I JUST WANT 2 RIDE!!

Just what it says!

Over the 4^th of July holiday weekend Debbie and I took a long motorcycle ride, 889.3 miles to be exact. We rode out to Canton, OH and the Pro Football Hall of Fame (HoF). That would be the HoF for American style football, not the World Cup/FIFA type of football.

We left the house about 9 AM on Friday morning heading west on I70, traffic was heavy but moving well. By the time we were on I68 traffic was very light but the police presence was heavy. For a while it seemed we saw a police cruiser every 15-20 miles. Even with all the cops, traffic moved at a nice 70-80 miles an hour!

Not being in any real hurry we stopped whenever we needed or when Debbie had to stretch her legs. I also collect Harley Davidson dealer pins and have all but two for the shops in West Virginia, Bluefield and Wheeling. This ride would have netted me the Valley HD, (Wheeling) pin but they were closed for the 4^th. Moving on, we arrived at our hotel, the North Canton Courtyard, about 4PM. We were tired from the long day in the sun so we had a small meal in the hotel bar and “retired” to the room and it’s whirlpool tub.

The next morning we rolled out to the HoF. We had a really good time, reviewing all the displays. The history of professional game was quite interesting, if you every get a chance to check out the uniforms of the Duluth Eskimo’s it will be at the HoF!

The one thing I was surprised about was how small the HoF was, with over 100 years of history I expected more content. Also, I thought that some of the displays were not set up in a manner to ensure that they are going to last another 100 years. I hope that the HoF is taking preservation more seriously then it appeared.

It took about 4 hours to make it through all the exhibits of the hall. After lunch we decided to go to a couple of the local HD dealerships. It was here that a VERY surprising weakness with the built in GPS appeared. I selected Freedom HD from the list of local dealerships in the GPS and we rolled out.

After about a 15 minute ride the GPS announced that we had reach our destination “on the right”. “Technically” it was correct, Freedom HD was on the right, but we were in the middle of the interstate and the dealership was about 300 yards, a large ditch, a fence and another road away. It was no better when we attempted to go to Adventure HD. You could see the dealership as we traveled down the interstate but, the GPS lady directed us in the opposite direction when we hit the exit. Following her directions we ended up in the parking lot of a Sheetz gas station.

Not only did it fail to find these two dealerships, it also failed to find Steel City HD on our trip home, placing the shop about a mile away on the wrong side of the road. We only found this store because there was no place to turn around along the road. To give the GPS system database of dealerships some credit it did find Valley HD and Neidengard’s HD with no issue. This is a brand new 2014 Ultra Limited with the most current software load. To only find 2 out of 5 dealerships listed in the database is poor quality control at best and plain stupid at worst. I am going to do a more in-depth review of the bike as soon as I have the first service completed.

The ride back home was completely uneventful until we reached the merge of I68 and I70. I think the highest speed we reached between the merge and I81 was 45 MPH and that lasted about 30 seconds. When we reached I81 I headed south until we reached Martinsburg, WV and then hit the back roads home. Normally that would have been a longer ride, but I bet we saved an hour of scraping my boots along the road.

We road nearly 890 miles through 5 states (Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio) on a comfortable bike. Our “storm chaser” powers were never activated, which means we stayed dry. As you can see in the pictures, we crossed some cool bridges!  We both like pro football (although Debbie is a Dallas Cowboy fan) and the HoF was worth the trip, highly recommended. All in all it was a great weekend away.