Thursday, June 04, 2015

An Early Season Road Trip.

I don't have any cross country road trips planned for this riding season. My new garden, some home repairs and yard projects will take up a lot of my time this year. I did manage a nice 4 day trip this last weekend. My riding buddy, John, came up from St. Paul, MN last Wednesday evening.


On Thursday, May 28th, we had the bikes packed and we were off to Oshkosh, WI. We were going to stay in Oshkosh and ride back and forth to the Super Bike races at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI. The races were taking place over the next three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I had booked and paid for three nights at the local Super 8. John had purchased the event tickets for all three days. We were set!

At the Oshkosh Super 8.

A MiG-21 we could see from the motel.

Friday morning we woke up and checked the weather. It was looking like there was some possible rain later in the day. We had breakfast and decided to check out the EAA Museum that was just down the street from our motel. We could have spent the entire day there. More than 200 aircraft, a large library of books and manuals, countless displays of historical artifacts... Too much to see in just one morning.


Everything from a German WWI tri-plane to a Piper Cub. Lots of experimental aircraft and even a replica of the 1903 Wright Flyer.

A collection of WWII nose art...


There were even a couple of Harley-Davidson powered airplanes.


Then things went bad... On our way out of the museum it started to rain. We quickly made our way back to the motel. Once we dried off, we checked the radar. It looked like we were in for at least a half day of rain. We waited out the rain while watching the Turner Classic Movie channel and checking the news and radar. By the time it cleared up enough to ride to the track, the races would be over before we would get there.

Saturday wasn't any better. It rained heavily the whole day, and the temperatures had dropped. We spent almost the entire day at the hotel.


Sunday was sunny but very cool. We made the hour drive to the track and watched some practice races and real races. We spent some time walking around the paddock and vendor areas before sitting at turn 5 to watch the races. We both would have liked to stay much later and watch the Supermoto races, but the cool temps and 6 hour ride home made us rethink our staying late.


There were several cool motorcycles at the track. It seems everyone had a scooter or a small bike of some kind. There was even a candy lime green Concours 14.



Even with the rain and cold weather it was a fun weekend!