Lightin the Fire for BBQ

Spent the morning over at Giff's. His place has become my Floyd's of Mayberry. Place to talk about bikes, politics, age, and whatever else comes up. Bill closes up right around 12 and I don't blame him.

Decided I needed to and should make a small run to get back in shape for the riding season. Not physical shape but riding shape. Earlier in the month I felt like I never stopped riding and was comfortable and confident. Today I was going to test this out.

Being involved in the Smoke Chasing thing I figured BBQ places was as good as anything to chase today and start racking up the points. The plan >>



Since I really wasn't in a rush, I stopped on the highway (ya gotta get used to this when hunting some stuff down) (I have MeAsWe face the traffic and let me know if we are gonna get run down) and grabbed a border crossing (another waymark category)



First stop was a 2 fold stop at LJ's. One for the picture of the BBQ place and one for a bonus stop for going there and taking the picture with your flag facing the wrong way. This was called the "waste of time, backwards bonus"





Next stop is United BBQ in Providence. We ate here last year and it was pretty good. Matter of fact I think I used this as a tag location. Well the economy has not been that great and it has taken a toll on the independent businesses and my guess it may have hit the food industry that much harder. Just look at the Piccadilly Pubs, they all seemed to have closed very suddenly.



Came across this old house and new it had to be on the National Register of History Places. The sign was kind of a giveaway.





But even more interesting right across the street was this place. I am not sure what this person is trying to accomplish. Now researching these guys, I would have called them gargoyles, however gargoyles are exclusively used as water diverters. They are grotesques when the are gargoyle like but don't function as water diverters.





We get extra points called sidedishes if we find foreign BBQ places.



I have a huge backlog of places we have been from last year and have been whittling away at this backlog for waymarking. One of the places was Putnam Railroad Station. When I posted it, the waymark was denied because the GPS coordinates did not seem right and I said the building was vacant. Also the picture wasn't that good. I decided to take another ride to this place and fix er up. BTW the building is vacant.





The long stretchy picture, I used some new software for creating panoramic pictures. I have one from ArcSoft that I got with one of my cameras, however it always creates a bowed and distorted picture, which is really neat if you are trying to be Salvador Dali. I went searching for a replacement so I could get rid of the bubble in the pictures. I found Hugin, which works mint, gives you lots of options and is free to boot.

Another BBQ that burned it's rub.



Downtown Putnam, CT is kind of a neat place. Lots of restaurants and the building are interesting. Another lost iconic retail company. There have been so many that have come and gone.



BBQ places are usually very colorful and have neat signs.





All in all it was great day of riding, made a riding mistake (remember the confidence thing) that made me aware to be aware, captured a bunch of places for the grand tours and just had a nice relaxing day on the bike.