Key West or Bust, Day 15

Mile Marker: Home
Sunday May 25, 2008

We do our well-honed morning pack-up routine for the last time on this trip. In each of our canvas carrying bags we always use a plastic garbage bag to hold our dirty laundry and keep it separated from clean laundry on a long trip. Today, I laugh as I notice that the dirty laundry now takes up the entire space of my bag, leaving only a handkerchief and one clean pair of socks as the clean laundry. Tonight, we’ll do laundry at home.

“I’ve chosen every route and every mile so far on this trip,” I tell Kitty. “Today it’s up to you.” We discuss the options and she chooses to ride Skyline Drive to the US 211 cutoff at Panorama and then take 211 and 29 home, which, in a twist of fate, is exactly the route I’ve already pre-loaded into the GPS.

At about 9:15 AM we retrace the four miles of I-64 to the entrance of the Shenandoah National Park. At the entrance station, the Harley Davidson Electra-Glide in front of me suddenly begins backing up. Its rider apparently has not heard my quiet Gold Wing come up behind him, and apparently hasn’t checked his mirrors either. Maybe there’s something to that old biker saying “Loud pipes save lives!” I’m not worried about damage to the bike, since he would just impact my front tire, but he’s kicking it backward pretty good, and I’m afraid he’ll hit my front wheel at an angle and dump us over. I sound two long blasts on my horn (I think it’s the first time this trip) and fortunately he stops just before making contact with my front wheel. Trouble can come from the least expected sources on a motorcycle trip, even when at a dead stop! “Good job on the horn!” the park ranger says as we pay the $10.00 motorcycle fee.

The day is crystal clear, with temperatures on the Drive in the mid-fifties. Skyline Drive is a 105-mile ride with a 35 mph speed limit throughout the park. Compared to the Blue Ridge Parkway, the curves are sharper and generally more frequent, and from the overlooks you can often see settlements in the valleys nearly 3,000 feet below. On this pristine Sunday morning, there is little traffic on the road but the trailhead parking lots are jammed to capacity with cars. Apparently Memorial Day hiking is a big thing here.

From about Milepost 85 to 82, we see the fire-ravaged forest to our left, residuals of fires last year that closed the Drive for some time. Some of the blackened trees, in a struggle to survive, have pushed out green buds along the upper tree branches, persevering in the face of apparent disaster.

Unlike the Blue Ridge Parkway, which no longer has any fuel services, the Drive has services and we fuel at Loft Mountain, located around Milepost 80. "And there we go," Kitty says for the last time on this trip. She is no longer croaking as she did when we started. She sounds strong and confident.

“They are just starting our second church service at home,” Kitty says in my headset. “God, bless ‘em good!”

At about Milepost 32, the location of the now-closed Panorama visitor center, we catch US 211 eastward and ease around the serpentine downhill curves. At the bottom of the steep curvy road, running into the village of Sperryville, I notice a sign on a white panel truck parked at a crafts shop: “Antique tables made daily,” it announces boldly. I think about this for a minute. Somehow the words “antique” and “made daily” just don’t seem to play that well together in the same sentence. Something about this would make me scratch my head if it weren’t inside a helmet, and now that I think of it, I do have an itch inside my helmet.

We ride the remaining 35 or so miles home, sedately observing the speed limit. Kitty is in Full Going-Home Grandmother Mode. We’ve been in the seat now for upwards of two and a half hours, and she says she doesn’t want a break, doesn’t want to stop for anything. “If the trip has to be over, let’s get on home!” she says.

And so, after a short 136 miles on a beautiful, crystal clear day that more than makes up for the pounding we took on the first day out, Jill says "In 0.3 miles turn right on Blueridge View Drive, then arrive at Jim Home." And thus we arrive at Mile Marker: Home! Kitty's health started out pretty shaky but on antibiotics she improved every day, although we never got into the power walking routine we'd planned. By now, she's hardly coughing into my headset at all and she says she feels great. We’ve had great weather except for the first day out. We circumvented the fires in Florida without a problem. The bike and trailer performed flawlessly. (The only casualty was a burned-out bulb in one of the light bars on the bike, but it’s the lower center bar on back, which is hard to change on the road and invisible from the rear when pulling the trailer, so I opted to wait until I get home to replace it.)

Some of you may remember Kitty's Kardinal Rules for a trip: No snakes, no cities, no traffic. Well, this trip was a guarded experiment venturing into forbidden territory.

We visited Savannah, which immediately violates two of the three rules in that it's a city and there was heavy traffic getting into the historic downtown section where we stayed. Savannah, I would say, was not a failure but not a highlight either. We just don't do cities that well. We did enjoy the Cajun restaurant we stumbled into.

Key West was an experiment in "destinational travel." I loved it, Kitty loved some of it but felt there were far too many people too close together. Although the 70 miles nearest Key West are a spectacular ride, next time, maybe we'll fly there.

Walt Disney World was another experiment, and we both enjoyed that a lot. I'm fascinated as much with the technological infrastructure as with the actual venues themselves.

But as we talk about it, we realize that returning to our "riding roots," two-lane roads far from the city, is what we do best on the bike. Kitty and I maybe aren't so good at "doing" things or finding things to do. But we are pretty good at just "being." The 1,000 miles or so from Key West through the flatlands of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina before running into the Smokies and Blue Ridge Mountains, although not spectacular in the "Rocky-Mountain-cool" kind of way, was a great time for us just to "be" together and enjoy what the countryside could reveal as we travelled through vastly different ecological regions.

We’ve ridden 3,099 miles according to the GPS, 3,125 miles per the odometer. I believe the GPS. Kitty and I laughed many times during this trip about the low number of miles we're traveling. I'm not sure, but I believe this is by far the lowest 15-day total we've ever accumulated. According to the hours logged by the GPS, we’ve spent about 63 hours in the saddle. Several years ago I stopped keeping a gasoline log on trips (I know I get 39.8 mpg one-up, 35.4 mpg two-up with the trailer). And with today’s gasoline prices, who wants to know how much you’ve used anyway? We did note the highest price for regular grade gasoline was in Key West at $4.099, until that price was matched today on Skyline Drive. The lowest price we found was somewhere in rural Georgia, $3.749.

