Throttle Therapy

Yesterday Dave and I got up early and headed out on the bikes for a lake ride. Kickstands were up at 8:00am and off we went. We stopped in Indiantown for breakfast at Cracker's Cafe. This place has the best breakfast and is cheap!!!

After breakfast we headed into Okeechobee and then back south to Port Mayaca. We stopped at our normal spot, the scenic outlook at the Port that overlooks Lake Okeechobee. Our original plan was to ride up to the rim so we could see the lake, but the sun was blazing, so we pulled in under the bridge. This is the Army Corps of Engineers dam at the lake. Lake Okeechobee is just on the other side.

A closeup of our bikes...Dave's is the yellow and black R1, so by process of elimination, mine's the white and red one!!! :)

Looks like I ran over a mustard packet in this photo! It was actually a very large bug! Better the bike than me! But getting hit by bugs and having to wash the bug guts off your arms is a small price to pay for the utter exhilaration of the ride!

This is a shot of a small lake on the outside of the rim. A lot of people actually fish at spots outside the rim...not sure how good the fishing is...but we always see people out there. I'm guessing it's because the best fishing in Lake Okeechobee is only accessible by boat. Lake O is huge...next time we make it up to the rim, I'll be sure to snap some pics!

It was definitely a good ride...about 160 miles. We did have a close call with a pack of turkey vultures. We came up on a pack of about 15-20 of them on the side of the road chowing on some roadkill. These are very large birds and it takes them several swoops of their wings to get their massive bodies off the ground. As we closed in on them (we were doing about 75mph so this all happened pretty quickly), they started to take off. Dave had given me the "heads up/keep your eyes open/something could happen" signal as soon as he had seen them, so I was ready...well as ready as could be. I knew we were both thinking the same thing...please don't take off towards the road, please go the other way! Well, all but 2 of them did just that. The first one that went toward the road actually got up pretty high pretty quick, the second one, not so much. We were both tucked in behind our windscreens (well as much as you can tuck in...you can see from the pics, there really isn't a whole lot to get behind!) and were ready for an impact. Luckily, neither of us hit the second one, but it was a close call...probably missed Dave by about a foot and me by about 6 inches!!! Aahhh...the joys of motorcycle riding in Florida!!!