Shaking out the Cobwebs (141/365/2023)

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We’ve never insured the bikes this late in the year, but here we are and, at the end of the day, we didn’t not insure them. April and May, up until this week, have been cold and the thought of riding has not been particularly appealing. That, and we’ve just been crazy busy.

Usually, for a first ride of the season, we start out with a ride up to Squamish. But it’s a long weekend, and the Sea to Sky will be full of weekend warriors. Too much traffic, too many people frustrated on the road, it just wasn’t appealing.

So…where is it not a long weekend?

The US.

It seemed like a perfect opportunity to go to Edison for lunch at the Longhorn (assuming it was still there after all this time). But first, a fabulous ride around Drayton Harbour, Birch Bay, Lummi, through Fairhaven, and down Chuckanut Drive.

The past week has been hot…but today was overcast and the more typical temperate climate we are used to at this time of year. The traffic was light because everyone is already where they were going for the long weekend and, although the border line was long…the Nexus line only had one vehicle ahead of us.

The roads on the US side had even lighter traffic, and there were surprisingly few bikes. It’s not often that we get a full ride through Chuckanut without a car in front of us, slowing us down.

Today was that rare day.

We haven’t ridden these roads for about seven years….. it’s weird to see that in print. I came down for a conference in 2016, shortly after Trump won the vote. We did one ride across the line in 2017 and that was it….it just felt wrong in some way. It felt like coming down was supporting that government and we decided to ride in Canada until the political scene changed.

Then COVID arrived and things took a bit longer than expected, but here we finally are again.

When we rode into Edison we wondered if the Longhorn would still be open. It was, but the back parking lot was blocked off for some reason so we turned right to pull around and park out front. It’s always a bot odd to stop there and park out front. It’s a Harley bar and we are usually the only sport riders there, and we typically get sideways looks. But they make a mean clubhouse with bread from the bakery next-door.

However, where we turned the corner, there was something new down the road that didn’t used to go that far….so we investigated, and found a fabulous new place, with tons of outdoor seating, excellent beer, and fabulous pizza.

Next to it was an artist’s studio with some funky scrap metal fish art…..

….and random objects outside….in the “Certified Free Stuff” corner.

Once home, we cleaned up the gear and wiped off the bugs.

It was a little 325km shakedown ride that cleaned the cobwebs out of both us and the bikes.

It was a good day.

But my butt hurts and I’m very tired after that much riding on a first day out. Need to toughen up again 😉