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Eustis Autumn Lakefront Bikefest Ride - 11-04-01

    At 10:00 am I showed up at the Ale House and found some people waiting. We picked up some new people today. All very kool people. For the ride, we had 7 bikes. Not bad considering the weather. We rode up to Eustis on the backroads, one of them was 437 (one of my personal favorites)...

    We arrived in Eustis, parked our bikes, and headed towards the action. It was pretty kool. Some vendors, a bike show, live band yada, yada, yada...

    Midway through the day, Brett and I were saying that there wasn't much to talk about concerning today's ride. Don't get me wrong, it had been a great ride and all, but just nothing that really stuck out. As usual, that was going to change. 

    We ate lunch at Mack's Wine (something or other). Now in the fast paced urban metropolis of Eustis, you would expect things to move very quickly. Someone should have told that to these restauranteurs... I mean you talk about slow... damn... The food was good, but i was ready for dinner by the time we payed our checks and left. I think it even took them longer to ring us up than it did to cook the food...

    We checked out the bike show and stuff, then decided to ride out. We went up into the Ocala National Forest (dejavu - we were just there last week) and then started heading back. This is where it all got interesting. The ride was being led at this point by Fearless Art (need I say more?) and one of the new guys Mike who we began to refer to as Blinker Boy. Now riding behind Art is already bad enough. We never know if he actually knows where he is going. Then we had Mike who we never knew if he was actually turning or not. There was the blonde in pig tails. She got all prettied up and was cruising the front yard on her riding lawn mower. She reminded me of Ellie Mae from the Beverly Hillbillies in her 40's. Then, we rode through the rain (not too bad) and this Tractor Trailor / Semi / 18 wheeler (whatever you call them) slammed on its brakes just because we put on our turn signals to switch lanes. Well, his brakes locked up, and he came screeching by us.

    Then at the gas station where we stopped to put on rain gear, we got the weather report from this nice man. He was speaking the old laughing Spanish/English sign language bit.... Still not sure exactly what the hell he was saying or where that language originated. All I could make out was "Heyyyyyyy, Rain..... Motorcycle.." At that moment it dawned on me. It was raining and we were on motorcycles. I had not realized that. The nice man did a great job of repeating himself very loudly in our ears many, many, many times just in case it had escaped us.

     It was a great time. The group that rode today were all very nice. We hope to see you all next Sunday for our big Fall Fun Run.

See you guys next time,

Rob

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Last modified: November 12, 2001