This year I'm going to try publishing highlights of Americade 2007, day-by-day in this blog. This is the 25th year for Americade. It's scheduled for June 4-9 this year. The blog will also include my preparation in getting ready to take the ride to Lake George, NY, my observations while there, the ride home, and getting back to normal.
I missed getting my blog entry in for yesterday so here it is.
Tuesday is always the day we go to the Tour Expo vendor area. It opens at 9 a.m. and if you're registered, you just walk in by showing your armband. Others pay $10 a day.
We approached the parking area and noticed that everyone was lining up and parking on the side street instead of entering the big grassy field. We continued on ignoring the crowd. We soon realized that the grass was wet and many of the bikes, especially with co-riders, didn't want to take a chance on spilling their $20,000 bikes ($25,000 with full chrome). We were all on trikes so it didn't matter what the surface was. We were waved in and parked very near the end of the grassy area near Tour Expo.
We walked the quarter mile down to Tour Expo and flashed our armbands to get in. Jane headed for the helmet vendors while I went to Cycle Gadgets to look for a camcorder mount to put on my trike.
Jane needed a new helmet and finally decided on a fancy Nolan N102. It had a flip up front, sunshade, and fog eliminator feature. It also contained a headset and microphone to hook up to the trike's radio and CB.
I had already found the components I needed at Cycle Gadgets and decided to walked back to my trike and see if they would work with the existing mount I got two years ago for my Garmin 2610 GPS. Half way there, I got a cellphone call from Jane wanting me to come back and look at the Nolan before she bought it. So I walked back and essentially agreed that it looked like a good helmet. The only possible problem was the hookup cord. Would it mate to the trike's existing connection? I said I'd walk back to the trike and bring the cord back -- just to be sure. So I took another half mile jaunt to fetch the cord. It matched.
Jane wanted to go over to the other side of town to the second part of the Tour Expo called The Forum. I said I wanted to try out my new camcorder mount so We went in separate directions. I walked back to the trike and put my camcorder in the new handlebar mount, started up the trike, and turned on the camcorder. I left it on for the whole trip back to my motel -- maybe 8 minutes of video. That worked great, with no shakiness.
We got a bit of rain today -- big surprise. We also got a big drop of pollen from the trees that covered everything including us and our bikes. We even got a rainbow out of it that appeared low over Lake George. See picture, above. While downtown all of a sudden we got a 50 mph wind that came out of nowhere and lasted about 20 seconds. Then it got real cold. Did I mention that the weather is totally unpredictable at Americade?
I missed getting my blog entry in for yesterday so here it is.
Tuesday is always the day we go to the Tour Expo vendor area. It opens at 9 a.m. and if you're registered, you just walk in by showing your armband. Others pay $10 a day.
We approached the parking area and noticed that everyone was lining up and parking on the side street instead of entering the big grassy field. We continued on ignoring the crowd. We soon realized that the grass was wet and many of the bikes, especially with co-riders, didn't want to take a chance on spilling their $20,000 bikes ($25,000 with full chrome). We were all on trikes so it didn't matter what the surface was. We were waved in and parked very near the end of the grassy area near Tour Expo.
We walked the quarter mile down to Tour Expo and flashed our armbands to get in. Jane headed for the helmet vendors while I went to Cycle Gadgets to look for a camcorder mount to put on my trike.
Jane needed a new helmet and finally decided on a fancy Nolan N102. It had a flip up front, sunshade, and fog eliminator feature. It also contained a headset and microphone to hook up to the trike's radio and CB.
I had already found the components I needed at Cycle Gadgets and decided to walked back to my trike and see if they would work with the existing mount I got two years ago for my Garmin 2610 GPS. Half way there, I got a cellphone call from Jane wanting me to come back and look at the Nolan before she bought it. So I walked back and essentially agreed that it looked like a good helmet. The only possible problem was the hookup cord. Would it mate to the trike's existing connection? I said I'd walk back to the trike and bring the cord back -- just to be sure. So I took another half mile jaunt to fetch the cord. It matched.
Jane wanted to go over to the other side of town to the second part of the Tour Expo called The Forum. I said I wanted to try out my new camcorder mount so We went in separate directions. I walked back to the trike and put my camcorder in the new handlebar mount, started up the trike, and turned on the camcorder. I left it on for the whole trip back to my motel -- maybe 8 minutes of video. That worked great, with no shakiness.
We got a bit of rain today -- big surprise. We also got a big drop of pollen from the trees that covered everything including us and our bikes. We even got a rainbow out of it that appeared low over Lake George. See picture, above. While downtown all of a sudden we got a 50 mph wind that came out of nowhere and lasted about 20 seconds. Then it got real cold. Did I mention that the weather is totally unpredictable at Americade?
Tomorrow (actually today), we will be heading up to the Lone Bull Restaurant for breakfast and then back to Tour Expo. I am beginning to see a new helmet in my future.
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