Wild Hogs II Day 1

I woke up around 0600 to heavy rain and the realization that I had not yet packed my bike. I spent the next hour and a half hurriedly finding places for all the stuff that I might need but probably won't. In the end I did cut some stuff out and was able to find a home for all the things that I “needed” to take along.

We were approximately an hour late leaving due in part to the rain and mostly to my brother Jay arriving late. We saw rain a good part of the day arriving in Newburgh NY the home of

Orange County Choppers of American Chopper TV fame around 2 pm. We spent some time looking around and taking pictures like a group of Asian tourists. The place is nice but totally commercial and over priced on just about everything in the shop.

By contrast, we went about 5 miles up the road to stop in at V-Force Customs. That is the shop that Vinnie DiMartino and Cody Connelly opened after leaving OCC. It was very cool. Vinnie was sitting right there at the counter and talked to us right away when we walked in. We were given the royal tour of the shop where Cody was diligently working on a bike and Vinnie posed with us for a picture. They thanked us for coming and invited us to stop by anytime.

After leaving V-Force Customs we headed into historic Montgomery NY. It was a neat little town. We then stopped to figure out how to get to our next destination (Clarksburg State Park, MA). We decided that we would take Rt. 209 N. Of course, we then took 208 North. After wandering the state of New York we broke down and asked directions to someplace to eat. Either Kevin misunderstood the directions or the guy at the gas station thought it would be funny to send us on a wild goose chase. Where we did end up was at the entrance to the New York State Thruway (I-87). We decided to go ahead and pay the toll and head up that way. We stopped to eat at the service plaza on the thruway where it was advertised that they had WiFi service. Unfortunately we could identify the network but could get no internet. I hope we will find a place today for me to upload this and some photos.

It appeared that the rain had stopped so I broke out the GPS to find our way to the campground. It took us about another hour and a half to make the campground, arriving at about 7:25 pm about a half hour before the last check-in deadline. We got camp set up before dark with the usual keystone kops efficiency. We were finally able to get a fire started even though everything was soaked from the heavy rains earlier in the day. We turned in around 11:30.