It’s good to be on the road; we cherish and fiercely protect our time together. But Mile Marker: Home is where we’ve made our lives together, and where every journey ends. In a sense, although we’ve ridden the far-flung reaches of the North American continent, all our roads eventually lead to Mile Marker: Home.

It’s good to be home!

Key West or Bust, Day 14

Mile Marker 0, Two
Saturday May 24, 2008

During the night, our motel apparently lost power, or at least the clock in the room is blinking a nonsensical time when I wake up. I don’t bother to check the time as pull aside the drapes to the motel room and check the weather. As predicted, it’s raining. The Internet Weather Channel predicted rain moving out by 10:00 AM.

So in the morning we take our time, uncover the bike and hang the wet towels out to dry. (We use towels to protect the bike and trailer at the points of stress where the cover would rub the paint, and he seams bike and trailer covers are not waterproof.) We generally laze around until the weather clears and I think the roads will be mostly dry. Generally, wherever we travel, when people see we’re a couple on a motorcycle, they want to talk about the bike and our travels. This morning a very large dude asks “Where are you riding to?” How does he know we’re riding? Oh… maybe the long jeans and motorcycle boots are a clue, or the Deal’s Gap T-shirt I’m wearing.

As usual, people with the best of intentions tell us of destinations we should visit and things we should do there. We try our best to help them understand we're in it for the ride, not for the destination. We make polite noises and say innocuous things like “Oh, thanks — maybe we’ll have to check that out.” You know, whatever you say when you have no intention of doing any such thing. But inside I’m thinking “I DON’T CARE, PEOPLE!! I JUST WANT TO RIDE MY MOTORCYCLE!! IT’S ALL ABOUT THE RIDE!” Ok, I feel quite a bit better now, thank you.

The weather clears at about 10:00 AM as predicted and we stow the still-wet towels in the trailer and pull out to head northward from Fancy Gap (Milepost 199) on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Behind the weather front, the sky is clear and the temperature is a cool 62F. Jacket weather. Traffic is very light this morning, and we see only one other vehicle traveling north.

In less than 25 miles we stop at Mabry Mill (Milepost 176), one of the major attractions on the Parkway. It features a working gristmill driven by a water wheel and from time to time has numerous activities depicting life in a bygone era. We’ve been here many times and this morning stop just to get a few digital photographs and to give Kitty a chance to wander around through the gift shop.

After we leave Mabry Mill, we are both quiet. I’m reflecting on the trip and thinking about whether we should ride home tonight instead of staying in Waynesboro, Virginia as planned. This is easy, swoopy riding, and I find myself using higher gears and lower RPMs than usual when running curvy roads. The bike feels steady but a bit sluggish without the power curve I usually maintain in curves. Kitty notices this and says “You’re in a mellow yellow mood this morning, aren’t you? Going-home syndrome?”

Going-home syndrome is what we call those last couple days when the trip isn’t over but most of the highlights have been registered and we start turning our minds toward home and what to expect as we ease back into work and our usually routine. I guess we both have going-home syndrome today, because mostly we don’t talk and are each lost in our thoughts as we ride the graceful curves and hills of the BRP.

At about 2:00 PM we reach Milepost 86, the Peaks of Otter Lodge, and decide to stop here for lunch since we’ve run out of picnic lunch food. Or, if we decide to ride all the way home, we’ll eat some protein bars and keep traveling. We discuss this for a little while before getting off the bike and finally decide to keep the reservations in Waynesboro. The ride home from there would make for a very long day.

As we are eating lunch, an elderly couple walks in and I notice the man’s ball cap. It’s a Navy hat with “PT 104” inscribed on the side. It reminds me that it’s Memorial Day weekend. As we pay our bill and leave, I get up and walk over to the guy. “I just want to shake your hand and say ‘Thank you’,” I say. He’s hard of hearing and I have to repeat it. A grateful look comes into his eyes and says “Well, I just did my job as best I could.”

Continuing our ride northward, we talk about the vegetation. There’s some flowering laurel, but the rhododendron are still at least a month from flowering; in late May they aren’t even pushing buds yet. The higher elevations feature budding maples trees that give entire mountainsides a reddish-brown hue, and flame azaleas with their pastel tangerine color grace the roadside from time to time.

Two days ago, we stopped between Cherokee and Asheville at the highest point of the Blue Ridge Parkway (6,053 feet). Today, after a precipitous drop from the highest Parkway elevation in Virginia at about 4,000 feet, we reach the lowest point at the James River Locks (Milepost 62), at about 650 feet.

Sometime later, we swoop around a bend to find several people in road flagging down passing vehicles. We slow to a stop, and a woman comes running up waving an empty bottle. "We're Appalachian hikers and the water supply is dry. Do you have any water?" The spring they were depending on for water is dry and they have over 10 miles of hiking to the next known water source. On March 12, they started hiking from the southernmost point of the Appalachian trail in Georgia and have hiked 800 miles so far; at their current rate of 10 to 12 miles per day, they expect to get to Mount Katahdin in Maine by mid September.

We give them all our bottled water and they take some pictures of their "motorcycle trail angels." Where we're going, we can easily get more.

And then, once again, we are at Mile Marker 0. This one is different from Key West, because it isn't the end of the road. But we’ve decided that for us today, it’s the end of the line.

“We’re getting on the Interstate!?” Kitty asks in alarm as I navigate the entrance ramp to I-64 west.

“Well, yeah, for four miles,” I respond. “Otherwise, we’d have to ride all the way through Waynesboro to get to our hotel. She concedes that it’s ok to ride four miles of Interstate if necessary.

