Originally it was only supposed to rain Saturday morning and then be pretty warm, but that was not the case. So, I opted to cancel the planned route/ride for that day and move it to today. After checking interest on the FB group page, I only had two other takers besides Kevin, which made me opt for having everyone meet me at my place since that is where I had planned the route to start; with a plan of taking back roads to Pardeeville for lunch and then north and east to head back home. It wasn’t much for distance, but that seemed to work for most of us having commitments for later in the afternoon.
We met here at 10 a.m. and I asked Kevin to try and be here early because I had a sense my bike may give me some hassles with starting after sitting for a while again, and that was exactly the case. She seemed dead as a doornail, so Kevin attempted to use a battery booster, but nada. So, then I got out my jumper cables and then she almost turned over twice, which is when Brad noticed gas dripping out of the base of my muffler. I immediately knew at that point it wasn’t the battery and that gas must have gotten into my engine again. During the week after coming home from work I smelled gas in my garage, but every time I inspected around my bike, found nothing leaking. Well, it sure was and into my engine. Brian opened up the oil reservoir and it was full of gas, and we just replaced the floats on my carb the end of last season. So, back in the garage she went and I was forced to be a passenger on Kevin’s bike.
We ended up at our destination, Piper’s Place for Johnny B’s BBQ, for lunch around 12ish which is right across the road from Carol’s Cones; one of our favorite stops for ice cream. I also planned some roads for the first time ever snaking north around Park Lake into Pardeeville to get us there.
After having some excellent BBQ we headed north with intentions of taking a bunch of back roads up around Marquette, but Kevin had forgotten to get gas in Pardeeville which forced us to deviate from the planned route to stop in Princeton for him to gas up because we wouldn’t have gone through any towns with gas stations. At that point we were around 7 miles off the route and it was already around 2, so the group agreed to just take Hwy 23 from there to Ripon for our intended ice cream stop a the Sweet N Saulty (SNS).
Once we arrived to the SNS downtown, it was apparent they were closed, but on our way there we noticed their other location along Hwy 23 on the west side of town and that they were open. So, we back tracked for our fix. As we did at Piper’s, we sat outside to enjoy the gorgeous day.
It was such a beautiful day! And, I have to admit, it was a bit of a nice change being a passenger, providing an opportunity to really enjoy the scenery and Amish country along our travels.
