Bogieblog

Sad News Received Today

The owner of my favorite Harley-Davidson dealer died today. I have no details at all, except for the sad news. May learn more at the HOG meeting coming up this Sunday, or maybe not. Will find out funeral arrangements later.

Rest in peace Eileen.

Ntion of Patriots Flag Ride 2019

Once again it was time my HOG Chapter to receive and pass on the Nation of Patriots flag. On May 18, 2019 it left Wisconsin for its tour thru the USA, and on Sept 7, 2019 it will be back home.

This is the entire planned route (from the Nation of Patriots website)

On Friday, we received the flag from Seacoast H-D at our supporting dealer in Concord. We had a great guest when Chapter members got to the dealership, prior to receipt. One of the flag bearers from the first Patriot flag tour was in NH on business, and heard the flag was passing thru, so came to witness. He had a flight out on Friday afternoon, so he couldn't stay for the pass off, but it was great to have him there.

The flag bearer from Seacoast (next to bike) and our Chapter's flag bearer (Blake)

Wisconsin Tony (white shirt) greeting the flag bearer from Seacoast

The official passing of the flag

Group photo of Seacoast and Heritage. The gal kneeling in front is from Seacoast and she brought a very nice camera set up. I gave her my email address and requested a copy of the group picture so I could put it in the quarterly newsletter.

When I was getting ready to leave, I said my goodbys to the group from Seacoast and told the photographer that when she sent me pictures, I would reciprocate by sending her pictures. One of those pictures was of her by her bike.

Someone joked that having a picture of her would be a novelty, and I responded that I rarely had my picture taken too. She asked if I had rode there, and I responded that I had. I didn't think anything of it, but when she sent me links to the pictures, I got a nice surprise

Yesterday we held a fundraising breakfast (100% going to the NoP) and then took a nice meandering ride to take the flag to the dealership in Lebanon, NH.

The Chapter prior to leaving the dealership.

We stopped at a convenience store in Danbury, NH and met up with some of the Twin Mountain group

They led us the rest of the way to their dealership where Blake handed off duties to their flag bearer

Within the entire package that gets passed on, there is a cell phone that tracks where the flag is. Checking the flag location at the Nation of Patriots website, it is still in Lebanon, but should be heading out toward New York some time this morning.

We are happy to be a part of this fundraising for veterans and this is one of the few Chapter events that I make sure I attend every year.

As an aside, since it was cool outside, I never thought about sunscreen. I was outside from the time I left at 8:30 until I got home at 3:15. My face got a wicked sunburn that I will be feeling for a while (no blisters, but still painful).

Making the Concord, NH Patch Website

An article was posted about the HOG Chapter's donation to the Kennek Foundation that we did a month or so ago.

Download Article about Loudon Fire Department

Trouble the Dog

Friday was an off day, so I only put in 6.5 hours at work (I had been on work travel so needed to do some catch-up). Fortunately I was able to work from home so I jumped on my bike to head for  a meet and greet with some firefighters who participate in a program that we raised funds for.

At our June Chapter meeting, the HOG chapter had a guest appearance from Sheila, from the Kenneck Foundation, (also FB page) who raises funds to buy US made stuffed dogs and a Where There's Trouble . . There's Hope book for children experiencing traumatic conditions. These items are donated to police and firefighter departments to distribute in emergency situations. Chapter members donated enough to buy 10 units (plush dog and book) to donate to a local  station.

So, Friday afternoon those members available, rode to the Loudon fire station where we got to see the fruits of our donations.

It was  a great day for a ride, and I was glad I got to participate in this worthy cause.

Helping out at the National HOG Pin Stop

Last week was motorcycle week in Laconia. National HOG has an official pin stop at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway during the entire week. This is a place where HOG members can come and upon showing their HOG card, pick up a special commemorative pin.

National HOG had asked our Chapter for volunteers to help man the tent. I volunteered and worked last Saturday afternoon. The first two paictures are from prior to my shift

The guy in the blue shirt, to the right of the table is on of our Chapter members. The people in pink-ish shirts are National HOG people.

