Observatory Park, Night Ride to the...Clouds

On Saturday, July 21st, Mother Nature didn't cooperate with us for our planned trip to Observatory Park in Montville, Ohio. This is an official dark sky location, and part of the Geauga Park District. We didn't get to see the stars, but the clouds were gorgeous. First we rode to Orwell and ate at the A&W on Rt. 322. I should have gotten the mini corn dogs instead of the bacon chili cheese dog, but the chocolate shake was awesome!

If you like to see the stars at night, this is a super location. It's all set up for the gazer in all of us, and also has an education quality with a trail that details the different planets along the way. But first, you go down the long drive to a parking lot. From there you can see a couple of buildings: one houses a weather station, seismic station, and telescopes. The other is a gathering building with open restrooms (even when there are no events).

Upon reaching the commons area, you'll find a large sundial, and if it's sunny you can stand in a designated spot (read the instructions) and tell what time it is based on where your shadow falls. Pretty cool! And then beside that is a walk-around display showing the different phases of our moon.

Walk between the two main buildings and you'll see a huge metal globe with constellations all over it, and beyond that flowers and a huge field. On that field you'll begin to see stone effigies and a path to the right. Go that way! Initially, there are these semi-enclosed circles where you can learn about the planets while the sun, our very own star, sets, and have a seat to just listen to the wind or watch the sky. The entire path is long, but enjoyable as it winds it's way all around the huge field.

One of the reasons that it's so big is that the developers managed to place four large stone corners that mark the actual base dimensions of the huge pyramid in Giza, Egypt.

Goldilocks and I made it all the way to Uranus, which seemed like the path less taken considering the weeds that were taking hold of that circle. But it was worth it, walking closer to the woods and watching the lightning bugs come out. And not to mention the young couple that was setting up camp in front of one of the pyramid stones with a tent and all; it's a park so I guess you can do that (I was jealous!!!).

Goldilocks received a text message from Tiny that the guys were getting hammered by mosquitos, so we rounded the path back to the buildings and met with the guys back at the bikes.

We rode the dark roads back to 322 and took Rt. 45 south to 88, taking a break on the causeway at Mosquito Lake. It was windy, everyone wanted coffee or sleep by this time (11pm), so we headed back to Hubbard McDonald's. Bones, Booner, and Sweet-N-Low left for home so SNL could get 4 hours sleep before getting up for work! The rest went inside for coffee.

Take a look at the observatory's website to see the events that are put on year-round, and times for star gazing with the telescopes. We go from early morning sunrise rides to 14 hour day rides to night rides - because riding and being together is the best thing! Go make some memories.

~ Holly, a.k.a. Stitchblade

Ohio's Tail of the Dragon, Route 536

Today was our 3rd Annual Sunrise Ride with our friends you are coming to know - Tiny and Goldilocks, Hammer, Bones, and Booner and Sweet-n-Low. You may recall that back in January, Bryon and I took a winter drive down Ohio Route 7 and checked out this dragon, and it was totally cool, cold even back six months ago. :)


I chose the Ohio Dragon for our Sunrise Ride, and by the way, if you have not done this, it's fun! We get up ridiculously early, 3am or so, and meet for breakfast at a 24 hour joint and try to hit the road at 4:30am. That worked in year one, not so much in year two, and this morning we didn't hit the road until about 5 or so, and the eastern clouds were already showing that cotton candy blue and pink. But that's okay.




We met at McDonald's in Hubbard. Did you know you can order bacon and eggs? True story.

Anyway, it was so freaking cold when we started riding through Hubbard on Route 7, but we're tough, and we followed 7 until we hit I-680 off of Albert Street. We followed that lovely piece of road to 224 and took that west to Route 7 South.

Route 7 is a nice road for quite a ways after you get south of Boardman. We stayed on 7 the entire way down to Hannibal, Ohio, stopping when necessary, like here. It was about 7:00am or so when we rolled all loud into this sleeping small town. I'm sure they were impressed, especially when we were so cold and I suggested a group hug to get warm. The guys thought us gals should go ahead and hug so our boobs would touch. Typical! Anyway, no hugging happened, and we took off after warming up by the engines.




