Wildlife Encounters

Friday's afternoon ride took me to West Chester via the Paoli Pike.  The original flight plan was to head up Goshen/Strasburg to get to the West Goshen Shopping Center on the Paoli Pike via the West Chester downtown.  That was the target because I need to go to the pet store there to buy treats for my new kitten, Lucifer.  When I reached the 252 and Goshen interception I made an on the fly decision to change the plan and take 252 to Darby Road, Devon Road, and the Paoli Pike to test traffic conditions in the early afternoon on the Pike.  As I headed up 252, I startled a red-tailed hawk that was on the grass at the right side of the road.  She took flight and at first attempted to fly across my path to the trees on my left but as soon as she was up, she veered right and came to perch at the top of a phone pole on my right.  The reason she was on the grass was that she had caught a snake which she took with her to the top of the pole.  If that was not a good omen from the shades of my ancestors, I don't know what is.

The rest of the ride out to the shopping center was without incident, traffic was light and moving at a good pace.  Traffic in the opposite direction was fairly light as well.  After stopping at the pet shop, I continued up the Pike into town and used the Wawa, right after the merge of the Pike with  Gay Street, as a turnaround and refueling point.  At that point the odo clocked 895 miles and tank required 2.597 gallons to fill up, still averaging 67 mpg.  Next refuel at 1095 miles.  While at the pump, a guy that had pulled up on a sports bike came over and asked me "what's that?"  We talked about Enfields for a while; he had never heard of them and was really interested in learning.  It was nice to chat with someone about the Bullet and it really confirmed that people will just walk up and ask about the thing.

The path back followed the usual run down Strasburg/Goshen and was nice as ever.  At a point shortly before reaching Bartram's Covered Bridge on Boot Road a big fat ground hog ran across the road from my left to my right.  I say him with enough time to react and slow down so there was no problem but it definitely was amusing to him waddle across the road.  Since I had slowed down almost to walking speeding, I decided to pull over on Boot Rd and get a shot of the Bullet with Lewis Run and the covered bridge in the background.  The bridge is not really visible because of the trees and the quality of the phone photos is not great but is not a bad shot overall.

I continued down Goshen all the way to it's end over Darby Creek at Darby Paoli Road.  Took a left after the creek and followed Darby Paoli to Godfrey for a run by my office.  I stopped in to check on somethings I had forgotten to do before leaving earlier in the day and the headed back home on my regular commute route.

It was a great ride, no problems from the Bullet, great to see wildlife up close without any negative effects, and to be able to put in some more easy miles on the odo.  At the end of the ride, the odo read 917.5.