[tilted horizons] - Ephrata "First Sunday" Rally season opens!

[Ninjette Newsbot]

The "crowd" was just a little smaller than usual. But parking was easy!

Last Sunday, March 2nd, I rode up to Ephrata, Pennsylvania for the first "First Sunday" ride-in/rally/breakfast event of 2008. It was cold, but not unbearably so during the nice twisty back roads course of about 65 miles from my home in Newark, Delaware. My thermometer read between 22F - 24F most of the way. Unlike last March, when I arrived to find an empty parking lot, there were already 12 - 15 bikes in the lot when I showed up at about 0830. More importantly, the "coffee ladies" were set-up in the lot, too. By the time I left around noon, maybe 70 or 80 stalwarts had made appearances. Among the attendees were two fellow regulars from the Sport-Touring.Net forums ("ejworthen" and "JamminJere") who'd ridden over from the Pottstown, PA area, and Gerry from the ScootLancaster blog, who arrived on his new Kawasaki Versys (first one I'd seen in person; pic is below); it was great to meet folks in "real life". Though the usual varied types of motorcycles were in the lot, a much higher than usual percentage were sport-tourers -- does that make we S-T'ers hardy, hardly sane, or merely hungry? I also decided to switch my American Legion membership from my current post in Delaware to the Ephrata post that puts on this "First Sunday" event. It was close to 50F on my twisty 61 mile loop home; any warmer and I would've had to shed some of my "serious cold" gear. Great fun all-in-all and a terrific start to the "Ride to Eat" season!

A nice row of sport-touring machines!

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