Miles on the Motorcycle

I've put 250 miles on the motorcycle in the past two days. I had a couple of places to go on Friday. The weather was so perfect I just had to use the bike. Today I met a friend in Hugo and we drove northeast along the St. Croix. We took that awesome road (Washington County Road 4) into Marine on the St. Croix. We went north to Taylors Falls before crossing into Wisconsin. We continued north of St. Croix Falls about 5 miles when my friend turned into this very strange place. I had no idea where she was going. The driveway was gravel and there were two stone gargoyles on the posts by the road. We passed grapevines and approached a huge stone square fortress looking building with a flat roof. Outside there was a huge fountain with a woman's figure and other statues all around. Inside the first thing I saw was a suit of armor. Turned out this place is a winery. They sell wines and wine accessories plus paintings. Also for sale was an ice cold can of Diet Pepsi - sweet, fruity with a hint of citrus. That sure hit the spot because I was cooking in my black jacket in this heat. I can unzip the zipper a few inches and air enters the jackets forcing it to balloon outward and cool me off. That works great until you have to stop - then you're instantly hot again. We got back on the bikes motoring across the Wisconsin countryside. There is a lot of up and down action in the St. Croix river valley. I love going up and down hills but my absolute favorite is curvy hills. I saw four turkey vultures circling overhead. I can tell they're turkey vultures because they float on the air without flapping their wings and tip side to side once in a while. When I compared my arm span to a bird, I came out to the size of a turkey vulture (or an osprey) so I feel an affinity to them now. We saw lots of things today on our beautiful ride. The strangest thing I saw was just a few miles from my home. A strip mall on Hwy. 47 has several businesses - a sports bar/restaurant, a Subway, a vet, a karate studio, a chiropracter, a beauty salon and a dentist. Out in front of this strip mall was a man wearing a costume. He looked like a big, mustard yellow triangle. I thought he was a bad tooth at first. Then I thought he was one of the Subway slices of cheese - they always come in triangles. The yellow triange held a sign that told me different. It read, "One Free Cream Cheese Wonton." A walking wonton - that was a first for me.