ALBA 2010

August and its time for A Laid Back Affair motorcycle rally.  I admit I had been looking forward to this year’s Affair all summer.  I had the time off to go, the Harley was in the shop my mid July to get its fluids changed & tuned,  Urchin had the time off to go &Urchin’s fella was coming too.  Way Cool.

Enter Reality.  The Harley needed a new coil along with fresh fluids and new plugs, points & condenser.  It wasn’t ready to roll until Thursday morning of the ALBA & it still needed insurance, registration & an inspection.  Scratch the HD for the rally.  Urchin had developed a nasty cold/sore throat/whatever & wasn’t in any shape to ride her Ninja anywhere.  Scratch Urchin.  No Urchin also meant scratch Urchin’s fella. 

OH well, its going to be a very different rally than I had planned, but my friends of many many years will be there so off I went Thursday noon in my truck to ALBA.  I went over Snicker’s Gap to Elkton then up the valley along the Blue Ridge on US 340 to Greenville near my parish.  From there I cruised on up US 11 to Lexington, hung a left onto US 60 over to Buena Vista, picked up food at the local grocery & then cruised into the Glen Maury campground.   The drive was beautiful & the temperature mild.

I entered a crowded Glen Maury campground.  OMG.  A very, very crowded Glen Maury campground with only 4 motorcycles in sight and many many tents, trailers and one massive class A RV parked right where the ALBA camps.  People everywhere.  Kids everywhere.  There were more bicycles than motorcycles in camp.  ?????  Seems the campground had double booked the pavilion & camp area with a family reunion, a very LARGE family reunion.  Mind you, they were nice, shared the pavilion with us, invited us to their big dinner at the event pavilion down the hill, played cool  music live in the evenings.  But it made for a very strange Affair. 

JP & Serena were there but sans bike – JP’s trike ate its transmission 60 miles from his house Wednesday morning on the way to the Affair.  Paul had double booked himself & had to work the weekend.  Mikey came but left Friday afternoon.  Jo has been tied up with her new house all summer & was still too tied up to come.  Several regulars hadn’t planned to come this year, they were on their way to Sturgis.  Several more got delayed by in the truly awful thunderstorms & wind that hit the Washington-Baltimore area Wednesday & Thursday, then decided to just skip it when they heard about the Family Reunion Hoard.  (A polite Hoard but still a Hoard.)  About half a dozen other riders arrived, saw the super crowded campground and headed on down the Parkway for their own Affair.  Can’t say I blame them.  All in all we had 20 registrants & 15 motorcycles, 5 of which arrived Friday evening late.  Well there were plenty of door prizes for everyone.

This year was a Black Tie Affair, we all got black ties as Rally pins.  Some of us were more inventive than others in wearing our ties – yes friends, this man keeps the interwebs running in a big way.  I went swimming in the Maury River, took a nice ride in the country Friday and caught up on all the news from the folks who were there.  I do think we should consider a change of venue though – this isn’t the first time in recent years the campground has “forgotten” about our reservation until we actually arrived. 

The lemonade was excellent.

Life’s Little Detours

August is the season of A Laid Back Affair motorcycle rally.  Usually Kat & I head off on our respective rides to Buena Vista, hang out with our friends all weekend & cruise around the Blue Ridge.  This year Kat’s fella JR was going to come too.  I’ve been looking forward to this weekend all summer.  Enter some pot holes in the road of life.

Kat is sick so she can’t make it.  No Kat equals no JR either.  No Affair for them this weekend.  My bike is still in the shop.  Its engine oil, trans oil, primary oil, condenser, points & spark plugs are all new.  But its plugs aren’t firing.  So now it has a new coil too, but its not yet registered, insured or inspected, so its not going to the Affair either.  Phooey.

Oh well, I’m going anyway, in my NNMC truck (that’s No Name Motorcycle Club).  I can take pictures, go swimming & maybe ride on the back of someone’s bike.  JP’s trike died on the way to the rally yesterday (Jim Post, the father of the Affair) so I’m not the only one who found a pothole or two.  Viva La Affair !

A Quiet Day of Rest

Since I was given this extra day of rest, I decided to rest.  The various projects on my plate right now could just stay there for one more day.  So after breakfast at noon – I do need to go to work tonight – I put a few stray things away around the house & then headed out to my lawn chair near the woods line to see what was to be seen. 

Its clearly mid summer in my woods.  The cardinals, titmice, wrens, nuthatches, thrushes, finches, pine siskins & various sparrows are all busy calling out to one another while they hunt down this or that tasty morsel.  The honeysuckle are about done blooming but the little orange flowered perennials are just starting up.  The shallowtailed butterflies and bumblebees are busy checking out the flowers, waiting for their feast to begin in earnest.  Various insects are calling one to another but not many this early in the day.  The world moves as it will & the wheel of time turns in its circle of life.  It has been a good day off. 

Life’s Wonderful Little Gifts

For various reasons I ended up having  tonight off.  Given I’m currently harboring a cold, this was rather nice.  So as twilight moved over my house & yard I built a small fire in my fire ring (wasn’t cool enough for anything larger) and let the smoke carry various troubles off into the darkening woods.  The fire flies were rising, two different kinds from here & there in the yard & the woods alike.  A humming bird flew along the woods edge, stopped & chittered at me & then flew on its business.  Paws-in Trouble hopped into my lap & got his tummy rubbed as we watched the green of the woods darken into green-gray backlit  by the setting sun.  The day birds had quieted & the night insects were beginning to take  their place in the cycle of sound.

I’m not sure whether it was sound or a touch of movement but I turned slightly to my right as I was watching the fire flies in the yard – to see a nice 4 point buck saunter into my yard between my chair & the tulip popular.  He totally ignored me & Paws from a distance of less than  twenty feet.  As near as I can tell he never even saw us, the sound of the weed wacker  across the street had his attention.  He nibbled his way across my yard, around the honeysuckle bush, along the pines between my yard & the neighbor’s yard & then walked alone the woods edge for maybe 20 yards before moving under the trees & back into the woods.  For slightly over 20 minutes this handsome fella was never more than 50 feet from me.

Now in the almost 18 years I’ve lived here I’ve seen several deer in my yard.  For the first 8 years there was a magnificent 10 pointer that showed up every October.  Various smaller bucks & does  have walked along the tree line & once I saw a fawn resting under the forsythia.  But I’d always seen them from inside the house through the kitchen or back bedroom window, never when I was outside in the yard.   I feel honored to have been able to enjoy this buck’s visit.