IBA Pizza Party & Daytona Bike Week 2012

I guess it was around 6am or so when I got back to the hotel room. When I walked in, Mike and Dad were both sound asleep and surprisingly, not snoring. I quickly feel asleep but woke shortly after 10am when they got up. Since we left a day earlier on this trip, our plan was to spend the extra day in Daytona checking things out. However, it was apparent that wasn’t going to happen as I looked around the room. Dad’s throttle lock gave out on him during the first leg of the trip forcing him to hold the throttle open the entire time. As you can imagine his shoulder was very sore. Mike seemed ok, but he was saying that he was beat as well. So instead of heading to Daytona, we made our way across the parking lot to Bob Evans for breakfast after having Barb Smith and Ray King sign our witness papers. While waiting on our food I sent off all the Waffle Houses photos to the WH rally email and began working on the paperwork for the ride.

After breakfast was over I still felt like crap since I was running on minimal sleep for the past 3 days and the nap I just had wasn’t cutting it. I went back to the room and passed out till around 2:00 that afternoon. After my nap I headed down to the lobby of the hotel where Mike and Dad were sitting around working on paper work and chatting. During our morning chat with Barb, Mike mentioned to Barb and Ray they he wanted to have dinner at a small seafood joint. Ray, a local to the area, suggested a few spots and asked if we would want to meet around 5 that evening. So once I got my wits about me after my nap I contacted Barb to find out the details for the evening. We were to meet her around 5ish out front of the Ramada.

Around 4 we headed over and started looking around at the other LD bikes there in the parking lot. While snooping around we ran into the Joey and his father again. I introduced them to Dad and we started drooling over Joey’s ST1300.

After a few minutes of discussion we met up with Barb and rode in her car over to Trenton’s Seafood which was next to the Airforce base there in Jacksonville. The food was outstanding as was the company. After dinner was over we headed back to the hotel to have drinks at the hotel bar. We set up some chairs in the corner next to the piano and were joined by Tim Yow, Mike Kneebone, Barb Smith, Joey Lawson and countless others who made their way over to say hello as they finished up the Florida Mountain 1000 that the IBA was hosting that day.

Later in the evening I found Rob Wilensky, Greg Rice, Kevin Lechner and Brian Bray. After talking with Rob and Brian for a bit they decided to head over to Stake and Shake for a bite to eat and shake. Around midnight we left the restaurant and I head back to the hotel to crash again.

The next morning (Friday) we headed over for breakfast in the Ramada. My back was starting to bother me a bit from sleeping on the cot, so I made it a short event and went for a walk around the parking lot to get it to loosen up. On my way back to the hotel I ran into the Rob and Greg and decided to try and ride down with them to Flagler Beach for the RTE hosted by Ray King.

We gathered in the hotel parking lot and then headed down I-95 towards Daytona. On our way out we got separated in some traffic lights. However, we have all heard rumors about how those guys rode, so we figured it wouldn’t take long for them to catch up. It didn’t. Within 15 miles or so we could see the array of aux lights coming up on us as Greg, Rob, Kevin and a couple others made their way through traffic. We joined in as they passed and made our way south, in a hurry.

Once we made it to the restaurant we parked the bikes and socialized (tire kicked) in the parking lot for a bit before heading upstairs in the restaurant for lunch. The food wasn’t a good as I remember it being last year, but we did have a huge group and the service was doing a fine job for how many of us there were.

Quick photo of the crowd at the RTE in Flagler Beach, Florida.

View from inside the restaurant. Last two years they have closed off the top half of the place for us to use.

After lunch Mike, Dad and I made our way down to Ormond Beach to check out the events going on at Ross Myer’s Harley Davidson. This, btw, was my second trip ever to a Harley shop…. Allow me to vent a little as I start this. The motorcycle owners that come in for this event either, A. Have little experience riding in groups, B. don’t care about other owner and/or riders, C. are simply idiots. As we make our way into Ross Myer’s, we have several other people cut us off and get in the middle between Dad, Mike and I. It wasn’t like we were leaving a huge gap or anything, they just moved in.