The guy in the prior picture was kind enough to grab a picture of my in action

At the end of the day, we got a group picture of those who worked the tent in the afternoon. The tall guy and the guy to the left are bigwigs in the NHOG organization. The two gals work several of the events for NHOG, and the guy at the right worked the table that was giving away free water bottle to those that showed their HOG Credit Card (no, I don't have one so didn't get a water bottle).

Here are license plates from bike sin the parking area that are a long way from home.

Don't see many Boss Hoss's anymore

Can you find my bike?

Taken while I was eating lunch before my shift

This will be the easier picture to find my bike in

A little help in finding my bike - to the left of the red one

Had a great time at the pin stop and hope we get invited to help out again next year!

First ride for Spring 2019

The shop delivered my bike yesterday afternoon so today I took her out for a shake-down ride. The skies spit on my a little, but no real rain. New gloves that I got over the winter felt good, as did the bike.

Extremely rare selfy. I couldn't even see the phone, so guessed :)

Bike cooling off after ride.

Cold, Work and Bikes

We had some cold and windy conditions for about 3 days. Not too much snow at about 7" and very dry, so it was easy to snow blow. I worked from home for a while on Wednesday as the roads hadn't been touched and I wanted to snow blow the berm as soon as I could so I didn't have to fight any refreeze from road salt. I got all the driving areas taken care of that morning but didn't get to the pathways until Thursday evening as I wasn't about to fight the wind (I have enough lessons in futility, don't need to invite more) During the cold wave the lowest temp it got to was -9. Today is the first day it got above single digits for a high. Pellet stoves have been chugging away keeping it nice and warm. I changed the P43, main floor stove, to continuous running so it could battle wind infiltration more easily than if it was on the thermostat. Today I put it back on the thermostat after the sun rose and we got into the high 20's.

Work is going well and I'm getting used to having to lug a laptop and iPhone home. It was much easier at my last job where I could log in from my home computer, but the job before that I had to bring home a laptop so it's not a totally new concept. My biggest gripe is that I can't plug in my home monitor since the newer laptops don't have the regular monitor connectors and my monitor is too old to have the HDMI port. Ah, 1st world problems :)

I'm not impressed with the Apple product (phone), it doesn't seem as easy as the Androids that I have used. But I'm sure people that have to go the other way also have that complaint.

I'm sure people have seen the footage of the giant ice disk that formed on the Maine river

and NH had a smaller one on the  Soucook River.

 

I have my own "ice disk" in the back yard.

That is the bottom of the bird bath turned upside down. Weird how the wind shaped the disk and then pushed it off to one side by about 1/2".

First Chapter HOG meeting of this year is tomorrow. This year I am the Membership officer so I will be inundated by people signing their yearly waivers and paying their  yearly dues. As long as I can keep everything organized, I'll be good. I'm also helping the new LOH Officer figure out her new role. When I took it on I got zero direction or help, so I'm trying to make sure that her initial experience is much more positive.

I've stayed warm, the cats are cozy and the birds feisty, so life is good.

Winter Storage Party 2019

Spent today at the Winter Storage Party that the dealer holds every year for those that (duh) store their bikes there for the winter. My bike was on the ground near the entrance between the service shop and bike storage because it is getting new brakes while it is in there.

A shot of her with a dozen or so of her closest friends - LOL

This was one of the rare years I didn't win any of the door prizes. But there was free food and about 10 HOG Chapter members there to socialize with, so I had a great time. Managed to leave without spending any extra money (over storage and brake job charges) too.

Awards, Certs and Prizes

Last Saturday was the HOG Chapter Christmas party. The venue, as usual was lovely and I got there early enough to get pictures of the view out the back windows.

Part of the festivities is the awards for various reasons. I was shocked to get the Die Hard Award. There is a story there, but I won't get into it - just suffice to say, no, I never even met Ray Hamel, so the name is in memory of a person and some of the stuff he went thru.

Had a great time and I left when the dancing started up (as usual).

