Greetings from Vermont

I've been posting regularly with my Treo but none of the text or photos are getting onto the blog - I suspect it's a Blogger.com issue, because all of my other e-mails are getting through just fine.
So much for my grand plans to blog from the road.
At the moment, I'm at the BMW MOA rally in Burlington, Vt., having arrived yesterday about 4:15 p.m.
The ride was reasonably pleasant. I pulled into a service plaza on the New York Thruway south of Buffalo, NY, to find three Indianapolis BMW Club friends in the parking lot. I rode with them the rest of the day and we ended up sharing motel rooms in Seneca Falls, NY. They planned a more circuitous route for Thursday, so I split off and made best speed for Burlington.
I took NY Highway 8 through the Adirondacks and would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun ride. The Essex ferry across Lake Champlain was a nice 30-minute ride, followed by a hellishly slow, hot slog through a 3.2-mile-long construction zone on Route 7 coming into Burlington. By the time I got through the construction, I was low on gas and even lower on bodily fluids. I gassed at a Gulf station and slammed down a quart of Gatorade before getting onto I-89 and zooming up to the Route 15 exit and on to the rally.

My Indy friends arrived a couple of hours later, called me on the cell phone and I directed them to the campsite I'd chosen for us.
I was sufficiently dehydrated that I ended up drinking 7 beers in the Beer Garden last night before staggering back to my tent.
So it was no surprise that I awoke with a headache this morning.
I plugged my cell phone into the bike's accessory outlet to charge and rode out for a breakfast at McDonald's, where I found a table next to a wall outlet for more phone charging.
I'm able to blog today only because there's a cyber cafe at the rally.
The weather is overcast and there is a 90% chance of rain forecast. I felt a few sprinkles as I rode back from breakfast, so it looks like I'll just spend the day hanging out and cruising the vendors.
The MOA issues a commemorative patch and pin for these rallies and some blockhead misspelled "Burlington" on the pin.
My friend Wayne, who with his wife Peggy, also rode to the BMW RA Rally in Boise, and the Top 'O the Rockies Rally in Paonia, Colo., the two previous weekends, showed me the commemorative t-shirt he got for the rally trifecta. It references the "MBW" Motorcycle Owners of America rally.
Absolutely incredible.