Now I guess part of me gets a bit cocky when I’m around a bunch of guys on Harleys seeing as how I’m in gear designed to be drug across asphalt and they aren’t… I realized quickly that we were sticking out like sore thumbs. Here we are in bright colored riding gear, helmets, dirty bikes, hard bags and extra fuel tanks. So to try and blend in with the surroundings I started shaking my arms violently with the handlebars. Dad looked over at me and said, “Easy, Cowboy.”

Once parked, we walked over to the shop and to the area where all the tents were located. As we made our way across the street, Mike asked the traffic cop if we had to be dressed like pirates to enter. This puzzled the traffic cop so he just smiled, laughed and said sure. Mike walked off laughing at the whole scenario.

After making our way through the shop we headed out to the vendor area. I don’t know what was more entertaining during this, the random things that the vendors were selling or the things that some of the women were wearing. Wow. Mostly it was over weight older women wearing way too little clothing. Why they thought it was ok to wear that out in public, I’ll never know. As we made our way though the vendors we passed a guy with a microphone head set on that was trying to sell some miracle polish. He didn’t have anyone to entertain so he was trying to get attention from the foot traffic in front of him. Wouldn’t you know it, he reached out to me. “What color is your bike man?” My response was simple, “Dirty.” He immediately fired back with, “Let me show you how to fix that problem.” I waved him off and replied, “Nah, I like it that way, I’d rather ride it.” The look on his face was priceless.

I don't claim myself as a "biker," rather a "rider". But I did find that patch rather amusing.

I can only imagine what the owners of those bikes were thinking about my scoot...

Contrast...

After wandering around the Ross Myer area for a while we decided to head back to Jacksonville to get ready for the IBA dinner. On our way out we were cut off by some assholes on custom choppers with fat tires. This wasn’t the first time this had happened to us while down here. Dad came over the radio after this happened and said, “I think guys with fat tires have fat heads.” After doing the stop and go thing for a while we finally got some distance between us and the fat heads. They found a hole and moved on up to the turn lane to go south on 95. As we got closer I could see the guy that cut us off was sitting on the right side of the turning lane, just shy of the white line. Seeing this I decided to do the only thing I felt was right. I moved over to the left side of my lane with bags just kissing the white lines. Just as I passed him I nailed the throttle and laid on the stebel air horn which is mounted on the left side of the bike. I looked back to see that the combination of 139db of ear piercing goodness and my line placement had him struggling to keep the bike upright. Oops.

Back at the hotel we changed clothes and headed back to the Ramada to join the rest of the group for dinner. We got our food and then sat down with Joey and his parents. As we were getting settled a couple other gentlemen joined us who happen to be in the WH Grand Tour as well. (Sorry don’t remember your names)

The dinner was great as was Rob’s intro speech. He introduced a man that had been riding at least 10 miles every day for the past 12 years! Impressive! From there Kneebone came up and discussed some of the events that are coming up and had the riders stand that had completed various rides. (We got to stand up a several times this year)

After dinner was over I went back to the bar to buy a round of drinks for everyone and then headed back to the table to talk with David Gillespie, Joey, Ed (Eds Last Resort Rally), Rob and a few others. After we finished the drinks, Joey and I headed over to look at my Vstrom as he wanted to see it first hand from watching my build on facebook.

Sometime later, Dad and Rob headed over as well to discuss some things on the bikes. I bet we sat out there for at least an hour chatting about rallies, various rides and upgrades. Dianne and Betsy walked over a bit later and joined us in talking about their upcoming ride on Monday, a 100CCC. (Which they completed on time. Congrats to both of you!)

