First off we had to his Marcia's Silver Spoon (they are one of our sponsors). After a waffle and a couple links, I was ready for anything. We chewed the fat and we sat there having a grand old time until my cell phone rang. It was Jimmy Bass wondering where we were. He was at the station doing what we were supposed to. We jumped up and headed for the bikes, and beat feet to the station. Better late than never (so I have heard).
After setting up tables, selling tickets and greeting all the folks to showed up, we "hit the trail" so to speak. We had a couple police units stop traffic for us so we could all make it through the traffic lights in "one piece."
Kerry and Fog were in the lead and they had a hard time keeping their speed even. It drove me nuts I have to say. We went along like an inch worm, fast then slow, etc etc. Other than that, the ride was a lot of fun. I cranked up my country music and got "in the zone." We made our way to the first stop which was North Bend. That is roughly an hour from the beginning. I snapped a couple pictures of the bikes in the parking lot. Some of the guys I hadn't seen since last years ride. It's always nice to talk to the retired guys to see what they are up to.
After a 20 minute break we set off again. We attracted a lot of attention going over Snoqualmie Pass. People were waving and we were having a great time. the weather was gorgous. The next stop was Ele Elum. This was on the East side of the pass and it was getting warm. Somewhere in the high 80's I would guess.
Another hour or so and we landed in Wenatchee. Mike and I had been riding behind Fog most of the way. Once or twice he looked like he fell asleep or something. Maybe we need to send him back through the motor course again... (possibly he was trying to avoid deer or something that no one else could see). The weather was sunny and hot. My wife would have not had a good time here. Mike Romaine and my neighbor Kevin split off from the crowd and had lunch at the Red Robbin (with lots of ice tea to go with it). Mike had to pick up a red rose for the ceremony later in the evening so we stopped at Albertson's to get-r-done. 
After a tank of gas we made it to the Red Lion where we held our party. I had a couple hours to kill before we needed to get to work on setting things up. I hit the showers to wash off the road dirt. that gave me just enough of a pick me up to want to play along at the party.
The party was a catered buffet with a DJ, social hour, memorial service for our fallen officers, and lots and lots of raffle prizes. It was a pretty fun time. Of course before we got started, the club members had to have a short get-together so we could obsess over overy last detail. I just wanted a beer.
Sgt Joseph arrived and presented out Memorial Ceremony. It was a moving thing. Sgt Joseph is one of my good buddies. The ceremony really added a nice touch to our party. It reminded us of the reason we had a party in the first place. 
Dave and Colleen know everyine in town. This is Kim, our waitress. I had Gernam sausage and eggs for breakfast. Mike insisted I had a hot dog. He said it looked like one, anyway. All I know is that it hit the spot.
While we were having breakfast Dave was spouting trivia like a daytime game show. He told us Three Fingered Jacks was the oldest licensed Saloon in the state of Washington. They he showed us a sign that proved it!
Apparently Saloons have the windows so folks can look in from the outside and see all the sinning going on inside. Us modern day folks can't have things like that so they moved the windows to another spot in an effort to keep small kids from becoming like me, and now we call those places Taverns. Of course, nowadays we have gone even more "yuppie" so when they build them now we call them "Sports Bars." (try and keep up, OK?). I guess so long as you can leave one of those spots with a wet whistle, they can call it whatever they want. 
I have heard guys talk about deer sign before, but I never thought of it like this before....
Mike and I made our way down the Highway to Wantachee until his GPS took us right to the Red Lion.
Halli got on the phone and next thing we knew, we were talking to Anna.
The reason Mike has a goofy look on his face is because Anna is a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10. She said she enjoyed talking to the other guys when they came over to see her (twice... no wonder). She said she liked that one "laywer guy" who seemed interested in all the legal stuff. We think she was describing Jimmy D. We had to laugh when she mentioned the Laywer part. We think she forgot to mention the outhouse part of that.
The weather in Wenatchee was very nice. Right around 80 or so and sunny. Anna said they usually have about 300 sunny days a year. After looking at all the good looking girls, we headed back to Tacoma. We made a short stop on top of the pass to gass up then continued on. Traffic was not too bad, but started getting heavier on I-90 near Nirth Bend, then heavier in Hwy 18 then to a standstill on I-5. Both of us decided we liked the traffic better on the other side of the bump. After poking around on I-5 (and I do mean poking) Mike and I split. I headed into Fife to make a stop at the Harley dealer and Mike continued on home. The weather looked threatening enough that he wanted to get home. At my last gas fill up, I noticed that my rear tire was nearly work out. I wanted to stop in and make an appointment to get that replaced before our Memorial Ride. After a brief stop at the Harley store, I made my way home.
After we ate, we filled our other tanks and headed up Hwy 20. . The ride along Hwy 20 was terrible. There was so much scenery, I barely saw the road. The weather was perfect but got a bit chilly up in the pass. Dave said the pass is around 5500 feet or so. We stopped for a butt break at a look out above Diable Lake. It's the one where the steel grated bridge is about 1000 above the gorge. What a view! The camera doesn't do it justice.
The top picture is looking one way and the bottom one is looking the other way from the bridge. 
This is one time where a guy needs one of those panaramic cameras. Its just too big for the picture. After I got through snapping pictures of the place, Colleen took one of my and the boys. She said I needed to be in a picture too.
So we pulled over and I couldn't resist playing with the camera. That is a Sana can in the parking lot of the Texaco station just past Elk Plain.
Of course you would get an even better view if the guy on the left would have moved over a bit. There were just the two of us on this ride. Don't ask me how I took this picture. You can see that I have a goofy leather thing on my head. I won that one day at a raffle and I wanted to see if those things actually worked, so I tried it out today. I kept my head from getting all sweaty (it was hot--92 degrees) that day. Soon after this stop, that long sleeve shirt made its way into the saddle bag. 
Well, that wasn't really very good news. Needles to say, we didn't make it to the top. We went back down to Randle and had a cold pop. We ran into a couple of guys on bikes that had cameras mounted on them. The camera was about 2 inches square and mounted to the front of the faring with double sided sticky tape. He said it ran for an hour before the chip got full. I may have to look into getting one of those things for my bike.
We liked Ernie so much we had to take a second picture. There was a lady driving by when we took the first picture. She got such a bang out of watching us, she had to stop and take a shot of us along with Ernie. What can I say. Exciting things can happen in Toledo.
After Toledo we started up St Helens from the West side. We didn't get too far before it started looking like rain. And rain it did, we we turned around and came back down. With the clouds we couldn't see the mountain anyway and we really didn't want to get all wet (or have to wash our bikes) so we came down a few thousand feet where we ran into Sasquatch. That guy is really big. 
After he said "Uncle" we headed down the hill. Mike was whining about being hungry again we we stopped at Spiffy's Restaurant. Spiffy's is sort of a landmark in those parts. We needed gas by then anyway. When we were in the parking lot, we could see St Helens. The clouds had passed over (figures) and the Mt cleared off a bit.
After having lunch, Mike decided to go home on "the other side" of the Hood Canal Bridge. That would take us over to Hwy 101 just after we made it to Olympia. We took 101 along the West side of the canal. The scenery was great. Once we got to Hwy 104, I turned off and went to the Hood Canal Bridge. Mike continued on to home. Here is a shot of the bridge (there wasn't a very good place to pull off and get a shot of the new bridge):
The bridge was taken out and re-done (maintenance). It has a different look to it now.
