In a little over a week, I'll be riding from Maryland to Mt. Snow VT for a week to attend the COG 2011 National Rally from August 7-13.

Going to ride as far as Oneota NY the 7th, and stay in a KOA Kabin there at the Unadilla KOA. Then 3 more hours the morning of the 8th to get to Mt. Snow Resort, and check in at the Lodge.

Not sure how many are attending, this stupid economy and obscene gasoline prices aren't helping any.

Not long now, Saturday the 6th is a mc ride (tri-state region's covered bridges) and then on Sunday the 7th I'm leaving at daybreak headed to Unadilla NY to spend the night at a KOA, then Monday at daybreak I'm riding maybe 3 hours maximum to arrive at Mt. Snow VT for the rally.

Not even sure I'll get the t-shirt I paid for, someone forgot to order for the fat men. Which reminds me, anyone heard from Black1 ? LOL.

Almost packed. Going very light, will have to wash mid-week or wear dirty clothes. Heh.

Using a trick an old friend taught me. I am using a food vacuum. Put the clothes in the plastic "bag" that is pre-sealed on one end, put the open end in the unit, turn it on, voila, tight and flattened. On the way home, I just roll everything and it all fits, who cares if it gets wrinkled coming home.

Found my tire plug kit, first aid kit, etc. right where I dumped it all after last trip.

Gonna go watch some MMA and then finish packing. For once the top case isn't going to be stuffed, it will hold my laptop and rain gear and not much else.

Guess I'll check the tire pressure tonight, so I don't have to tomorrow morning at daybreak.

Vermont, here I come!

Made great time, if I had cruise control I'd be almost to Mt. Snow by now. But I'm happy with stopping short at this KOA too. Gonna get in the pool in a few which will feel good.

Got lucky and only got damp twice, the kind that dries out after 5 minutes of riding.

When I made the route I let MapSource pretty much do its thing. I have prefs set so it will only get on slab to get off slab, if you know what I mean. I have set avoidance to stay off I-80, I-81, I-95, etc. So it found me some smoking good state routes and one particular US 220 that was empty enough I could really fly through the good mountain curves. Was probably a major highway in the 1950's.

Well, off to the pool.

Had some great mountain roads once I got into upper PA and then NY.

One of the coolest things about a ZX14 is the violence with which it accelerates, abundantly displayed when I was number 6 in a line of cars going 65 mph and we come up on rare passing area. Brapppp Brappp down from 6 gear to 4 gear, RPM up to 8K. She is screaming out, "Here I come!". I was past them, about the time I shifted back to 5th, and plenty of time to get back in the lane. A shift to 6th gear, just to carry the speed with lower RPMs, and a roll off on the throttle, and its back to 75 mph and I'm happy again, with nothing holding me up.

Saw the man once, a Sheriff, and I think he was snoozing. Around Troy NY I had to transition onto I-180 for 12 miles to get headed NE again, and the State boys had the ramp blocked, checking each vehicle. Not sure who or what they were looking for, but they had 6 cars on the side of the ramp. When I finally got to the officer doing the interrogations, he laughed and waved me on. Obviously the fat guy on the bike didn't fit the description or something.

And the only comment on my pipes was when I pulled in to Snow Lake Lodge and the guy at the counter was like "whoa, man, what was that you rode in on? Sounds sick sweet, sir." LOL I think someone needs to buy a bike.

Looking forward to dyno-ing Jeffo's map, because seat of the pants its performing quite well. My water temp stayed below 2 bars below the top even when I got stuck in the light to light mess of two mid-size towns that map source thought I should go through. Learning how to use it so I know some more avoidances to create and save for future routes.

Gonna run at least one of the routes the Rally team created and posted on the COG site, tomorrow.

The Lodge has an outdoor hot tub and an indoor jacuzzi, and the jac sure felt good on my weary old bones and muscles.

I decided to ride straight back Friday morning, so I'd have some time to decompress before I had to go back to work. It was about 500 miles give or take, 8 hours or so counting stops.

I just pressed GO HOME on the Zumo 550 and let it take me where it wanted, which for the last 2 hours of the ride was US Interstate 81 - I was lucky there wasn't much traffic on it.

Up until then, I got to ride some good mountain highways, like 17 and 7, and some US 88 which was pretty much empty except for me.

I got off of 88 to get gasoline, and when I followed the gps out of the gas station lot, it looked like I'd be back on 88 in like 30 seconds. But over the hill NY State Highway had it blocked off, and detoured, and no matter what my gps told me to do, I kept hitting detours. I just wanted back on 10 or 88, either would do. Finally, I had to hang a U-turn and head north, get on 10 North and ride it until it intersected the highway I wanted on, back about 5 miles north of the exit I had taken initially to get gas. I lost close to 30 minutes on that mess. I hate road construction, especially when it blocks on-ramps.

For a long time, I was running at just one bar water temperature, until about noon. I had left Mt. Snow at 6:30 am. By the time I got home at 2:00pm-ish the ambient temperature was in the high 80s, and I was running 3 bars while moving so still running cool.

While I was at Mt. Snow, my Garmin Zumo 550 blue screened and locked up. When I called them, I asked them if it was using the Windows 95 Operating System. I was pretty steamed. So they wouldn't send me one to my lodge in Mt. Snow, because it would take "at least 10 days to process the order" and I was wondering if I was going to have to use my smartphone's Navigator to get home. I had no way of printing google maps off my laptop.

So I just threw it on the bed. I figured since it was still warm, that meant it was running and just the display was messed up. So sure enough, I went out to run a 100 mile sportbike route in a loop around Mt. Snow, and then stopped on the route and had lunch at a rocking barbeque pit, and when I got back it was black screen (off). So I hooked it up to the USB to my laptop and it went into USB Mass Storage mode just fine. I let it recharge, and then it started up just fine, and worked all the way home.

Today I UPSed it back to Garmin for a replacement. I'm not having luck with Garmin gps units, this is 3 that have failed in fairly short order (6 months or less). That says only negatives about Garmin as far as I'm concerned. Not to mention their map update software is brain-dead, and I say this as someone who did 25 years in the IT industry, including managing multi-million dollar projects to successful completion. If I had software staff like Garmin has, they'd either make the software user-friendly and idiot-proof, or they would be terminated and I'd get people who could do it.