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My wife and I have just recently moved to the Danbury, CT area and it's my "job" to find nice places to ride/restaurants/places to see, etc. This weekend while she was out of town was spent doing just that.

I'm a big fan of taking your ride to an isolated area to test aspects of it - for me, I've been wanting to test out the ABS to get a feel for when it kick in and how it feels. I got the chance to feel the ABS this weekend - unfortunately....

I was cruising "comfortably" through some back roads, nice and twisty, when I noticed this particular mailbox on the side of the road. I thought that it looked really odd cause it was so low to the ground and had an odd looking stand....like it was on skinny legs and...it was walking across the road...

DAMMIT! WILD TURKEY!

See, we don't have those damn things in Canada so I'm not used to seeing them, walking across the fricking road. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to at least stand the bike up before I hammered both brakes.

While trying to bring the bike down from speed, I thought, "What the hell is *that* feeling?" It wasn't until the bird had figuratively flipped me the off and meandered into the woods that I realized It was what the ABS felt like when it kicked in - an odd fast pulsing through the wheels.

The most fun I had this weekend was following a group of cars. Now, these weren't ordinary cars - I happened to come up on 10 Porsches and BMW sports cars. I was following about $750,000 worth of 4 wheeled beauties.

As I followed I noticed they weren't going all that fast, relatively speaking. And even though we were on a fairly twisty (and definitely fun) mountain road, there were quite a few (short) passing zones....Hmmmm....

Next chance I had, I hammered the throttle of the FJR. It felt like someone had lit a rocket under my seat - I was amazed at how the FJR just leapt forward with no downshifting necessary.

This could be fun!

Sure enough, I managed to catch/pass 9 of the cars and all of them relatively easy. I would have caught the last guy but he turned off into a gas station.

As always, I'm glad I wear a full face helmet because it would have been embarrassing to have anyone see me giggling to myself. What a great weekend to put another 500 miles on the new bike.

One of my favorite roads in your part of the world is NY State Route 22 - just 7-8 miles west of you. The first 15 miles aren't so good, but north of Wingdale it gets better, and stays nice all the way up (well, I've only been as far as Salem, NY). Not extreme twisties, but nice sweepers and beautiful views to the east of the Berkshire and Green mountains.

jstark47 wrote:One of my favorite roads in your part of the world is NY State Route 22 - just 7-8 miles west of you. The first 15 miles aren't so good, but north of Wingdale it gets better, and stays nice all the way up (well, I've only been as far as Salem, NY). Not extreme twisties, but nice sweepers and beautiful views to the east of the Berkshire and Green mountains.

We're heading up to Americade in June and it looks like you've just planned out our route - thanks!

I had an awesome weekend for riding. Weather was great here and a friend was riding up from Annapolis, MD area. With my husband and I (rookies), that made for a manageable group ride of three.

We started out from New Castle, DE to Oxford, PA via Elkton, MD. Time constraints dictated that we stop in Oxford for lunch to get me back in time for an evening engagement. My husband's GPS told us that the Oxford Diner was nearby (of course all I did was peak around the building to see where it was). A great place where locals, young and old, like to frequent. Good, fresh food at reasonable prices.

The next day we met another rider friend for brunch and we gave them a tour of Longwood Gardens and looped around to finish up at a homemade ice cream place, Woodside Farm Creamery.

On this spectacular riding weekend, my odometer clicked over 1,000 miles! I'm looking to build up my saddle time and stamina to make a trip to Ocean City, MD before the year's end.

I was sick

I just got my bike back after being hit by a car in June. So needless to say, it was a great weekend for me.