Getting Colder - 2007
Here we are in the middle of September in North East Ohio, the days are getting shorter, the weather is getting cooler. Today is supposed to only get to 59°, a might nippy but it is supposed to warm up. Football season has begun and the Browns are looking awful. I have been on the Goldwing a lot lately driving her back and forth to work. I pick up my 9 year old son from school, and he seems to have a problem with the Harley-Davidson. It does not have a sissy bar and he does not want to ride on it. Seems that when I pick him up from school, he has a full bag of books and the Goldwing has no problem with it. It does seem that he is much more proud when Dad picks him up on the motorcycle than when I pick him up with cloe (my car).
I do love that bike for exactly what it is. An excellent and very luxurious touring motorcycle, perfectly suited to eat the miles and get there in comfort and feeling good. I cannot even imagine riding the Shadow-Aero to North Carolina with no place to store anything, a motor that is really shakey (no balancing or other such smoothing technology, nor a windshield. The Softail has managed to strike a nice balance between the two, offering the windshield (yes I know I could put one on the Shadow, and did - it was aweful) relatively smooth ride, but mostly for me, the motorcycle element. I was looking at the Goldwing yesterday thinking how much like a two wheeled car the thing looked.
Morning Rides
Most mornings, because of my son, I have ridden the Goldwing to work, the experience outside the bike, is essentially the same. I ride East in the morning along US 30, some of the most amazing sun rises in this area, are seen as you ride up the hill toward the Apple Creek Rd. overpass. Just as the sun is starting to peak over the horizon. The weather is cool and crisp, this really helps to cut down on the amount of coffee needed in the morning. The colors, however, are rich and vibrant as the sun paints the sky and clouds in a way that man has yet to come close to duplicating.
As I continue to travel past the Apple Creek Rd. overpass, the highway turns south around a field on the right. Most mornings the field is covered with a layer of fog that is very unique from morning to morning. Sometimes smooth and creamy sometimes more rough edged like a cloud, sometimes completely obscuring the field, othertime in patches. Tried to get some photos yesterday of a particularly beautiful moment of the sunrise but could not do it safely.