We check in, I clean and cover the bike one last time, and we walk across the parking lot to the South River Grill for dinner. The waitress describes a dessert with melted Reeses Peanut Butter Cup and ice cream over a brownie. Kitty lights up. She would walk hot coals for peanut butter!

But when it comes out, it is huge! “That dessert will probably cost us $10.00!” Kitty mutters.

“It’s our last night. How much more damage could one more meal do?” I ask. “And how many calories could one dessert add?"

Thus we end dinner with Kitty scraping up every bit of peanut butter from the dessert plate. In a little less formal setting, I get the feeling she would even lick the plate. This woman loves peanut butter!

“I’m going to the exercise room,” she announces, back at the motel.

“Good,” I say. “I’ll join you. If they have wireless Internet access so I can post my blog.”

They do. I’m writing, Kitty is running on the treadmill. Something seems slightly off about this arrangement but for tonight, I can live with it.

Key West or Bust, Day 13

Don’t Worry, Be… Flexible!
Friday May 23, 2008

We have ridden the Blue Ridge Parkway southward over a dozen times. I once counted the curves on the BRP, and by my count there are 2,159 southbound curves. I imagine the number going north would be the same, but having never traveled the length of it in the northbound direction, I don’t know. We are traveling northward, but today is not a day for counting curves.

The morning sky is clear and the temperature is 67F as we roll northward on the BRP after a leisurely breakfast. We have just over 200 miles to cover today, all on the BRP. About 25 miles or so into the Parkway, before the road starts climbing into the serious mountains, we are surprised by a detour sign. Ok, we're flexible, we’ll follow the detour. The detour signs put us on I-40 westbound, followed by a single sign that says “Use Exit 86 for Parkway Detour.” Exit 86?! We’re at Exit 59. That’s almost 30 miles of Interstate, bypassing the most scenic part of the Parkway! I inspect the BRP custom waypoints I’ve downloaded to the GPS, and see that this puts us past Mount Mitchell, which at 6,684 feet of elevation is the highest peak east of the Rockies.

So I’m kicking myself for not checking the BRP road closures. I always check the BRP road closures before striking out on a BRP ride. Except not this time. The detour is a complete surprise! But not to worry… we’re flexible! We can cope.

After following the detour signs to Exit 86, where we pick up Rt. 226, we stop for fuel near Marion, South Carolina. Three bikers are standing around talking. But not to each other. They’re on their Blackberries and Treos. One guy finishes his conversation and I ask him about the detour. “Oh yeah, I saw it on the Grandfather Mountain website, www.grandfather.com.” I pull up the website on my own Treo and see that the Blue Ridge Parkway is closed from Milepost 355 southward to Milepost 375. For the entire year. The most scenic part of the Parkway is off limits in 2008. Mount Mitchell, which is one of our goals, is accessible only from the north.

The detour takes us up a very twisty Rt. 226 to rejoin the Parkway. At one point, hitting a steep left-hand curve a little too hot, my track wonders a little farther toward the edge of the road than I’d planned. “Yikes!” says Kitty in my headset. Well, yeah, my track didn’t quite work out as planned, but I didn’t think it warranted a “Yikes” even though, two feet from my bike’s tires, there was a narrow grassy shoulder and then a steep mountainside drop-off. But that’s because I’m the rider and the bike talks to me: I’ve locked in to the tactile sense of the handlebars in my hands and my brain, I can feel the bike’s angle, I know the reserves I have to play with until I run out of room or have to change something to survive the curve. The passenger has none of those benefits. I was on the back of a Gold Wing once as a passenger. That was often enough. It was very scary for me, because all the sensory input I’m used to getting from the bike was completely missing. So, Baby, it’s ok to say “Yikes.” I’m flexible. I’ll try not to do that again! And it does cause me reflect on how such a small difference could make such a big difference. On most of these roads, tracking two feet one way or the other could spell the difference in a fantastic ride or a fantastic disaster.

Ok, we are flexible. We’ll reach Mount Mitchell from the north. Which, as it turns out, means backtracking southward for 23 miles before riding the narrow 25-mph road up to the mountain. It’s a clear day and I’m looking forward to the view from the observation deck. Clear days on Mount Mitchell are pretty rare. We ride to the top, chat with another biker couple who talk about the same “upside-down” way of travel that I feel, where the destination is secondary to the ride required to get there.

When we walk to the observation deck, we learn that it is closed for the season. Well, we are flexible, so instead of going to the observation deck, we ask the ranger about the road closure. He says there was a major road failure near Craggy Gardens and the entire road in that section has to be rebuilt. It will take at least this season and maybe part of next year to complete the work.

We ride down from the mountain top and backtrack 23 miles northward to our original entry point. The BRP is always a nice slow-down ride, and after a while I wonder why anyone would ever want to ride faster than 45 mph. From the overlooks we can see mountain ranges behind mountain ranges, lapping up into the blue hazy distance like waves on a misty beach. Although we missed what I think is the most spectacular part of the Parkway, it’s a rewarding ride.

Kitty is exceptionally quiet today, and I sense she’s tired. I finally pry out of her that, inexplicably, she only slept a couple hours last night. This has happened to both of us from time to time; no known reason, just unable to sleep well.

Our detour and backtracking will add probably 50 miles to the day’s ride, so I slide out of “poke-around” mode into “riding” mode. We do stop several times, once for a little lunch of peanut butter, carrots and apples that we always carry in the Escapade trailer’s cooler, and we invite another biker over to share an apple and a drink. Steve turns out to be a railroad engineer, and he has tales of the railroad to keep us entertained until it’s time to roll northward. He’s heading south, back to his home in Charlotte.

We swoop through the afternoon. There are two more small detours but these are both pleasant rides through the countryside before rejoining the BRP. We’d planned to ride about 200 miles. By now it’s nearing 6:00 PM and we’ve ridden over 260 miles, mostly on the Parkway, to Fancy Gap, at Milepost 199 in Virginia, where I-77 crosses the Parkway. But it’s ok, because we’re flexible.