The next morning we got up and headed down to Daytona along with Brian Hiley. We had plans to eat lunch with Mike’s sister in law who had been cooking some pulled pork and pies for us. Mike had warned us that her cooking was outstanding and he didn’t lie, the meat was extremely tender, the beans were cooked with bacon and the peanut butter pie was outstanding! After chatting with them for a bit we headed over to the Sunshine Mall to check out what was left of the vendors. Last year at this place I tried on a Tourmaster Sanora Air and really like it. After trying it on several times at various places I decided to go ahead and get one this time. Sure glad I did! It was nice to be riding around Daytona in that vented, high vis jacket.

I keep trying to think of a reason why...and "Because I can" is all I can come up with.

Wonder if he complains of engine heat issues?

"Because I can." I'd like to see some fool actually run it WOT with the spray...

We put more miles on our bike tires than most in attendance put on their trailer tires getting there.

Hi.

Well since your posing...

Something like that.

And the winner for this round goes to... Sometimes you gotta wonder what people are thinking.

Can you see me now?

Bright.

From there we headed over to the speedway to see what was going on there. The crowd was still in full swing even though some of the vendors were starting to pack up. Don’t know why the scenery was a different here, but the women were a bit better dressed here and the women that did reveal a bit were at least somewhat attractive. (some of them)

On the way home we stopped and 3 or 4 Waffle Houses while we were down there. Once we arrived at the hotel I wasn’t quite ready to settle in so I headed back out and picked up a few more WH’s in the Jacksonville area before calling it a night.

4 GPS cradles? Not much on Harleys but someone spent some time keeping that one clean with the farkles installed. Bravo!

Its being rode as well! Really like that sticker idea.

Another unique ride. Yup, those bottles are indeed nitrous and that is a fuel cell on the back.

Could this be the first IBA member with a nitrous kit on the bike?

Nice fuel cell set up!

Must be cold where he rides?

Another goal set... just sayin.

Er' body can see this guy hit the brakes!

Watchin over his pond. This was just outside our hotel.

We all knew that the FJR was fast, but damn!

418 miles before a fill up. :)

We headed home the next morning, picking up a few Waffle Houses along the way. I topped off in Jacksonville (both tanks) and didn’t put fuel in the bike again till I got to Charlotte, NC. J After fueling in South Charlotte, Dad went on home and I went over to the University area to have dinner with some friends. (While getting a photo op in Charlotte, a bright yellow wing rolled in that was unmistakably Don Jones. It was nice to see a fellow rider out and about on his way home.)

I spent alot of time in that building so that one day I could spend alot of time on that bike.

GPS mileage for the trip.

Another great trip completed. It had its ups and downs but I really can’t complain. Looking forward to going back next year!

A Mild Winter - Early Riding Season

Well, since the snow season was pretty much non-existent, it gave me a bit more time to work on the bike and ride it in between wrench sessions. This worked out in a way as I have joined a year long rally, The Waffle House Grand Tour. This is a charity ride actually that is put on by Hoagy's Hero's. www.hoagysheroes.org

In essence, we have the entire year to visit as many Waffle Houses as possible. We receive one point for each visit and one point for each pin we get the waitresses to donate to the charity. To get a visit point, we must take a picture outside the WH with our bike and rally towel. There awards for various things like: riding to a location in every month, most visited, farthest distance traveled, etc.

This rally started on 1/1/2012, unfortunately we didn't receive our towels to till around mid January. So in order to get a points before our towels arrived, we had to include ourselves in each photo. This got rather entertaining...

My first Waffle House entry. Salisbury, NC

One, "Warm" afternoon I decided to trek our for a short ride on the Vstrom and bag as many WH's as I could just off the interstate. So I decided to go down 85 south to 77 north to Statesville and then home on I-40. In this short route I managed to get 12 WH's! I didn't even go down into Charlotte for any!

