DOH!

[KUGO]

I was sitting at my home office desk, looking out the front picture window as the rain started to let off around nine o’clock this morning when I saw the mail lady walk up the front porch.  Went out to get my mail and found it was a major magazine day.  Yea!  I even got my new issue of “Cycle World”, the new-format Issue Number 2.  I’ll save my opinion of the new format and the new “every-other-month” delivery for the same annual subscription price for another thread.  (No, I won’t.  It’s tried to turn itself into a “high-class”/high-gloss rag (except the cover, of course, which is matte, the “new” rage of many progressive-leaning magazines, e.g. “Wired”, et al, ad nauseum) and it just doesn’t speak to me like it used to.  And I want monthly, especially in the winter time.)  But I digress…

Started thumbing through it and got immersed anyway, per usual.  About an hour or more later I happened to look up out my window to a sunny, blue-sky morning with only seventy-five degrees on the thermometer!  Here I am inside, after a week of lousy weather, on a gorgeous Saturday morning reading about riding motorcycles when I could be riding motorcycles!  What’s wrong with me?!?  I set the mag down, shaking my head, and headed for the garage.  Had a beautiful ride, too!

Don’t know what the road conditions are like where you live, but they are really crappy around here in my area.  The State ran out of salt this past winter (it’s Illinois, ya know) and really tripled up on the use of sand, as it was cheaper and more widely (cheaper) available.  The roads in mid-Illinois are STILL not cleaned off, even after numerous spring rains.  The sand can be a quarter of an inch thick at four-ways and some turns.  Bikers beware!  Enjoy your weekend!   

[Jess from VA]

Sand is not your friend. 

Either on the bike in the corners.... or on an utterly private Caribbean beach with the wife and a bottle of wine.      

[RainMaker]

Sand is not your friend. 

Either on the bike in the corners.... or on an utterly private Caribbean beach with the wife and a bottle of wine.      

I think Justin Verlander likes sand just fine.

[cookiedough]

Sand is not your friend. 

Either on the bike in the corners.... or on an utterly private Caribbean beach with the wife and a bottle of wine.      

I think Justin Verlander likes sand just fine.

what sand, I see no sand in that pic?   

hard to believe state of IL has that much sand all over the roads still is not like middle part of IL gets that much snow really in winter for the need for that much sand/salt?

[KUGO]

Sand is not your friend. 

Either on the bike in the corners.... or on an utterly private Caribbean beach with the wife and a bottle of wine.      

I think Justin Verlander likes sand just fine.

what sand, I see no sand in that pic?   

hard to believe state of IL has that much sand all over the roads still is not like middle part of IL gets that much snow really in winter for the need for that much sand/salt?

Cookiedough: Can't really speak for much of Illinois, honestly, as I just haven't gotten around the state enough yet to comment.  I'm an hour south of Champaign, and we have the sandy conditions I've described and I know that the decision was made to use sand and not buy more salt (towards the end of the season).  No, we really didn't get a lot of snow this year, but got a LOT of slick, icy weather.  I've had a landscaping business in this area for fifteen years and I never invested in snow-plowing gear, nor pursued that business in wintertime.  You're right: it just doesn't snow enough to justify the once-in-four-or-five-years bad winter.  (Not to mention the fact that I'm just NOT going to get up at 3am to a snowstorm that left a dozen parking lots to scrape before the businesses opened at 8.  That somehow didn't appeal to me as much as just taking off the year from Halloween until April Fool's Day!)