Normally we check in to our hotel or motel, shower and change, and then find a restaurant within walking distance. Tonight, though, because we are flexible, we decide to eat at the tiny Lakeside Restaurant just off the Parkway and then ride to the motel I’d booked last night while in Asheville.

And so a day of flexibility once more ends well for us!

Key West or Bust, Day 12

Contrasts
Thursday May 22, 2008

My wrist watch alarm technology continues to improve and not only have I now figured out how to silence it when we don’t want it, but also how to activate it when we do. This morning it sounds at 6:30 AM.

Yesterday, defying all odds, we made our originally planned destination, really without trying. It just happened. Today, well, I’m not so sure: I originally scripted a 370-mile day, all on two-lane or non-Interstate roads, including the last 85 miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway with its 45-mph speed limit. Normally that’s a nice day’s ride on two-lanes, but on the back of a very tiring day with Mickey and a long day yesterday, it might be too much. If it’s a hot day, that might be too many hours in the saddle, even for a super-biker-chick.

Nevertheless, undaunted by reality, by a little after 8:00 AM we roll northward from Vidalia on Rt. 297, a continuation of our two-lane journey through remote areas. We’ve ridden for days now in the same direction, and I’m suddenly struck that there’s a lot of “country” in our country, and it’s filled with incredible variety coast to coast, border to border. No two areas are the same. As well, I’m amazed how we, the human race, have been able to uncover the unique attributes of each area and discover what works, be it gathering seafood, planting crops, harvesting natural resources from above and below the earth, and a host of other ingenious commodities.

Logging, wheat, and peanuts (who are just now poking innocent green shoots through the soil) seem to be the primary industries here.

This day is a gift after the past days of hot weather. We start out at 67F under pristine and cloudless skies, and as we roll northward on Rt. 297 until we intersect US 1 near Swainsboro, the heat never comes into the day. These mostly two-lane roads are just perfect for our mood this morning. Not spectacular in the normal sense, but it just makes us feel good to be on our motorcycle on roads like this, far from the Interstate, mostly far from anyone else, just enjoying the day together. It remains deliciously cool and crisp. We hold US 1 until the town of Wrens, where we pick up Rt. 17.

The elevation here is only 400 feet above sea level, but there’s been a definite change in topography. Gone are the flatlands with their large expansive fields, gone are the pine trees that line the roads. The land here is more rolling and with more hardwoods, and the roads no longer feature miles of straight-line travel. Now, it pays to be sharp for every hilly curve.

We stop in Elberton, the self-proclaimed “Granite Capital of the World.” I wasn’t actually aware that Georgia is one of the world’s premier supplies of very high quality granite. A little research shows that Elberton sits on a layer of granite left by a dome of molten volcanic lava, 35 miles long, 6 miles wide, and estimated at two to three miles deep. That’s enough to fill the Rose Bowl 2 million times. But who’s counting?

I have a secret US tour sketched out: “Centreville, USA”. My goal would simply be to visit at least one town named “Centreville” (spelling does not matter) in every state that contains such a town, and get a picture of the bike with something that identifies the city. So far I’ve got only three. Without checking, I think there might be 34 states that have such a town, Georgia included. So at Elberton, we pick up Rt. 77, as I have added Centerville, Georgia to our itinerary for this trip.

As we near the waypoint, I think, “Wow, this is going to be a small town!” And as we crest the hill and Jill announces “Arriving at Centerville,” we see… nothing but a tin metal shed on the left. There is no Centerville, Georgia! Perhaps in time past there was, but no evidence exists now. As we turn around and retrace our ride, we do see a signpost for “Centerville Road” but it just disappears behind the shed. We concede an ignominious defeat and re-join our regularly scheduled route, already in progress.

Winding northward through Georgia in a complicated route only a GPS could understand or remember (I would never try these two-lane roads without a GPS!), we make our way through Toccoa and finally join US 23 and US 441 northward. By this time the elevation is 1500 feet above sea level and we are definitely in the Smoky Mountain zone. The heavy forests are mostly hardwood, and even the pine trees are different. I don’t have good pine tree technology to know which pines are which, but these pines appear hardier, have thicker trunks, and the branches grow much closer to the ground.

We take a picnic lunch break at Tallulah Point, from which the Tallulah Gorge is visible. This gorge was at one time the premier vacation destination of the Southeast, and was made somewhat famous in 1970 when the high-wire artist Karl Wallenda tightrope-walked the gorge without a net. It’s only 1,000 feet to the bottom. Kitty and I talked about how he dealt with the wind, which is formidable today.

By this time it’s almost 2:30 PM and prior to this stop, we’ve ridden about 220 miles and been off the bike for a total of 35 minutes (the GPS keeps track of these things). “It’s about 150 miles to Asheville,” I tell Kitty. “And remember, the last 85 miles is on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Do you want to bail out and stop now, or skip the Blue Ridge Parkway section?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “No, I don’t want to bail out. I feel good. Let’s do the whole trip.” So I call a Quality Inn near Asheville where I’ve stayed a number of times and book the last available room.

So we follow US 441 through Cherokee and just before 4:00 PM we catch the Blue Ridge Parkway at its extreme southern terminus. At first, I try on the curves like a toddler trying on a new pair of shoes. Having ridden for over a week in the flatlands and straight roads of the South, carving corners is almost foreign to me. I always try to find and hold the perfect line for a curve, but today I’m probably hitting only one in four. The rest of the time I have to make speed or lean angle adjustments. Kitty notices it and thinks I’m going too fast because of the way the bike changes around the curves. But 85 miles later, by the time we reach Asheville, North Carolina, my lines are smooth and I’ve regained my corner-carving confidence.

