Middletown...The Mission

At 1620hrs two members of the New London Motorcycle Club were sighted on the property of a Car Dealership in New London Ct. said members were there to meet another member of their Club. 

At 4:30 we rolled out taking route 85 into Chesterfield Ct for a stop at Davids Place. This was done because, pardon me, I was hungry having had only the two pieces of fried Spanish food. I picked up a grilled cheese sangwich and a LARGE Sierra Mist, having eaten the sangwich I place the large refreshing drink in the Specially designed cup holder by Harley Davidson (more on this later). 

We pulled out of Dave's and continued up route 85 to Salem No corners, where we picked up rte 82 for a pleasant 6the gear (use 'em if ya got 'em) ride to East Haddam. We crossed the Mighty Connecticut River and turned right onto the most beautiful pavement you have ever seen. Route 154 was smooth as glass all the way through Haddam Meadows, at which point the smooth ended abruptly and scarified pavement was the rule from there til the route 410 intersection. From there the road changed into Concrete with grass growing in the center-line. This did not make for the smoothest ride. Now comes the rest of the Sierra mist story, The lid on the mist decided to pop up and with the combination of the air rushing by and the bumps in the road the soda was splashing lightly onto my left leg. The top of the cup had vibrated soft, unable to hold the seal there was no way to seal the liquid in. After a couple attempts at grabbing the cup and pulling it up to extract it from the holder, each time the cup would flex and not lift out. The bumps in the road had actually driven the soda cup down into the holder wedging it tight. drastic measures were needed to have it stop splashing around, so I jammed my thumb into the cool liquid, gripping the wall of the cup I yanked upward. the soda was now free of the wind deflection of the bikes lowers and was spraying. In a swift swing motion I flipped the cup away. The cup impacted the ground causing a soda bomb, sticky liquid exploded upward covering my arm, the back seat, tour pack and saddlebag. Danny riding behind me saw my initial fiddling with something on the left side of the bike, he immediately deduced it was a soda issue, backed off his throttle and moved to the right. The wall of soda went by him as the carbonated depth charge went off. One mile down the road I stopped at a gas station and bought a jug of water to de-stickyfy everything stickied. 

We continued into Middletown turning onto East Main street, I did this to avoid the Main street night mare. just after William street I rode into and through a parking lot, seeing a concrete stairway leading up to Main, I figured this would be a good spot to stash the rides. As I came around the cars I found that the Club members who had left from Waterford at 4pm were parked there already, (It's hard to miss that green apple Harley). We parked the rides and did a stroll of main street. As we parked a bicycle cop was leaving and a Sport bike stopped to tell us that they would be towing bikes from where we were parked. We parked there anyway but talked to a couple cops on the way up the stairs,they said the parking lot is private property but they had not heard anything about towing bikes.

I can say the Vendors left a lot to be desired, unless you wanted a loan or insurance. As for bikes, Middletown had so many bikes arrive that they had to close roads to any more incoming motorcycles. Every side street and parking lot was full, so many in fact the Middletown was parking bikes in the grass in Hubbard park.  main street was Lot's of people, lots of bikes from Hubbard park to Washington Street, (5 blocks). Bikes were parked facing each other in the middle of the street and lined the side of the street between vendors. We ran into Rubenstein, the other Adamses, Kim, Sean and Ernie.

Always willing to try new things I ordered a Steamed Cheeseburger and Fried Green Tomatoes. let me say this about those, the Fried Green Tomatoes were good, after you let them cool a bit. They pretty much tasted like any veggie rolled in breadcrumbs and deep fried in fat. But then deep fry oil is one of my favorite flavours. As for the Steamed Cheeseburgers, I had heard how great they are from people who had tried them and from Television shows, in my opinion...not great...hardly good. If it weren't for the cheese, lettuce, onions and tomato, there wouldn't be much flavour at all, but then, what can you really expect when you take a lovely piece of bloody meat and steam it gray, the fats leave, the fats are where the flavour is, what you are left with is a grey clump which has more liquid assigned to it than a canteen, The finished product is a quickly deteriorating soggy roll with it's innards in your hand.

After walking and looking around a while i decided I had walked enough and made way to the concrete stairs leading to the bikes, Jerry joined me while Danny went out Vendor hunting. After a bit of standing around Jerry decided to go in search of "facility's" he was gone for quite a while, as I waited there alone I talked to a police officer who happened by in regards to the towing rumors  he stated he didn't believe that there would be any towing issues at all seeing as the event is put on by the town to bring in dollars and awareness as to what businesses are there, and towing vehicles that you are trying to attract doesn't make much sense. With the officer gone I was joined by Dave who decided to have a seat while April was out and about enjoying the sights. Soon Danny was back and when Jerry returned after walking all over and finding that the "Facility's" were at the south end of the event we informed him that there was another set at the bottom of the staircase in the Chinese restaurant. With the sun deciding to set we made our way out of town. We took 66 across Portland and Cobalt and as I turned onto 16 I remembered Danny mentioning Beer, and it struck me, O'Shananagins or O'Herlahy's, or O'Somebody was up that way, but I couldn't remember is it was 66 or 16. I pulled into a parking lot to discuss the matter and after a second Danny remember...it was Smokey O'Grady's. After a little more deliberation we decided it was on route 66 and not all the far away, so we got back on 66 and after 3 miles pulled into Smoky's.
We each had a beer, Danny had them bring out the Jack Honey so we could do shots.

Leaving there, we decided to continued east on 66 through East Hampton and pick up route 85 to 207, to 32 and 2 in Norwich. As we turned onto route 85 i noticed two things, first, it was getting damned cold out and I needed a jacket, secondly, that there was a deer ahead of us sauntering across the road. I signalled the other riders of this by using the out stretch hand signal(meaning to slow down) and the "There's something walking in the road a head of us signal, (this is done by using your hand and fingers to perform a tarantula impersonation and pointing in the direction of where the deer was heading) Both other riders saw the "slow" signal and slowed behind me, both of the riders saw the tarantula signal and had no clue what I was talking about.

We continued ahead until we found a store parking lot where we donned jackets for the remainder of the ride. The ride from Portland home was a pleasant 6th gear run for the most part, like I said."Use em if ya got em". All in all a great night.

I finished the evening off by myself, with a cup of coffee, a shot of jack, and some rye toast and bacon.

klay