UP MI motorcycle ride, Monday Sept ??, 2011

Actually, I could determine what the date is, since I know Saturday was the 10th.  Mystery solved.  Life is complete, go on about your business.  I'm going to continue to type, however.  I think my fingers may have ADHD, and this is the treatment I provide for them.  The only other thing to do is to numb them with bourbon, but then only I get enjoyment from that...and I like to share.  Anyone want some crabs or cat hair?  J/K on the crabs, they're too expensive to share. 

Monday morning in Newberry.  I think Val set her alarm every day, I don't remember.  Sometimes we got up right away, sometimes we didn't.  Sometimes she would get up and go to the bathroom and then come back, but sometimes she'd just get ready to go.  Today, I got up and peered out the window.  Fog.  Lots of fog.  Val stays in the rock.  I mean bed, of course, she stayed in bed.  Which was as hard as a rock....as most hotel beds are.  I understand why, but I don't like it.  I did what I need to do to get ready to go and went down to see what they had for breakfast.  HAHAHA  waffles, dry pastries, juice, coffee, etc.  They do have a computer, so I go online to check weather.  That turned out to be a waste of time, but not as much of a time waster as talking to the desk lady.  It's after 9, so I try calling Peggy.  She's not in, but the lady that answered the phone was glad to tell me that it was sunny there in Esky.

misc small talk...blahblahblah and then the big question!  "When it's foggy here, is it also foggy other places?"  I know, dumb question.  But the answer!!!  "I don't know, when it's foggy here, I don't go anywhere any else.  I think that it's usually foggy around the lakes."  Thanks for nothing, lady.  Turns out there are lakes all around this place, it's just like MN.  Or WI.  Why is the UP not part of WI?  It'd make more sense for WI to take care of it than for MI to do it.  Where's wiki when I need it.  I quickly got tired of her, so went outside to look  around.  Took my camera too.  OK, at one point, it was so foggy that I could hear a truck going by but could not see it...and the highway was not far away.  I could hear it and I could see a blinky light on it.  We're not going anywhere till it lifts.  Keep in mind that I've been in and out a few times.

Finally, Val's ready to go, it's 10 or so, so I haul my crap out to the bike, uncover them, etc.  I see some people next to the 3 goldwings that were there when we got in last night.  We exchange the pleasantries that you might expect, then I see the tshirt on the lady:  Hanson's Holdup, which is located in Arcadia, WI, a nice ride away.  So then I ask:  "where you guys from?"  "Well, we're from Hayward MN, and they're from Wabasha, MN".  As you know, Wabasha is where Grumpy Old Men was based and is less than an hour from here/home. 

I see that I think that  I've forgotten to finish Saturday, did I type about the falls?

Finally at 10:20, all our crap is strapped on, and Val is searching for her key.  And I mean she's searching for that damn thing, she goes thru all her pockets, her purse, her jacket, the saddlebags, checks the ignition, determines it must be in the pants she was wearing yesterday, she's flapping because McDonalds is going to throw out all the biscuits in 10 minutes, she won't get breakfast.  So, she says:  "go get breakfast ordered, I'll be along as soon as possible."  Off I go, hoping I'm going the right direction.  The fog is almost gone by this point, and lifts entirely by the time we're done eating.  The key was in one of the pockets that she was wearing, btw.  She unpacked and repacked the bike for the exercise.  I had thought by now she'd have found a place to put the key each time she removed it from the bike.  Oh well, we got breakfast, fog is gone, we're set.  We do need gas, kind of unusual that we need gas right at the beginning of the day, so we pass BP and hit the next one.  Time to hit the road, south! South to Lake Michigan.  Well, they call them lakes.  Personally, I think of them as fresh water oceans.  If you can't see across the damn thing and it affects the weather....it's more than a lake.  On this day, the road did what we wanted all trip...to spend some time riding along the shore of the "lake" but being able to see the "lake".

We stopped to adjust gear, add gloves/jackets or something.  The Nifty 50 place was closed, and I wanted to pee.  Hmmmmmmmmm  Bad ride leader!  Oh well, I figgered I could wait a while, and I did.  We stopped somewhere and gassed up, offloaded some coffee, got a snack.  In Esky, the road turned west, away from the "lake", by the time we got to IronMt, WI, we were HOT.  Take off coats, chaps, sweaters, get something to drink, ask the guy how far Rhinelander is, he says approx 40 miles.  WRONG!

Val didn't see this, I saw it and turned around to get the pics.  Laona, WI.
We got to Rhinelander, and had quite a time finding the hotel.  Oh well.  We skipped lunch today, too.  We were able to park the bikes right next to the door, and our room was right inside the door.  Handy.

The top pic is the yard/park behind the hotel, we got off the bikes, turned around and there it was.  The restaurant was across the parking lot, so about 5 we walked over...it was totally empty, but I had seen Open signs, so we burst in, got seated and was served mediocre food.  Nothing wonderful here, so we head back to cover the bikes and get the cocktail going.  I had 2 rather large drinks and got kinda goofy, sorry...no pics of that...it was just verbal goofyness.  I had bought a bottle of lemonade at that dumbass station where we stopped for a break, it worked very well as a mixer for the cheap whiskey I had bought at the corkscrew place. 

I really enjoyed the scenery after we turned west in Escanaba, we might have been home!  There were corn/bean fields and pasture and hayfields and lakes and woods and houses.  It was a nice ride....all in all, a nice day, nice hot day.