“You’re going slower now than you did at first,” Kitty says. I smile because I’m actually going 10 mph faster on the same type of curve. It just feels slower because it feels right: Slow down before the curve, pick the right lean angle, keep the eyes level with the horizon as the bike leans into the turn, hold the line, watch the road as far in front of the bike as possible, accelerate coming out of the turn.

Once again today, without really trying, we’ve ridden 370 non-Interstate miles. God smiled on us with clear skies and temperatures in the 70’s (F). One of the things I enjoy most on a ride is to see how the country in our country changes, and do that you have to ride some miles in a compressed time format, and you have to be up close and personal. In two days we've ridden 700 miles from the sunny expanses of central Florida to the rugged mountains of North Carolina. These have been two of those special days.

Oh, yeah, I think I’m going to enjoy the next two days on the BRP.

Key West or Bust, Day 11

Oh, Sweet Vidalia
Wednesday May 21, 2008

My alarm clock technology has improved considerably with this trip. I have now successfully figured out how to turn the thing off when we don’t want it. And so as planned, we sleep until we wake up and it’s after 10:30 this morning when we finish loading the trailer and roll out of the “90’s” Disney parking lot. First order of business is to find fuel, as I rather expected (but didn’t check the GPS) to find fuel near the Pop Century hotel. The nearest fuel in the direction we are heading is about 10 miles.

After fueling up, it’s nearly 11:00 AM and we head northward while talking about how we might want to order our day. Our original destination of Vidalia, Georgia, is about 330 miles, almost all on two-lane roads. This seemed a tall order last night, tired as we were. We talk about the options, of getting home on Memorial Day instead of Sunday as planned, of cutting out parts of the trip, of staying on the Interstates. In the final analysis, Kitty just can’t bring herself to vote for an Interstate ride, and thus we commit to two-lane riding as planned but the stopover points might be modified as necessary. If we get home a day later, it’s ok. We’ll ride today until we feel like stopping.

Thus we take Rt. 429 Toll north to Florida’s Turnpike, where the tolls once again annoy me in that our little Escapade trailer constitutes an extra axle, so we are charged the same toll as a truck with three axles. We have four wheels and gross probably 1,400 pounds. A three-axle truck has 10 wheels and weighs somewhere around 60,000 pounds or more. Where’s the justice in that? We get off the Interstate as soon as possible and work our way past Leesburg to Ocala on US 27. I wish we’d stayed on the Turnpike to Ocala to avoid this densely populated area. Nevertheless, in Ocala we pick up US 301 north to Starke where we stay with Rt. 121, which we hold into Georgia.

“The palm trees are gone,” Kitty comments. She’s right. My WOTI friend Grumpy (he’s actually not grumpy at all, it’s just a Disney thing, so he’s Grumpy and his wife is Happy) who lives in Mount Dora near here calls this the “hill country.” Compared to the vast flatlands of southern Florida, I guess it’s a little hilly, or at least with hints of hills, with lots of lakes and lots of beef cattle ranches. And there are bugs on the windshield. In southern Florida, we’ve ridden for days with virtually no bugs on the windshield, but this morning, 30 minutes of riding results in a bug-riddled wind screen that has to be cleaned at every stop.

Running into Georgia, our straight and flat two-lane road keeps its route number, so we follow Rt. 121 through the Georgia pines and into the afternoon Georgia heat. The temperature is 90F but Kitty and I are both doing well. We’re both surprised how good we feel after being so tired last night. The Georgia speed… uh… shall we say “guideline” on this road is 55 mph. It’s straight and flat, miles of nothing but pine trees, no cross traffic. In west Texas this road would have a Texas speed limit of 75 mph. I don’t ride Texas-fast today, but the urgency of making miles is strongly upon my shoulders, so I, well, create my own speed guideline that I think all concerned parties could live with. It seems to work, as I neither run up behind traffic nor get run over from behind.

And thus to the little village of Folkston, where we take a break and top off the fuel tank. This is actually a remote rural area with very few services, and I don’t like riding with a near-empty tank in these environs.

“I see a lot of pine trees, lots of logging trucks in these parts,” I say to a tiny blond teenaged girl fueling up a giant Ford 4 x 4 diesel pickup truck. “Anything else happening around here? Any other crops? Any industry?”

“No sir.”

“Just logging?

“Yes sir.”

“Nothing else?”

“No sir. This town is too small for anything else. We have only four stoplights.”

Well, I guess that just about sums it up.

For the last 50 miles or so, it’s been increasingly cloudy, and before leaving Folkston we hang out for 10 or 15 minutes waiting for a passing storm off in the north to clear the area. But I can see another front approaching, and decide to see if we can split the difference. We head north on US 1/Rt. 121 toward the dark heart of the storm. On the GPS, I can see our route bearing off to the right, away from the storm, and I think we might miss it but it will be close. A little too close, as it turns out. This time we don’t escape, and within five miles we are in the middle of a small but intense local downpour. By now it is far too late to do the Dance of the Rainsuit, so we keep riding in the heavy rain. With the Tulsa windshield, as long as we can keep moving at about 50 mph, we don’t get too wet, as the still-air bubble from the fairing and windshield surrounds us and keeps most of the raindrops from penetrating. But there’s a period where traffic causes us to slow to about 35 mph, and that’s not fast enough to stay dry.

“Go, road!” I keep urging, trying to inch our way to the east, out of the storm. I’m hoping this isn’t one of my spectacular miscalculations (there have been two, including one with Kitty) where I think we can keep on riding but in fact the visibility is so poor that we have to slow to a crawl or even stop. This time it works out ok, because after about 10 miles of this, we clear the storm and leave the rain behind. In my mirrors, the sky looks black and ominous, but for us, sunshine rules!

The temperature has dropped from 90F to 72F. “That was kinda fun without rain gear,” says Kitty. “At least it’s cool.” In another 10 miles the temperature has returned to 90F, and in 30 miles we’re dry. It's great to be wearing those waterproof Cruiserworks motorcycle boots, otherwise we'd be slogging around in wet leather for two days!

