Rolling to Renovo

Only problem is... we never made it. Monday dawned bright and clear... the first day of our vacation. The next few days were promising rain, so it was time to seize the day.

This would be the longest trip Deb and I have taken together on the V-Strom. The plan was to go to the Cranberry Bog just south of Renovo. The day was clear and cool when we left home. The fall foliage was nearing its peak.

Somewhere north of Jersey Shore I made a wrong turn and by the time we figured it out we had gone quite a ways in the wrong direction.

Since the dogs were home alone, we decided to save the Bog for another day. The roads and fall foliage had been so wonderful that not getting to our intended destination wasn't really a bummer. For that matter it leaves us with an excuse to do this ride again someday.

Dropping down into Lock Haven (by mistake) we parked the Strom and walked the Main St. looking for lunch. Coming upon Leo's Deli/Bakery I liked the look of it. The first bite of my Italian pannini sandwich confirmed my choice... it was one of the best sandwiches I have ever had.

On the way home, we turned off before Allenwood and visited the "Ordnance." What was originally the town of Alvira, PA was taken over by the government during WWII and developed to turn out bombs and TNT. Today all that remains are the concrete bunkers, built to store the explosives, overgrown with vegetation. You can see that the reflective piping on my Fieldsheer jacket really works! Also remaining from before the Ordnance is the old Alvira cemetery where you can find the graves of Civil War and World War I veterans.


Be careful on the road in and out of the Ordnance... it looks like they dropped some ordnance on the road!

In the Dark

One of my favorite Bruce Cockburn songs, "Pacing the Cage," has a line that says "sometimes the darkness is your friend..."  I don't think he was talking about motorcycling though. It gets kinda creepy on a bike in the dark. Perception is altered, such that cornering is a bit more difficult, visibility is obviously less and, worst of all, deer and other woodland critters are more likely to spring onto the roadway. Although it had cooled down some by the time I got on the road to home at 8:20PM, it was more for protection than cold that I put on my Fieldsheer overpants.

Didn't mean to be out so late... but ended up doing a 5 hour slog with an outside vendor and Sonicwall tech support trying to setup a VPN passthrough on the County's router. Ugh! I understand routers and what they do. I can usually achieve success in setting up what I want, but there are some things about routers that are just perverse and hateful. I guess that's why there are some guys who specialize in routers and basically nothing else.

Ah well... I'm home now, and the dogs were so very happy to see me.

The Commute

Two days a week (sometimes 3) my job takes me to New Bloomfield, PA... the county seat of Perry County. Actually the job doesn't do it... my car or motorcycle do the actual task of taking me there.

Perry County is an interesting place. When I tell people I manage the computers and network for the Perry County government, they usually express surprise that they have computers in Perry County, which is known for being somewhat backwards. I believe it may still be the only county in Pennsylvania without any stoplights.

I have been doing their computer work for about 9 years now, during which time the network has grown from 34 PCs and 1 server to over 170 (and 20 servers)

I will forgo telling any Perry County jokes here, although most of them were told to me by people in Perry County, which illustrates how gracious and good-humored most of them are down there.

Its a 94 mile round trip each time I go to Perry. It's a varied bit of travel: stop and go through Sunbury and Shamokin Dam, a stop in Selinsgrove for an excellent cup of coffee at the Kind Cafe, a (usually) high speed blast down 11/15, and then my favorite part: turning away from the river onto Rt. 34 and the run through the woods to Newport and then another stretch of rural two lane from Newport to New Bloomfield.

I love seeing the land in different seasons and weathers. This morning the woods looked like this:





There are some cool spots along 11&15 too. McKee's Half Falls is kinda spiffy even though it's more of a rapids than "half falls." Here's the V-strom at the Half Falls rest area.



This little rest area even has a port-a-potty! Here's the "half-falls" themselves. They are more impressive in the spring when the river is up, but nice any time.