Americade Report

[BudTheGrey]

I spent last Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Americade with my wife and a couple friends. I was on my C50 (of course), my wife Tammy had her '99 Savage and our friend Debbie was on an '01 Savage, another friend Jay on a '01 (?) Katana.

We were getting discouraged on the days leading up to the trip -- rain, rain, rain. We started out later than planned Friday morning because Debbie got caught in a storm on the way to our house, and we loaned her some dry socks and boots. The rest of the trip down was relatively dry. Friday nite driving home from the fireworks the last 5 minutes was in a hard rain, but dry clothes and a hot shower were in sight...

Weather was fair, if chilly, for Friday. Attendance was down this year; lots of hotels in the Lake George area had vacancies -- unheard of during Americade week. There was a couple sprinkles while we were wandering around the main show. Jay had to leave at dinner time, the rest of us stayed the weekend.

We stayed at Melody Manor and I highly recommend them to anyone wanting to take a vacation in the area. There was power outage Saturday nite, and they owners made sure to keep the restaurant open for guests, even if they were limited on what they could serve. They also made sure we had a couple candles to take back to our room so we wouldn't be completely in the dark.

We disposed of a lot of our disposable income on Saturday. The best deal was sheepskin seat covers from Alaska Leather. I actually got to see the difference between the "deluxe" version and the "rally". My wife and I decided that grade 'b' sheepskin ain't so bad, and ended up getting one for each of our bikes for about what I was gonna pay online just for mine.

On Sunday we discovered that Tammy's savage had popped some kinds of oil plug or seal. It was putting a pretty good coat on everything behind the motor. When we started back, the oil was just at the top of the inspection window. I checked it every time we stopped (often, as Debbie gets cold quickly and it was only about 50 deg). By the time we got home -- about 100 miles -- the oil was down by about a third. Her bike's back in the shop, and she's not pleased. She's eying the S50 they've got on the floor...

Overall, not the absolute best trip to Americade we've every had, but still pretty darned good. We went from one extreme to the other -- last year it was 90+ degrees all the time, this year it struggled to hit 60. Oh well.

Next year is the 25th anniversary of Americade; we've already made our reservations.

[dragbar]

Sounds like a good trip.
I do believe I've read of a plug that is just inserted into the engine on those Savages and does have a rate of blowing out. But easilly fixable.