We’d thought that Vidalia, Georgia was a destination too far today, but as it turns out, except for the town of Baxley, 30 miles south, there are virtually no other overnight services along the entire route. So it’s a good thing we feel good, and Kitty is up for the whole trip. Since our dietary changes and weight loss, she’s like a different rider with respect to the distances she can ride comfortably. I had to laugh earlier on this trip when someone sent an email congratulating Kitty for “being able to hold her water longer.” Well, that’s never been the problem — tired butt syndrome was the problem. And like magic, now it isn’t a problem! She’s become a super-biker-chick! It is a joy to travel with Kitty, longer rider or not.

So we decide to go for Vidalia, home of the sweet onions of that same name. In this area of south Georgia, the pine trees have given way to huge flat expanses of golden winter wheat in full fruit. It’s just now in harvest season, about six weeks earlier than the Kansas harvest of the same crop. As we near Vidalia, the strong scent of onions pervades the air, and it appears the onion crop is just nearing the end of its harvest season. Like a giant open-faced sandwich, large gray fields are lying open to the sky with freshly upturned earth where onions have recently been harvested. I want to check whether there is more than one annual season for onions.

By 6:30 PM, we make Vidalia, which was our originally-scheduled destination for the day. We find a Holiday Inn Express with the GPS. They have five open rooms. Fortunately, we only need one. So it’s all good. Who knew we would feel so good today after being so tired last night? We’ve ridden over 330 miles, almost all on two-lane roads. Even if the ride isn't what most people would consider greatly scenic, I feel better on two-lane roads because I think I've done a better job of understanding the geography of our great country. I owe it that.

Tomorrow is another day of options, depending on how we feel and what we feel like doing. Only tomorrow knows what tomorrow may bring.

Key West or Bust, Day 10

Mickey

Tuesday May 20, 2008

By 8:20 AM I have donned my favorite vacation T-shirt, we have boarded the Disney bus, and are waiting for the Animal Kingdom to open. This may be the first time ever that I've been early for a morning event. Oh, the T-shirt? "Temporarily Out of Service."

We opt for the Kilamanjaro Safari for our first ride, thinking the animals might be more active earlier in the day. It pays off and the exotic animals are either actively moving around or resting in plain view.

Then it's off to see "Finding Nemo - The Musical" but we're too early, so we decide on the Everest Expedition roller-coaster where we are quite surprised by a brisk backward ride in total darkness. After wandering around some more, we see "Finding Nemo" and smile at the whimsical puppet/actor characters.

On our way out of the Animal Kingdom, we stop in to see "It's Tough to Be a Bug", a 3-D frolic with a few multi-sensory surprises in store.

We're off to Epcot using our "park-hopper" ticket, and by this time it's after 3:00 PM so we find something to eat in the Chinese pavilion. We visit the various pavilions and decide to eat in the Biergarten but they are booked. It's ok, because German food we know, having grown up in Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish country of Pennsylvania. We decide on a food we don't know: Morrocan.

After making reservations at the Marrakesh restaurant in the Morocco pavilion, we wander to "The Land" and stand in line for an hour for the ride "Soarin'." This is a spectacular ride combining the effects of IMAX huge-screen and flight simulator technology. It's breathtaking and you never leave the building. Fantastic technology!

By now it's time to meander back to Marrakesh for dinner where we have the "Morrocan national dish," couscous, Kitty with chicken, I with a roasted shank of lamb, to the accompaniment of a Moroccan rhythm and string combo. Fantastic! I have to admit I couldn't help but notice the belly dancer who showed up for a while!

After finding a place along the lagoon, we watch "Illumination," a dazzling laser/fireworks/multimedia show that's made all the more amazing because the buildings all around the lagoon participate with lighting effects, lasers, and sparkly things. What a great show! Disney does just about everything with first-class production values, and it shows (pardon the pun).

And we're tired. After a full day with Mickey, we need a vacation day! We'd planned several fairly rigorous riding days for the next two days, but with the heat and the fact that we're pretty tired this evening, we'll sleep in tomorrow and make our way northward when we're rested. We have a number of options including cutting out part of the scheduled ride, spending more time on Interstates, or arriving home one day later.

Once we have a plan, I'll let you know, but I'm pretty sure the plan I've sketched out is out. Out the window, that is.

Our friend Karen has a sign in her office: Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. We're all about flexibility.

Key West or Bust, Day 9

Where There’s Smoke… Don’t
Monday May 19, 2008

When Kitty and I were discussing this trip and talked about riding south along the Gulf coast and then returning through central Florida, she said “Orlando is in central Florida, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s about as central as it gets,” I responded.

“Could we go to Disney World?” she asked with impish grin.

“Yes we could,” I answered.

And so I booked the tickets and the hotel. Two nights in the hotel, one day at the park. So once again we have a destination. I have double- and triple-checked over the past week to make sure we are on schedule and that I haven’t somehow booked the rooms a day early or late! That’s one of my worst fears when we have “hard points” in a trip: That I’ll get out of synch by a day and suddenly we’ll find ourselves wandering around with plans we can’t fulfill and spent money we can't use!

It’s a short ride to the Disney Pop Century Resort Hotel where I’ve made reservations, about 150 miles from Clewiston. We laze around, pick up a few groceries at grocery store, and roll out around 9:30 AM. This morning, a gray pall of smoke hangs like a curtain to the north, but probably east of where we might be traveling. The desk clerk tells us that the route we’ll be taking was pretty smoky this morning but should be cleared by now with the winds from the west.

The first thing I want to do is backtrack to a waypoint I marked yesterday as we rode by, an “Okeechobee Scenic Loop” turnoff. The GPS routes us to the little park and we decide to start by walking up onto the levee, along the south shore of Lake Okeechobee. We immediately see smoking remains of the burning lakebed, and large plumes of dirty white smoke arising across the lake from the north shore. I’m expecting to see a very large body of water, but with the water level where it is now, we see a canal and mostly a dry and smoldering lakebed, with the water a shimmering mirage in the distance.

