixed in more subdued but richer.  You could smell the smoke from fires burning in fireplaces every now and then as we passed by the odd house in the woods.  I was transported back to Falls of yesteryear in my beloved Adirondacks and spent the rest of the trip just giving thanks for being alive.

We got back to town about 7 and headed for the Long Branch Saloon, (a local dive where bikers hang out, among other things, but with the best steaks in the world) just to make the day complete.  After a great meal and more laughs, we went our separate ways, vowing to do this again, soon.  The treat for me was the realization that it was still Friday and I didn't have to go home and work on a sermon for the next day.  I could go to bed and go to sleep, which, by that time, I desperately needed.  It was a great day for a preacher suffering a dose of burn-out.

I need more of these puppies.

8:53:41 AM
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