Despite reports of cataclysmic weather, which didn't materialize to any great extent, the turnout was somewhere around 80 plus riders for this Motogiro. Friday was actually warm and humid, shorts and T-shirt weather, very comfortable.
The Sunnyhill Resort was really very nice, kind of an old fashioned Catskill resort, but one that has been well cared for and regularly updated, plus it is located in a place with wonderful views. The staff was very attentive and easy to work with, if you said something they listened and fixed it, nice.
The cold didn’t really materialize on Saturday as was predicted earlier in the week, the temps were in the low 60′s, quite tolerable, and as for rain, one medium downpour halfway through the morning run and that lasted maybe 5 or 10 minutes. Otherwise it was light showers in the AM and it got foggy in some places, not bad at all, just got the bikes muddy. For the afternoon run, no rain at all, just overcast, really a warm enough glare free ride.
Sunday AM, when we got up, it was a deluge. There were streams running through the parking lots and down the hills, but a quick look at the Weather Channel radar showed that this particular rain would be passing by soon with the next bout coming in late in the afternoon, and sure enough, by the time we went down to the riders meeting, the rain was gone and the clouds were slowly breaking up. By the time we got to the lunch stop, we were in glorious sunshine which continued right up to the awards where the skies began to darken and the rain returned just as we were on our way home.
So, if you wimped for the weather and stayed away (or if you were there and wimped out 
-, you missed out on a great Giro. I hardly used my Gerbing electric gloves, mostly ran them to see if I could run the headlight and gloves on low and not lose the battery, the answer being yes. Now, the electric vibrating panties did draw too much and after an hour I had to turn them off,
which was good because by then I was quite exhausted - .
A Giro is really all about the roads. We look for great roads and then try to get a facility that will handle the crowd reasonably. As far as lunch stops go, we have found that if we can throw in something motorcycle related, like a dirt bike museum, or my shop -, ya know, not a big expo but something that you can view and enjoy in a short period of time, then fine. But most riders just want to stop for 90 minutes, get something to eat, walk around and visit, and all the while they’re jonesin’ to get back on the bike and ride some more roads, and the roads were very, very good. Some of them, I have ridden with my club, Taborton TT riders, as we run routes out through some of those areas, but a lot of them I have never been in on and they were all quite good in different ways, perfect for the smaller bikes.
There were some real good county roads that had nice long runs in them and curved and twisted through the Catskills, the pavement in good condition, and the town roads would take you down into the hollows, sometimes missing a little pavement here and there as they were often near the water, no big deal, you just had to be aware. We had some good dirt sections, muddy of course, but perfectly ridable. The ultimate dirt section came on Sunday AM, when we began the descent down “The John Strempher Memorial Highway”..really, that’s what was on the directions! This was a loose dirt road that went straight down for a half mile and it had corners in it. At the bottom, there was a small table with lozenges on it to sooth your throat from all the screaming you did in your helmet on the way down.
BTW, the directions were excellent, and the arrowing was quite good, except who put a yellow arrow on a birch tree? Contrast people, contrast;-)-
For some reason, the attrition rate for bikes was quite low. I was #79, and right off the bat the little group of myself, Henry Syphers, and Doug Roper noticed a bread trail of oil leaks going down the road. I thought to myself, this will not end well, and sure enough maybe 30 miles out, there was Rick Snyder's Honda S65 sitting beside the road with Rick out directing folks into the next turn. He must have broken the oil line that runs up to carb to preheat it. BTW, Ray Bennett was riding the other 65cc entry, also a Honda S65, and Ray's bike held up this time all the way to the end, this attributable in a large way to an oil cooler he mounted on it.
There were a few other bikes that went down on Sunday, but really, nothing like the usual amount of broken bikes. We did have three excursions off road resulting in light damage to the bikes and none to the riders, one of them who went off in the Saturday AM, came in and had a nice lunch, and then proceeded to repeat his AM performance almost immediately in the afternoon. The other crash happened almost immediately after his 2nd crash as a rider, who’s name I dare not speak, came over the rise, saw the first crasher in the bush and just thought, “What the hell”, and went flying in also. He said the nice thing was that there was someone there to lift the bike off of him, you just can’t plan any better than that.
When we pulled in the resort on Friday, it was loaded with families of small kids, kids without a lick of sense who apparently had large life insurance policies placed on them by their parents and were seemingly encouraged to run out in front of you and be crushed like a squirrel or something…just kidding, but they did bear watching. I guess the resort runs Halloween hay rides and parties this time of the year, but we were out of there early and not back until later so they had the place to themselves most of the time, worked out well.
There's a ton of golf courses in the Catskills and we went flying by one somewhere's in the middle of the heavier rain and there were guys standing on a tee watching us go by and you could read their lips, "Look Harry, and they say we're crazy."
Waving at folks reaps benefits when you ride a bike, whether it’s a modern bike or one of these cute old vintage jobbies, waves automatically defuse attitudes and we waved at everybody and almost to a person, they smiled and waved back. Once they caught on to this was a rally, they were out standing by the road, or sitting in chairs watching the parade go by, old guys smiling and waving, getting a kick out of a slice of the 60′s passing by; little kids with their parents smiling and waving and getting toots from the horns, and then there a was a couple who must have run in after the first riders went by who had a big sign, magic markered with, “Go, Go, Motozero” and were waving and thumbs up to all the riders who went by. No, I don’t know why it zero, an attempt at humor perhaps? Appreciated the effort, either way.
The banquet was delish’, your choice of prime rib, chicken, or pizza? Oh yeah, the kids with whom you had to share the main dining area with, but they ate and split and we had the place to ourselves.
Bob foisted the MC duties on me at lunch, he does it last minute so I can’t load up too much and piss off too many people. Bob’s instructions were, “Don’t offend anyone, and don’t tell any jokes that only you, the Ropers, and coat check girl get.” Hey man, I can’t help it if you guys are a little slow -
It went well enough, I managed to come up with enough stuff to keep it interesting and flowing, and we even managed to come up with a key note speaker, Dave Roper, who spoke on his foray to IOM for the 100 year celebration during which time he appeared on one of the Indians that placed 1,2,3 on the initial charter run, you may have seen that article in Classic Bike, good job, Dave.
BTW, as many of you know, Dave has a certain fondness for horizontal singles like Aermachi’s or Moto Guzzi Airones, and as we were looking at the cylinder on his Airone, we decided that rather than refer to them as horizontals, it would be so much more fun to refer to the cylinder placement as, “Missionary Position”. Is there no end to this fun?
The Awards were squeaked in during the waning sunlight, go to results for the winners, but I do recall that the winning overall time was a tad over 4 seconds, done by a guy who looked exactly like Gene Hackman, I mean it was uncanny! One of the most important parts of the ceremonies is to thank the volunteers who make all this work, and once again volunteers, our hats are off to all of you, thank you so much for all you do, we are grateful. And a special thank you to Rick, Steve, and George for heading this Gyro and doing such a great job.
We all like to live our lives in the sunshine, but usually it’s the stormy weather that makes the person. Those that learn to embrace all of life, not just the fair weather part, are those that are the best at happily living life, and the same is true with motorcycles. I did not hear one complaint about the weather or conditions, all I saw was the best bunch of folks in the world with smiles on
their faces that won’t go away for a good two weeks. It was good to be with all of you guys and catch up. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you again at the Spring Giro.
BTW, “The Boughton Brothers” will again be running the Spring Giro which will be held at Jiminy Peak once again using a whole new route that will engage you with the police departments in three states. – Dgy