I’d like to ride the scenic road atop the levee, but Kitty wisely talks me out of this. “Knowing that there are fires burning, firefighters and equipment in use, do you really think we have any business taking our Gold Wing and a trailer on this narrow road into the fire area?”

I know she’s right, and so we abandon our scenic ride for the day and simply ride northward on US 27 to Orlando. It's our hottest morning to date, with the temperature at 89F at 10:00 AM. As we roll northward against a fierce quartering wind from the northwest, holding the posted speed limit of 65 mph, the sugar cane eventually gives way to miles of orange groves, which appear (for this growing season) to be nearly ready for harvest. Some orchards have large trucks already loaded with orange-filled crates. According to the GPS, our elevation has changed from at or slightly below sea level in the Everglades to around 150 feet above sea level, a tiny change but enough to make a dramatic difference in the topography. Judging by the multiple advertising signs we see using the word “Highlands”, it seems this area is thought of as the highlands.

Orange groves give way to beef farms. If I asked any 10 of you which state is the largest producer of beef in the United States, I’d get answers like, what… Texas, certainly. Oklahoma, maybe? Or the more adventurous might volunteer Colorado, or even Wyoming? Nebraska? You would all be wrong. Along with sugar cane, citrus fruits, and several other crops, Florida is also our nation’s number one beef producer!

Along the way, we can see the smoke plumes of the wildfires off to the right, north and east. Occasionally we get a whiff of smoke and once or twice we think there’s a bit of haze hovering over the road surface, but since the wind is carrying the smoke away from us we have no problems.

About 60 miles out of Orlando we begin seeing the first cloud cover since the first two days of the trip, and about 40 miles out, as I look at our GPS waypoint and compare it to the darkest heart of the clouds, I realize we’ll be in the middle of the downpour. We pull over and do the Dance of the Rainsuit amid large drops that are already splattering down. The temperature has dropped 14 degrees to about 72F. But by the time we’re back on the road, the heaviest rain has passed and we are dealt only a glancing blow. After 20 minutes of riding in what’s now bright sunshine, it’s really hot under the rainsuits and so we do the Undance of the Rainsuit. We repeat the dance once more just about 10 miles from our destination when we ride through another downpour. We get to the hotel very early, about 1:30 PM.

Our check-in hostess at the Pop Century Hotel, Sarah of Augusta, Georgia, tells us that the hotel has 2,880 rooms. All I can think is “That’s a lot of laundry!”

"Here's your parking pass," she says. I explain that we're on a motorcycle that will be completely covered and ask her for suggestions. She has none. I solve the problem by taking one of the complimentary luggage tags provided in the purchase package, cutting and folding the parking pass paper until it fits the tag, and attaching it to the tongue of the trailer. Not on the dashboard as requested, but the best I can do.

The hotel is whimsically themed for a century of popular items. It features building-sized icons of things typical during the various decades of the past century, including giant Rubik’s cubes, four-story tall 8-track tapes, a 40-foot high Big Wheel that lists the “Recommended Child Weight” as 877 pounds.

So we find our room in the 70’s building, clean and cover the bike and trailer now that it’s once again sunny, hang out by the pool for an hour and a half while doing our laundry, eat dinner from the food court, and go for a walk along the lake where a mama duck and her two very tiny ducklings walk up to within a foot of us and duck-talk to each other before wandering back down to the water.

Kitty is reading all the materials on what we might do tomorrow. Which is a good thing, because while I more or less got us here and penciled in a few recommendations from friends, I confess I haven’t spent a lot of time figuring out what to do with yet another destination.

Key West or Bust, Day 8

Okeechobee Blues
Sunday May 18, 2008

As I uncover the bike and trailer, it reminds me of a sleeping creature just waking to face the day. Covered, there’s no telling what lies beneath. But as soon as the cover comes off and those radio and CB antennas are raised, I always think “Ah, now there’s a motorcycle!”

By 8:30 AM we’ve had breakfast at Paradise Café and are on the road. I’m a bit melancholy to be leaving Mile Marker 0, because our time there was so short and I so enjoy this land of sun and water and palm trees. We’ve discovered that destinations are cool, too. I learned quickly what to do with one.

Today is a slow rewind of the outbound trip, the names of the Keys appearing in reverse order on the GPS. The vistas are just as spectacular heading back to the mainland. We talk about Mile Marker 0 and Kitty reiterates that there are just too many people for her taste. Enjoyable for a short time but now she’s ready for some country riding.

Today is our hottest day, starting out at 87F and growing warmer, until the fairing thermometer reads 94F at Homestead. Kitty usually doesn’t do well in hot weather, and for this very reason I planned some short-mileage days such as this one. We have two days to run from Key West to Orlando, a distance of just under 400 miles and a something we’d often cover in a day. But I scripted this into a two-day ride, and today I imagine we’ll ride to the Lake Okeechobee area. Last night I’d called a hotel there to find out if there are any fire-related problems that would keep us away. The report came back that although there are fires in the area, there are not likely to be travel problems.

Once more we take Rt. 997 (northward this time) through the Redland district , Florida’s nursery, while Miami, Hollywood, and Fort Lauderdale all slide by on the GPS less than 20 miles to the east, alarmingly close for Kitty. But there’s no evidence here that major east-coast cities are so close. Rt. 997 intersects US 27 northwest of Hialeah, and we run the four-lane north and west to the Lake Okeechobee area.

