Happy Dan, Young Dan, VSL and I set off for a weekend trip down to western MD and WV on Saturday morning to meet with with Mitch (Kik) and head to his friend PeeWee’s for a party.

Despite it having rained all night and morning before, it cleared up beautifully for our 8a departure.

We were riding along through farm roads of southern PA smiling our asses off, feeling lucky to have gotten these two days together when suddenly we note the absence of Vinny. He’s prone to daydreaming, wandering or just plain doing his own thing so we figured it the usual and he’d be along shortly. He wasn’t. After rebuilding his ignition timer (’49 pan) and checking valves and compression, we got it started but something sounded a little off. Then his oil light came on. Uh oh.

Wrecked timing case gears. A big old mess. He had just paid someone a pile of $$$ to build his lower end.

We sat around for five hours waiting for a fetch from Philly. Vinny took it as well as could be expected but we could tell he was pretty sad. Young Dan and I set off to pickup some hoagies and beer for lunch while we were waiting. Twenty miles later we had the sandwiches strapped onto Dan’s bike and a half-case of beer in my saddlebags. Little consolation for Vinny, but at least we didn’t have to sit around hungry in the middle of nowhere while we waited. Oh, did I mention it was a stunningly beautiful day? It was. We were itching to get going, but not willing to leave one of our own behind.

After Vinny and his bike were safely in a truck with his friends, we got back on our way and made it to PeeWee’s just as the party was wrapping up (ring a bell?). Nothing left but drunks, crazies and a bunch of people who, to our best estimation, were under the influence of LSD or similar. It seemed that way, at least. We had fun fucking with them (good naturedly) and making new friends.

There were SICK old bikes all over that place. Pics below.

Mitch and Timmy, our hosts, made sure we had all the cold beer we could stomach and all the food we cared to eat. We even had a late night Waffle House stop for good measure before checking into the Day’s Inn. We’re out of practice with this stuff and are not much for sleeping on the ground lately.

Plus, we wanted to get up at 6am and head to WV and catch up on some lost riding time. Mitch and Timmy looked upon us with suspicion when we told them we were getting up at 6 to go riding. They were even more surprised when we woke them up the next morning ready to go, and good for our word.

I think they had some business to attend to that day and saw us off.

We spent the morning rolling through the Catoctin mountains just west of Frederick and even hit some goat paths with stone washes and spring water running across the road and even a few critters. Hit a small town for breakfast and then decided to head over to West Virgia for lunch and to dip our feet in the hot spring there.

Then we hot-rodded it home on the highway for four solid hours.

It was a nice weekend, if too short. We rode somewhere around 550 miles.

‘Til next time.

Thanks Mitch and Timmy and PeeWee.

Sorry, VSL. We’ll have you back up in no time.

Jason

Angry Dan, Mitch and Young Dan having a sunset beer

Beautiful red knuck at PeeWee's