Waffle House #667, Statesville, NC

After that ride was over I started pulling the Vstrom down for some winter upgrades and was pretty much out of the game for about a month. During this time several riders had started gaining some serious points! One my bike was back together, it was time for a test ride. So I headed down to Charlotte to try everything out and find the rest of the WH's in that area.

Waffle House Rally Flag. It arrived bare, so I added some patches and my rally number to it for some flare.

For this ride I wanted to try and get familiar with the GPS so I decided to use the POI's that Dad loaded into the GPS for all the Waffle House's. Well that turned out to be a bust... those locations were way off! It took half the day to figure it out but eventually I did get the GPS figured out and worked out a good method for finding them.

Waffle House in Concord, NC. Got the waitresses to take a photo with the bike and they donated 18 pins!

Waffle House outside of Belmont, NC

The pins that the Concord store donated.

During this ride I got to try out my new heated pants as well. Talk about a wise investment! I ended up going back to the shop the next weekend and purchasing the heated socks and jacket liner! I rode a few hundred miles that day in February in upper 30 degree weather. It was a bit brisk but the sun was out and the roads were dry.

At this point I only have 26 locations and there are several riders that are already in triple digits! With the up coming rides Im not too worried about their lead as Ill be on the road alot here in the next few months.

Speaking of that I guess I should go and speak about the rides that are on the books for this year.

Ride 1: SS2000 ride in to IBA party in Jacksonville, Florida. (3/13/2012) This year, Dad, Mike Brown and myself will be attempting a SS2000 (2000 miles in 48 hours) on the way into the Jacksonville, Florida. This route will be similar to the ride from last year. This years route will take us into Dallas, Texas then down to Beaumont, Texas and across I10 to Jacksonville.

Ride 2: Moonshine Lunch Run. (4/13/2012) Pretty excited about this ride. Always heard about how big this event is and this year Ill be attending with Mike Brown and gang.

Ride 3: Wisconsin Rustic Road Ride. (Late June) Will be riding up with the parents to spend a few days with the grandparents in Wisconsin then we will head over to the gathering in New Glairus.

As always we will be doing the typical local riding in the mountains and what not on the weekends in between. However this year Im looking to expand my state riding and head to the cost a bit. I have a goal of visiting every Waffle House in North Carolina and to achieve that I will have to get out on the coast a good bit.

Vstrom Upgrades...

Like every winter off season that I can remember, the bikes have gone through a series of upgrades. While the Vstrom came pretty well set up for long distance riding, there were a few things I wanted to do to make it my own.

First thing I did was paint the saddle bags. The bags a bit of damage and some scuffs from the previous owner that I wanted to touch up. In addition, they were all black and blended in too well with the back of the bike. I wanted to do something to make them visually stand out some.

Solution: Paint the vertical surfaces of the bags silver to match the front of the bike.

Doesn't look to bad if I say so myself.

Added a little reflective tape to make myself a bit more vizable at night.

Saw this trick done on another Vstrom online. Love it how looks like I have extra head lights.

Dad and I made a list of things that we needed to do to the bikes before the start of our riding season. We purchased some white boards so that we could write on them over and over. The list for the Vstrom was rather long, but we stayed after it and got it done.

Checking the valves was one of the items on my list. Pulling the valve cover on the rear cylinder was no big deal. 4 bolts and done. However, the front cylinder required a bit more work since I had to pull the radiator off the bike to get the clearance to the valves.

Front cylinder valve cover removed. Valves all checked out.

Another, much larger task at hand for the bike this year was to mount and wire a GPS and a radar detector to the Vstrom. In addition to these goodies I wanted to mount my SPOT device and arrange all these items where they could easily accessed and used.

Ram mount for the SPOT. Used the SPOT cradle and the 1 inch connection bar.

Another task was to change out the brakes on the bike as that was my biggest complaint with the Vstrom. They were very soft and lacked response. First steps to fix that, new pads and fluid. Problem mostly solved. Braided lines may come later...

