I always loved that line, it’s from Night Court, Buddy….Harry’s father….he ad that funny smile and nodding head as he said it.
Anyway…I picked up the bike late yesterday afternoon and brought her home. The 30km from the repair shop to home wasn’t enough to know if she was feeling better, so we needed to go somewhere today. Kirk suggested Whistler, but then I saw I had a couple of lens filters to pick up in Blaine, and his face lit up.
We have a really great map and associated map book that I picked up many years ago – Destination Highways. The authors are riders and created maps and books for British Columbia, Washington, and Northern California. They intended to do one for Southern California but never did, and I always wished they’d done won for Oregon. Perhaps their timing was off and Google Maps killed their business plan….but I still love the maps and books and throwing the map in the mailbag was how I found so many of the roads that we are now re-visiting after a six year hiatus.
Today it was a quick run across the Pacific Truck Crossing (thank goodness for the Nexus card…..5 minutes vs 2 hours!!) and then it was into Blaine to pick up my parcel and then off on a fun little 325km ride.
Isha ran marvellously. She felt a bit twitchy on the throttle after her repairs and service, but it’s also just as likely that it was me feeling like I had a different bike after she shed probably close to 100lbs of rack mounts, hard luggage, dry-bag luggage, and all the contents from our trip.
I really do like riding her without all. the baggage…..she’s much more fun.
We rode down a common route I take, cutting off the Lummi Island loop, and enjoying a run down Chuckanut Drive. From there, we’d normally take Colony Road back across to Highway 9…..but the last time we rode that there was a horrible stretch of fresh oily slick chip seal….do not recommend….I’ll wait a month or so for that nightmare to settle in before riding it again.
But there was another road I’d not taken in many years…at least eight years or more, and I’d thought about it the last time we rode to Edison, but couldn’t quite remember where it was> Then when we rode down Highway 9 on the way to Sedro Wooley with Hans two weeks ago, I’d been thinking about it again, and looking at all the roads we passed thinking “Is that it?”
Kirk led the way to the end of Chuckanut and I’d said to let me take over after that and I’d see if I could find an old route that I used to ride. So I turned left instead of right at Edison-Bow Road, and headed off on Bow Hill Road….and it all came back…..this is a nice stretch. We passed over the I-5 and came to Old Highway 99. A momentary pause as I reached into the depths of my memory banks..and then saw the sign “Prairie Road”.
YES!
A fabulous ride, very little traffic, lovely scenery, and after that…a left on Highway 9 and head north until we came up (a bit faster than anticipated) on the Blue Mountain Grill.
The last time we were here we’d discovered that it had been taken over by new owners. We’d ordered sandwiches and then sen some phenomenal looking curry go by to someone else’s table. Stupid us….when the place is purchased by a Thai couple….you order the Thai food…not a burger or a clubhouse. I mean, it was good food…but you should eat the cuisine that the people in the kitchen grew up eating and cooking….not what you did.
So today we stopped in again and rectified that error in judgement (did you see what I did there….I’m riding on a new rectifier…and we rectified something 😁)…and ordered their Panang curry…..and it was phenomenal.
From here we deked off onto Mosquito Lake Road and back up to Kendall and then crossed at Sumas and over to the Lougheed and eventually back onto the freeway at Coquitlam.
It was a 325km kinda day, and the bike ran beautifully.