May 28, 2007

The ride to Solomon’s Island was the first motorcycle ride where our bicycle riding group got together to ride the motorized form of bikes. I meet up with Manley and Carole at Carole’s house to start the ride down to Solomon’s Island. Carole rides a bright yellow Ducati 748, Manley has a 07 silver ST1300 and I ride a 06 black ST1300. The Solomon’s Island is a favorite ride of Carole’s and favorite route of other biker’s as it wines down through Charles and St Mary’s counties to the . The ride down say a lot of motorcycles as we road down to the Chesapeake Bay.

The ride starts off down 202 to pickup 301 before getting on MD 4 for the trip to Solomon’s. All of these roads we all had ridden before on bike rides, but the view at 50+ mph is a bit difference than at bicycle speeds of the upper teens. We pretty much cruised to Solomon’s with a only a few sprints, of course lead by Carole as she let the Ducati do it’s thing and I sure she hit 80 before backing off remembering that the rest of her riding buddies wasn’t on sports bikes and allowed us to catch up. We got down to Solomon’s Island in a little over an hour. We took some picture to document the trip and had lunch at one of the outdoors restaurants on the water. We also walked around and looked at the boats in the marina and just kind of enjoyed the view of the Chesapeake Bay. It was a little quite for a holiday weekend, but then again it was still early in the day.

The ride back was along the same route as we road down, route 4. We road to Waysons Corner at route 408 and 4 which was a good stopping off point for us to split up and all head home; Manley headed home to Waldof, Carole picked up 301 to Bowie and I took MD 4 up to the Washington Beltway and headed across the Potomac to Alexandria. Usually, I hoop off the beltway at route 1 and take the back roads home, this time I stayed on 495 to Van Dorne to get home. A little riding on the super slab is okay sometimes.

A total of 115+ miles trip and as always a ride with friends is a good ride.