OK, so I didnt take as many photos of the progress and upgrades as I would have liked. However, I did manage to get the bike out for some photos the other day before we set out on our SS2K. So here ya go, the new and improved, "Big Ugly Beast."

Fuel cell mounted up over the passenger seat. Shut off valve for fuel located on left side. .5L of water hanging from right side of fuel cell mount.

J&M Intercom, SPOT, iPod wireless remote, Map light, ride clock, cramp buster, throttle lock, GPS, radar detector.

Controls for heated items. Rocker switch turns on heated grips, large knob controls grip temp. Two smaller knobs control temperature of heated gear. (I now have socks, pants and jacket)

Voltage meter, auxiliary fuel pump switch, auxiliary light switch.

Plugs for heated gear.

Pelican box mounted. Purchased the pick and pluck foam to go inside the custom bag liner. Set up to carry camera equipment and ride documents. Cut the clips off three clip boards and velcro'd them to the lid.

Saddle bag set up. Chain lube, tripod and first aid kit are velcro'd to the lid to prevent falling. Bag liner from Bagsforbikes.com.

Bagsforbikes.com

Overall I am really happy with the way things turned out on the bike. There are still some things that need to change in time. But for now I think she will do. :)

Snow Season 2011/2012 - Done.

Another snow season draws to a close, this time it’s a bit early due to several reasons.

Mother Nature hasn’t been that nice to the southern ski areas at this point in the year. We had a very mild winter with lot of rain which kept snow bases thin and most of the difficult terrains bare. Reflecting back on the season I came to realize that I didn’t ride a single difficult trail this year, which upsets me a bit, but alas.

One of the main reasons I cut the season short this year is due to my extensive riding plans for the 2012 riding reason which include a SS2K attempt in early March, Moonshine Lunch Run in April and various other rides through out the summer. Prepping the Vstrom for these trips became a priority over the snowboarding.

The nail the sealed the coffin, however, was a back injury that arose during my weight training a few weeks ago. While doing squats one evening I felt an odd pain in my back when completing my last rep on a set. The next morning the pain was very intense in my lower back and was not relieved by the next day. After seeing a chiropractor it was determined that I have a degenerative disk in my lower back that I had aggravated to the point it was causing muscle spasms. After a few adjustments the pain diminished but my lower back strength has dropped off. In fear of re-injuring my back while snowboarding before the SS2K attempt, I officially packed up the board and gear for the 2011/2012 season.

It was short season for me, but I still enjoyed each and every trip. I started the year at SugarMountain on some borrowed gear following the play off game between App State and Maine. That was the only time I made it to Sugar for the year. At that point, the only trail open was the upper and lower flying mile.

Josh and I and made a trip up to Beech Mountain a few weeks later. The only trails open there were Upper and Lower Shawnehaw. The cloud cover was thick, add in the snow blowers and the visibility was horrible. We made the most of it and enjoyed our day.

My last trip was over New Years with the home town group. We only rode at Beech that weekend but we had a great time. Please feel free to go back through the previous posts to see photos and more details on each trip.

As far as the bike are concerned, Dad and I are very busy! We have both bikes down at the moment as we are wiring up GPS units, radar detectors and doing the usual maintenance. I’ll be sure to post more details on the upgrades when they are complete!

UPGRADES!!!

New Years 2012!!!

Every year for New Years, my high school friends and I get together and party. In recent years we have usually camped out or partied on the lake. However, this year we decided to move it to the slopes.

Robert's place at Echota was open for the weekend so we made our plans accordingly. Friday morning I picked up Carrie at her parents place, loaded up the Escape and headed to Boone. We planned to meet up with Drew and Becca on the outskirts of Boone to pick up some groceries and mainly, beer.

From there we planned on heading to the profile trail so that we could hike along the side of Grandfather Mountain.

Heading West on 421, always a welcoming sight.

Once we had the amount of beer and water we felt was appropriate... we made our way to the trail head. The previous couple of days/night had been seasonably cold and with that a few snow showers had occurred.

