We headed out of Watertown, NY around 7:15 this morning, traveling to Lake Placid, NY via some beautiful back roads through the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. The weather was still pretty cool. We learned at one of our stops that is is unseasonably cool up here right now. Upon arriving in Lake Placid, we could immediately tell that this is a tourist town. The Olympics have been held here twice, so there were lots of sports and Olympic shops, ski slopes, and we also saw the place where the ski juming is done. We had a great lunch at Jimmy's which was located right on the lake, and our table was right up to the water!! After lunch and walking around the town, we headed toward Port Henry, where we would cross into Vermont, by way of more back roads.
Before crossing the bridge into Vermont, we stopped at Champlain Memorial & Lighthouse. As we pulled out onto the highway, we thought our Goldwing had turned into a Harley!! It was much louder than normal. We pulled off and Bruce found the muffler was loose so we went on and crossed the bridge into Vermont and made it to Bristol where we stopped at an auto parts store to get a clamp for a temporary fix. The man at the auto parts store was very helpful. He took a look at it and suggested that he call a friend of his that owns a chopper shop here that could do a real fix on it. Bruce agreed. The man made the call, told us to ask for Dave, and off we went to Huntington Choppers. Oh yeah, the man said, "Dave is a little scary, but don't worry, he does good work and knows what he's doing." Upon arriving at the chopper shop, Bruce went in to find Dave. When they came out, all I could say to myself was, "WOW." This man, Dave, was dressed in all black clothes from head to toe, had long black hair almost to his waist, and what skin on his arms that showed was all but black with tatoos, and cussing like a sailor. I was now a little leary of what was going on. Dave took a look at the mufler and said it would be no problem for him to fix it. He started rolling choppers out of the way so that we could roll our bike into his shop. He had to move 3 outside to get the door up, then 2 more from inside to make room for our trike. As the door went up, I another guy.....and another guy.....all very similar in looks to Dave, and I saw lots of choppers, all in vaious pieces. Now I was really leary of what was going on here! Before Dave got started on our bike another customer came in and they began talking about a bill. This guy owed Dave $1200 and wanted to pay him $1000. Dave got hostile, threw the guy out of his shop (literally!), cursing heavily the entire time. After a brawl in the parking lot, Dave was ready to work on our bike. This whole time I'm trying to just walk around and look at stuff like nothing is going on, while really I'm thinking, "Are we going to die in Vermont?"....Well, the answer to that is no....Dave was very friendly and nice to us and got us back on the road within about 1 1/2 hours. After he got the bike fixed, we chatted a little bit, then were on our way again. What an experience!!!
We headed on toward Montpelier, VT which was our destination for tonight. This time we were on some great twisties. Roger and Picky would have really liked these roads. Before going to our hotel, we took a road north for about 12 miles to Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Plant where we took a tour and enjoyed some great ice cream and talked about the experience we had today.
Finally it was on to our hotel and find something for dinner. The man at our hotel suggested an Italian restaurant called Sarducci's so we tried it and it was great! Very enjoyable setting and food. After we finished, we heard fireworks. As we went outside, there was a couple (from here) with their Goldwing watching the fireworks so we began talking to them and ended up having a really good time together. We didn't leave there till 10:30! (Still don't know why Montpelier had fireworks on the 3rd.) Today's mileage was 272. It's now 12:10 and we're off to bed......
No comments:
Post a Comment