COBRA

Yes, you heard it right.  This will be the final year of the now famous (or infamous?) WVBR!  If you’ve been putting this off in years past this is your final chance, so take it!

The rally is over the August 19-21 weekend with plenty of riding, fun, food and camaraderie.  Come out and meet fellow Buellers from all over and enjoy good conversation with good people.

When: August 19 – 21, 2011
Where: Northbend State Park — same place as last year!!… and the year before.. and the year before….
Why: Riding… eating… campfire… does there need to be any other reason??

We can pitch our tents at the same location as last year in the overflow camping area or if camping is not your thing… make your reservations at:

The Heritage Inn
315 E. Main St
Harrisville, WV 26362
304-643-2938

Full details are in the BadWeb Storm Fronts HERE.

Hope to see you there!

Mike Farrenkopf is heading out on a month long, 12,000+ mile trip to Alaska and back.  Be sure to come out this Saturday, July 30 to wish him a safe and adventurous trip!

For whatever reason, 2011 has been a slow year for COBRA group rides.  I for one have been enjoying quite a bit of my own riding this year (closing in on 4,000 miles already myself) but for some reason we just haven’t been able to get a group ride going.  Hopefully, this one will bring more of us out!

We have a fun twisty tour mapped out and scheduled for Sunday, August 7.  Kickstands up at 10:00am sharp, so show up early with a full tank of gas so you’re geared up and ready to roll out at 10:00am.  We’ll be hitting the Hocking Hills area with a lot of hills and twists, and there will even be a short (1 mile or so) bumpy, gravelly portion through the Clear Creek Nature Preserve.  No worries though, road bikes will be fine but I’m sure the Uly riders will enjoy it!

Total ride is 130 miles, half of which is pure twisty fun!  Lunch will be at the Grouse Nest around 11:30am, after which we’ll hit the majority of the ride.

Here’s a link to the Google map of the ride.

Please note that this ride is technical for much of the twisty portion, be aware of that. I would rate it a 4 on a scale of 1-5.  We want to enjoy the twists and turns while riding safely at the same time.  Newbies are cautioned against making this their first group ride.

That being said, feel free to bring a non-Bueller friends if you feel so inclined!

We couldn’t have asked for a better day to ride today. There was a baker’s dozen of riders (12+1) that turned out at 11am this morning. I apologize for being a few minutes late with an empty tank — especially since I was the one that said to be sure and show up with a full tank and ready to ride at 11am. Doh!

Regardless of that minor glitch, we headed off about 11:20am after a brief talk about the ride and etiquette. We made it to Zanesville without any issues, enjoying a “teaser” twisty road on the way. Some food, gas and we were on our way down 555.

Apparently sometime in the past couple of weeks the county or state decided it was time to tar and patch the road — which made for some even more interesting riding then originally anticipated. But we had a good group of riders and we made it through without incident.

At some point on our way back through Wayne National Forest, we made a turn and I neglected to follow my own riding instruction – to stop and wait at every turn. I thought I saw the distinctive lights of our “sweeper” after the turn so I continued on. My bad #2. We lost 4 riders at that turn. One caught up with us at the next turn but said the others had gone a different direction. We pulled off to wait a few minutes to see if they came along, but…no joy. The missing 3 were all very experienced riders with a couple GPS between them, so we figured they either decided to go another way or would catch us along the route at some point.

Sure enough…15 minutes later, they pulled right up behind us! Looking back at the map when I got home, I noticed that I had also taken a wrong turn after we lost them (should have continued on 93 South, not turned on to 93 North), which took us a slightly longer route around…allowing them to catch back up to us when we re-connected to the planned route.

Worked out perfectly! haha

All in all, I think it was a great ride. The curves were plenty twisty, the weather was great, the leaves were changing and barely covered the road, and we had some good company.

A very enjoyable ride, if I do say so myself.

I hope everyone that came enjoyed the ride as much as Lisa and I did!

P.S. Riding 2-up with the wifey helped me keep the speed down, the twisties a little less “scary” and helped ensure there were no “performance awards” given out. She did a great job as our guardian angel!!

The May 2010 issue of Cycle World has a fantastic article called “The Demise of Buell”. Mark Hoyer, a journalist, prior employee of Buell and long-time acquaintance of Erik writes an excellent inside story on the closing of Buell. We even get a close up view of what was to be the next big Buell — the Barracuda 2, an upgraded, turbo-version of the 1125 series.

This is a MUST READ!!

Pick a copy up at the newstand — if you can find one. If not, you can download the back-issue now for just $.99 from Cycle World.

Here’s the first part of the article, along with a link to download the entire issue.

The Demise of Buell

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