The trail head was rather muddy from the rain and melting snow but the trail looked to be in pretty good shape so we carried on. From the trail head it was a little over 2 miles to the "Profile View Overlook." It was early afternoon when we started, so we knew we would have to move pretty quick in order to get back before night fall.

The trail was lined with snow as we started our climb up the mountain. As you can imagine, the higher we got, the deeper the snow accumulation was. At some points the trail was completely frozen over. Our pace was rather slow but we continued on anyway.

Starting up the trail. FRESH POW!

Around 4pm we managed to find our way to th Profile View. It was an amazing sight! I checked my altimeter app and we were approximately 5000ft above sea level at that point. Judging by the time it took us to get to the overlook, we knew it was going to be dark when we got to the base again. No worries, over prepared drew brought along his head lamp....

Profile View

When we got back to the cars (3,800 ft above sea level) the sun had already sat for the day. We changed clothes and got out of our muddy boots and headed to JVC's house in Banner Elk to meet up with the rest of the crew before heading to dinner.

Fluffy had built a mini ramp in his garage, which actually turned out quite nice. He and a couple guys from Alpine Ski Center were riding the ramp on skate boards and bicycles. It had been almost 10 years since I rode a skate board, but after some convincing I decided to drop in on the ramp. It had been a while... it wasnt pretty, but I did it.

From there we headed to an Italian place near Sugar Mountain. With 8 of us trying to eat at 7pm on Friday in a ski town, our wait was a bit ridiculous. After calling several restaurants to learn that the wait was about the same everywhere, we looked across the parking lot to see a Food Lion. Becca proudly exclaimed, "I'm a good cook, how about some bow tie pasta and pizza." SOLD.

A bit later we were up to Echota where we met up with Robert, his girl friend Claudia and his roommate Eric. I hadnt seen them since I left Raleigh, so it was good to see them once again. As we unloaded the cars, Becca and Claudia got to work on the pasta and frozen pizzas. The beer bottles started opening and the stories started flying. It was good to be back up there.

Nothing like having a nice winter lager while sitting next to the fire.

We threw a small party for Drew's accomplishment of hitting 200lbs! We hope this is his max and he can get back down in weight. This is our way of encouraging it. Humiliation!

Will rolled in around midnight that night as he had to work late in Charlotte. Unfortunately, we all partied a bit hard and were passing when he rolled in. As he walked in he let us know he had a nice present from playing Dirty Santa with his family...

The next morning I was up around 6am. Showered and began getting ready for a day on the slopes. By 7:15 we were rolling off the mountain and ordering our breakfast at the local country store.

By 9am, lift tickets were purchased and we were making our way to the lift line to catch the first chair for the morning.

Two things Beech has going for it, high speed quad and a hell of a view!

Good freeze the night before, so the runs were a bit crunchy on top. However, it didn't take long for the other riders and the sun to soften that up and make the conditions pretty good considering the lack of snow so far this year.

Drew and Will at the top of Beech Mountain.

Will and I about to make a run down the mountain.

Not too long ago a movie came out about Squall Valley and the game of GNAR. "Gaffney's Numerical Assessment of Radness." Its about having fun with friends and assigning points for doing different things on the slopes. Points are assigned for certain runs, tricks completed and shenanigans committed on the slopes. (Peeing mid run, calling people out, etc.) Points are deducted for crashes, losing you pass, etc. We we started playing our own version of this....

One thing that we took from the movie was, calling your mother while riding down the hardest run on the mountain. Well, seeing as how Lower Shooting star was the hardest one open, we did it on that one.

Drew was the first to call his mom.

Will followed Drew and completed his run with far less turns than Drew did. :)

This type of thing continued for the entire day as we rode. It really was good time considering the lack of runs that were open. For the most part we stayed on the Robbins Run/Shooting star as there were less people on it than Upper/lower Shawneehaw.

