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2006 BuRP Motorcycle Rally Blog - Day 8

This year I'm publishing highlights of the 2006 BuRP rally, day by day in a blog. BuRP was scheduled for July 10-15 this year. The blog will also include my preparations for getting ready to take the ride to Maggie Valley, NC from the Wing Ding rally at Nashville, TN and my observations while there.

I've stayed at many motels while at rallies and going to and returning from rallies. I always feel a little odd compared with the average summer traveler. The travelers I saw this morning at our motel were dressed in summer wear and departed in modern cars, SUVs, vans, or trucks. Travelers usually pull a suitcase on tiny wheels. They wheel it to their vehicle and place it in the trunk. Then they leave. Contrast that to Jane and me this morning getting ready to leave.

It was raining. I had covered the trikes with our full covers. I had to put on my rain suit and walk out to the trikes and flip off the rain on my cover for a few minutes, then go over to Jane's trike and do the same. Then I went back to mine and removed the cover and pulled up the two antennas. I walked the cover over under the covered entrance to the motel and laid out the cover on the ground and folded it over and over to get it to go inside the cover bag that is about 1 foot by 8 inches. Since the cover was still wet, it took quite a bit of pushing and tugging to get that big cover in that tiny bag. I walked the bag back to my trike and placed it in the trunk. Then I took the cover off Jane's trike and did the process all over again.

We got a cart from the motel and loaded all the various bags we had taken off the two trikes the day before. They filled the entire cart. Why two people on two trikes need so much stuff is a little crazy but we were away from home for 15 days. It was still raining so we didn't want to spend the next 30 minutes trying to get all these bags on the trikes in the rain so I moved the trikes to the entrance of the motel. The entrance isn't too big and I didn't want to block the door so I parked the two trikes facing in opposite directions, tail to tail on both sides of the entrance with the front ends of the trikes sticking out in the rain but everything else from the seat to the back of the trikes, under cover. Perfect motorcycle bookends.

Then we brought the cart down and I separated the luggage into two piles, one next to my trike and the other next to Jane's trike. Then we each loaded our own trike including attaching all the required bungee nets to hold things in place. Meanwhile, the regular motel guests were departing the motel wondering what the heck was going on as they passed through our motorcycle loading operation. They pretty much ignored us but I could imagine the conversations that were occurring in the car about us.

We finished and went back in to the continental-style breakfast supplied by the motel. The guests were pretty normal looking. We, however, sat there in our green rain suits.

We rode through rain for awhile when we left our motel this morning. Then the rain slowed down and the sun tried to come out. Within 50 miles, there was no more rain. At our first gas stop, we shed the rain suits and put on special cool vests. They kept us cool for the whole trip through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

These cool vests are soaked in cold water and wrung out before you put them on. When we went into restaurants, we took off our coats but kept the vests on, looking like a couple of nerds. But there was method in our madness. We took the vests into the restrooms and ran water on them to provide more cooling. We wore them out of the restaurants dripping water behind us with every step. You could find us by following the path of water drops on the ground.

Things were going smoothly until we neared exit 7A of the NJ Turnpike where we normally get off on I195. Suddenly, there was a sea of taillights before us and all three lanes of traffic slowed to a maximum of 10 mph. After three miles of this in 90 degree heat, we passed three vehicles including a state police car on the side of the road. It looked like one of the vehicles had run into the back of a truck. Right after that, speed quickly rose to 70 mph and we exited.

When we finally got home, Jane got off the trike totally exhausted and went into the house to cool down and get a soda. I turned on the computer and wireless and Jane turned on her computer. Communication with the outside world was reestablished.

We each rode 2034 miles on our 15 day trip. It would have been longer if we had stayed longer at BuRP and gone on some of the rides but Jane was not up for doing any rides with her injury. She's now telling me that the bump on her head is still there, although smaller. We will be getting her checked out after the weekend.

I see from recent posts on the Motorcycles forum that forum members who have never attended a BuRP rally are now asking questions about BuRP 2007. They want to be part of the action that is still going on as I write this. As I mentioned in the last blog entry, BuRP is for every forum member. It is run by forum members. I have nothing to do with the planning for BuRP. Like all success stories on the forum, the idea came from a forum member. Jack Paul suggested that forum members meet and go for a ride. The organizers of the rally were corner host, Brenda and forum moderator, Bill Wood. The fifth annual BuRP rally is now winding down. Why not be a part of BuRP 2007. Let Brenda know that you are interested. Any member of my five forums is welcome to attend. Some people bring their friends and family members too. This year, one BuRP attendee even found us from a Google search and just dropped by the rally site.

This ends the BuRP Rally Blog, from my perspective. I've enjoyed the comments made on all three rally blogs. Some have even wondered why I didn't give more information about what happened at specific rallies. The answer is that I'm not trying to be a reporter and tell you everything that happened. I'm just giving you my experiences on a day by day basis. Each motorcyclist has a different set of experiences at rallies. I hope that I may have encouraged a few of you to think about attending a rally. A few may have had their thinking reinforced that rallies are not for them. I say if you haven't been to a big rally, try it out once. If big rallies aren't your thing and you'd just like to try something small and at the same time be with people you've only read about here on the Motorcycles forums, then give the BuRP rally a try.

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