The week before Thanksgiving I attended the first week of Green Belt training thru one of our customers. This last week, I attended the 2nd week of training. BTW - Please no comments on where the training was done - (CC - you know what I mean).

We had a group project thru the week which involved making "helicopters" out of paper. The hellicopters had to follow a standard template and the only modifications that could be made were by folding and use of paperclips. Out of the 4 teams, my group came in 1st. There were several things that were scored; there was a 10 minute presentation featuring stats and use of Minitab for the project, The team had to build and test 10 identical helicopters in 5 minutes, testing consisted of the requirement that each fly for at least 1 second from a height of 65", then the teams got to pick 5 of their 'copters to compte for flight time and lowest Standard Deviation between the 5.

After the presentation, my team was in 2nd place. Then we made up points during the build because each was identical to the others (seriously, I figured that would be a given for teams, but apparently not). We had a very tight Standard Deviation for our 5 competition flights, which was followed closely by another team. We also slightly beat out another team for longest flight at 1.89 seconds. We did not hit our 95% confidence level for flight time, but none of the other teams did so either, so when all was said and done, our team squeaked by with 1/10th of a point. Each team member received the following prize

Hey, and the first week we had a team competition also. first, each person took a survival quiz. Without scoring or knowing answers, we then broke into our groups (totally different groups than week 2) and then took the survival quiz as a group. Once the scoring was done, I had the lowest score in the class (lower is better - my score was 40), and my team had the lowest team score by about 10 points at 50. This despite the fact that our team also had 2 of the highest individual scores at 78 & 80. So I was able to influence the team enough to lower the score significantly.

Lets see, two team competitions where the only common denominator was me - cause and effect perhaps :D [/JK]

 

Wet Riding

Rode to work yesterday for the first time in 2 weeks. The previous week we had such thick fog in the moring it was sometimes scary driving a 4-wheel vehicle. Then all this last week we have had sever storms rolling thru. Friday we were supposed to have storms in the late afternoon. No big deal, I'll keep an eye on the radar and bug out in time to miss them.

Except I forgot it was end of month. And I forgot that we had a source inspection slated for the afternoon, for lots of parts, and I would probably have to stay later than usual. Sure enough, I finally got to leave work just before 6 pm (I got there at 5:15 am).

I also forgot to take my helmet :O. So I donned a leather cap, my other leathers, my rain pants, gloves and glasses and left while it was still dry. I got about 3 miles into the ride (to the Bedford/Goffstown line) and it started raining. Well, no sense stopping since there are no bridges for me to find. It rained harder and harder. At one point lightning snaked directly overhead and then the thunder crashed a second later. Cars slowed down because of the heavy rain. I had my left hand above my glasses to keep water from going inside them. I must have looked like I was saluting with the wrong hand for a lot of the ride. I'm sure the cop in Weare was laughing his azz off as I went by his cruizer that he had parked at the Weare fire station. That's okay, I was still having a good time jamming out to my music and taking on the challenging weather.

I got home about an hour later - I did hit some lighter spots of rain as I was close to home. Although I felt like I was soaked, after taking stock I really wasn't too bad. My back was dry and so was my right arm (which had always stayed on the hand grip). My left arm was soaked from water running into the jacket from my glove while I was "saluting". The front of my shirt was soaked since I have never found a way to keep the water from running down my neck then under my jacket (my hair keeps the water from going down the back of my neck). My crotch was soaked as the seam to my rain gear leaks once the bike's saddle starts puddling water. But from mid-thigh down I was dry. And my hands were wet because gloves are never water tight - they can keep out light rain but not downpours. Their main uses are to protect the hands and also to provide grip with the handlebars despite being wet (leather is great at that - bare hands not soo good).

I haven't had to use the glove dryer since I moved here - found it still worked (Thanks Cop Car - you and HH gave this to us a long, long time ago)

This morning the sun came out so I hung all my layers out on the chain link fence to dry

Nothing is worse for wear, obviously I didn't melt, and I had actually been thinking a couple of weeks ago how dingy the patches on my vest were looking - that issue has been taken care of :)