Our next quick stop was a rest area 2 miles down 7 (if only we'd known), and then two town down aways we found a gas station. We stayed there for a half hour bullshitting and eating snacks. The guy working there was a biker too, and had a cool bike parked outside the building.

Onward we went, until Bryon saw a mom and pop restaurant on the right, Van Dyne's in Shadyside, so we made a right onto the road just past it and took the service road back to it. If you're in the mood for good food (biscuits and gravy sound good?), take a stop here. Oh, and they have a burger challenge, something like a 2 pound cheeseburger and fries in 30 minutes or less? Look it up here: Van Dyne's Restaurant.

It was only about another 20 miles to Ohio's Tail of the Dragon. You'll know you're close when:

1) you pass Ohio Route 78 on the right

2) you then pass a green sign that says Hannibal

3) you see the sign for 536 with the turning arrow

Turn right. You'll wind up a hill a ways by some houses, just follow through. Then you'll make a sharp left turn, up a hill, and a sharp right at the top and then have fun! It winds and turns and makes you think. Don't look too long down the drop offs or up the steep driveways that make you think "who the fuck would live up here?". Goldilocks counted the curves: 108. Ohio's Dragon ends at Ohio Route 78. You can go left to head west and choose other nice roads to ride, or turn right to go east and meet up with Route 7 again. 

Matter of fact, starting tomorrow, July 9th, they will be doing some much needed construction on some sharp bends that overlook deep slopes on Ohio's Dragon. In several places the road had collapsed and was restricted, and there were temporary traffic lights I think three times where there was only one lane. This kept us from going straight through, but it is supposed to be done in about 30 days. We recommend waiting until then to go do it.

On the way home, we rode back on Ohio Route 45 to Lisbon, and stopped for food at the Steel Trolley Diner for another bite to eat. I had the oatmeal pie, which was very good, and next time it will be one of their specialty hot dogs.

With that, it's 7:38pm, and I'm off to take a nap. That 3am alarm clock was a doozy, but it was worth every minute today to get up and do something different and make more amazing memories with the best of friends.

~ Holly, a.k.a., Stitchblade

Memory Patches and Vests

Memory Patches

In the biker world, when someone dies, they are memorialized on a vest or cut with a patch. The patches tell only the briefest parts of the person: their names, nicknames, dates of birth and death. 

The colors vary from personal favorites to club colors - whatever is relevant and shows a little more about their lives.

Here at our store, Freedom Thirteen Cycle, we created a memorial for bikers from the Mahoning and Shenango Valleys. We had a small banner made with a quote from a song, "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun..." - so appropriate for the life of a biker. It doesn't matter how they died, and some didn't ride, but instead rode on the back seat sharing a life in the wind with their partners.

The idea came to me while reading the book, All The Names, by Jose Saramago. In this book, the main character, Jose, has been a basic clerk at the records department which records all the births, marriages, and deaths in a large city. It's a huge facility with aisles and aisles and shelves and shelves of dusty boxes of the dead. They contain all the names. Well, it was a really good book, and it struck me that I'm like Jose, day in and day out getting to record the names of the dead, only in my world in the form of memory patches.

I've seen many names of the dead. I've met their loved ones. I've touched their vests and made them a monument of sorts, a wearable record, a place for the dead to get yet another ride in the wind and sun.

Sometimes bikers come up with other ways to remember. In early 2017, a trucker/biker had come into the store with his brother's vest - the one he was wearing when he was in an accident on his bike and died. The trucker, Mr. Bevan, had been looking for someone who would be willing to make life-like wings out of denim on the back of his brother's vest (he had tried with some faded denim and markers, noting that his brother had gone down on his right side by using red in the lines). It was one of those rare challenges I accepted. For a week, I painstakingly created layers of denim with a feathery look, sewing down parts and leaving parts flip up, with the result pictured here. 

It's up to the living to remember the dead.

They do so in many ways.

Sometimes the living forget, or avoid what may be too painful.

However the living deal with death, there are no wrong ways, but as evidenced here,

the living do care.

So if you're reading this, keep on living.

If you choose to, keep on remembering. 

Most importantly:

have joy

have fun

have many wonderful seasons in the sun.

~ Holly, a.k.a. Stitchblade