We stopped for a bit to rest. Robert, will and I went in to grab a few cold beers. They had Busch Light on sale for 2.00 a can. (for the slopes,that aint bad) However, things changed when we found out there was a 10.00 debit card minimum. We walked out with alot of beer.

Back on the slopes we continued playing our game and trying not to make fools of our selves. (oops) At some point we talked Becca into going up to the top of the mountain and riding. She was very scared, but she did pretty darn good.

We did pretty well to not embarrass ourselves on the slopes. However, the lift lines were another story. At one point we made it our mission to keep Drew out of his skis. We would hit the latch to release his bindings, then someone else would push him at the same time. This got alot of attention and laughs.

At another point, Carrie threw a snowball at me and managed to miss. (surprise) This ended up starting a snowball fight in the lift line.

Becca and Drew on top of Beech Mountain. Her first time up top!

Can't get enough of this view!

Through out the entire day of riding I was putting the Go-Pro camera up on my helmet and making runs down the mountain. I did this in order to make a short movie about the day. This was all fine and well until I ended up taking some kid out (really he took me out) while recording... Below is a link the to the video. The crash is at the end.

Enjoy. Beech Mountain New Years Video <~ Click

Walking back to the car we saw this thing. Parked in the Handicapped spot, too.

After leaving the slopes we stopped by our favorite restaurant on Beech Mountain, Brick Oven. We killed some more pasta, wings and pizza before heading back to Echota to celebrate the new year.

Every Christmas Carry buys us guys a nice dark beer. This year's was a aged stout from Trader Joe's. Was very good had a high alcohol content as well...

Chillin out around the fire place waiting for the ball to drop.

We ended up playing circle of death that night, again. Along with some other card games while watching the ball drop and the RedBull jump. It wasn't long after that we all passed out again... there is a reason why...

Will's present from Dirty Santa. Peach Moonshine. This ended up making laps around the table...

Sunday was a lazy day with some crazy weather. Woke up to an amazing view and temperatures in the lower 60's. We managed to get up and moving to make it to lunch at the Banner Elk Cafe. The food was great, fried chicken, green beans and mashed redskin potatoes. All for like $7.00! We were all a bit hungover still and apparently I was a bit rude to our waitress, but honestly the service was crap right from the start. But anyway...

Good Morning, 2012!

While we were at lunch the temps dropped like 10 degrees and rain came outta no where! It went from sunny and warm to cold and wet, quickly. So we went back to Echota to drink the rest of the afternoon away and lounge.

Becca ended up having us all craving some baked Mac and Cheese after telling us about her recipe. So we managed to make it down the mountain to the store and picked up the ingredients we needed. For 24.00 we ended up getting enough stuff to make two pans of the stuff and it fed 8 of us, well! I think we will be cooking more often!

Later that afternoon the temps kept dropping and the wind was blowing hard. It found its way through any lack of seal around the windows and doors. The blinds were moving and the doors were creaking due to the wind and the pressure. We later had fun with this by opening the front door then the back door... If the back door was open, it was all I could do to open the front door for all the pressure on it.

The next morning a few of us decided to go back to Beech for a half day ride for 20.00 since it was weekday and the holiday rates were over. The temps were well within blowing range so they had them all on that morning.

Drew and Robert decided to get some more GNAR points by parking at the top of the mountain and riding down the slopes to pick up their lift ticket.

All the blowers were on at Beech.

After one run down the mountain...

Conditions weren't as good on Monday as they were on Saturday thanks to the warm weather and rain. But it was still worth $20.00. We rode till around 12:30 that afternoon, called it quits and headed back to Echota to pack up and head home.

Visibility was a bit low again, but manageable.

All in all it was great weekend. Good times with friends on the slopes, lounging around the condo with drinks and good food. Really can't complain. Hopefully things will turn around in the weather and we can get a trip up to Snowshoe, WV soon!

Until next time... think snow!