Lake Okeechobee is the second-largest lake in the lower 48 United States. You can read about it at www.lakeokeechobee.org for a lesson in how grandiose schemes to drain the Everglades have wreaked havoc on this incomparable but delicate ecosystem for generations to come, and how the complex system of canals and locks that now crisscrosses southern Florida is necessary to correct the imbalances created by these schemes and yet supply the cities along the Florida coast. And since the water levels of Okeechobee have been kept artificially higher than the surrounding lands, 40,000 people are now at risk should there be a rupture of the dike. In 1926, a hurricane spilled over the levee and destroyed 13,000 homes. In the hurricane and rainy season of 1947-1948, millions of acres of surrounding land were under water for six months. As US 27 turns toward the central part of the state, we ride past miles and miles of dead cypress trees, millions of naked soldiers standing white and silent in the sun, whatever mission they had in life accomplished, still waiting for the next command. I haven’t done the research, but I suspect these are casualties of the Everglades drainage projects.

After crossing I-75 on our trek northward, the land becomes less swampy, probably thanks to these same drainage projects, and we ride past a number of huge sand and gravel excavation operations. This arable land is mostly planted in sugar cane (Florida is the largest producer of sugar cane in the US), but we also see some large green expanses of turf farms. We smell occasional whiffs of wildfire smoke and see some dark smoke clouds in the distance but not close to where we’re making our best time in the fierce west-to-east wind that catches us broadside and whips the flags on my antennas into a frenzy.

At Belle Glade we decide to ride on to Clewiston where, at the astonishingly early time of 3:30 PM, we decide to stop pushing through the heat and take a break for the day. We find a brand-new Holiday Inn Express that is too new to be in GPS database. This turns out to be one of the nicest properties we’ve found on this trip. We spend some time by the pool like normal travelers, talk to the local people about the fires, and try to find out what to expect tomorrow.

Walking back from Beef O’Grady’s, a sports-bar kind of restaurant the hotel manager had recommended, we see a huge new plume of smoke to the northwest, in the vicinity of where we will be traveling tomorrow. We ask about this and learn that the water level of Lake Okeechobee is currently quite low and it’s actually the dry lake bed that’s burning. Earlier this week, there was a huge multi-vehicle crash on Rt. 27 because of the smoke. The locals say there will be no travel problems except possibly smoke obscuring the roadway. Tonight the wind is blowing from west to east and thus blowing the smoke out across the large lake and away from the roads on the west side, but if the wind shifts to the west tomorrow it could affect our route. Mom, we’ll be careful!

We’ve traveled a modest 234 miles today, 1,631 miles for the trip. This continues to be one of our lowest-mileage rides ever, but as always, each ride takes on its own personality. This one seems to have a low-mileage personality disorder but it’s working for us!

Key West or Bust, Day 7

Mile Marker 0

Saturday May 17, 2008

At Mile Marker 0, time is of a different order. In fact, time just doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot at Mile Marker 0. For us, this is juxtaposed with the fact that we have only one day here. Even so we sleep in and have a lazy breakfast at the Paradise Café, just a few blocks from the hotel. Our server is, I would guess, Slavic, judging from her accent (it’s a bit of a hobby of mine), so I ask her about why she’s in Key West. She’s Ukrainian. Close. And she loves Key West because at Mile Marker 0, time stretches out and all the things that made people uptight in New York, where she lived for six years, don’t exist here. She says she may stay here for the rest of her life.

We have only a loosely-formed plan for the day, and first we walk back to Mallory Square and book tickets on a reef cruise, one of those glass-bottomed boat affairs. We cruise seven miles south to the reef, where we float for about 40 minutes. I would have expected the rumble of the diesel engines to frighten the fish, but on the contrary, they seem quite curious and schools of brightly-colored fish, whose names I don’t remember more than 10 seconds after the guide identifies them, follow the boat. Seeing the reef underwater, it becomes evident why the sea appears mottled from above. The deeper sections of the reef are sandy, and these areas reflect more light and thus appear as the lighter green areas. The uneven coral-covered sections of the reef are darker and account for the darker turquoise seas.

I ask the tour guide about water temperatures and algae. Algae has been on the increase as water temperatures have become slightly warmer over the years, but the guide doesn’t think the algae have affected the water quality on the reefs around Key West. The water is actually rather clear, although through the glass I can’t really judge the visibility.

Returning to the dock, we have lunch at the Half Shell Oyster bar, where we are joined by a rooster and a number of pigeons. You gotta love a restaurant that features a sign as you walk in, “Don’t feed the birds.” This place has literally thousands of license plates, donated over the past 20 years, that almost completely cover all the walls.

At Mile Marker 0, there are quite a bewildering variety of available travel conveyances, from bicycles to motorized scooters to hired bicycle hacks to little four-wheeled, street-legal electric contraptions that look a lot like modified golf carts. We, being the contrarians that we are, spurn them all and decide to walk Key West. I have my little yellow eTrex loaded with waypoints and it serves us well.

We walk to Ernest Hemingway’s house for little reason other than that Hemingway was one of the first authors that helped me realize the value and the joy of literature. We learn that currently there are 47 cats on the premises, and they have the run of the place. We see several six-toed cats, which, if I’m not mistaken, is likely the result of decades of inbreeding. And we learn the story of why there are so many roosters on the island: At one time a third of the population was Cuban, a culture where cockfighting was an accepted practice. The US population took exception to this, and the city passed an ordinance that all the roosters must be freed. And they are free today. There’s a $500 fine for “harassing a rooster.” And it begs the question: Where are the hens, without which there will be no roosters?

We walk across the street to the Key West lighthouse and I climb to the top for an elevated view of Key West. In the visitor center is a first order Fresnel lens. Without going into detail, Fresnel lenses, named after their French inventor and pronounced “frey-nel”, were for several hundred years including modern times the best light-focusing device ever created. A first-order lens could be seen 20 to 30 miles at sea. This first-order lens is in pristine condition and it is the closest I’ve ever been to one. What a monster! It must be 12 feet or more high, and probably six feet across its largest diameter. Kitty opts to stay in the air-conditioned museum rather than climb the 88 steps to the top. This lighthouse has a fifth-order lens and is still lit although it has been decommissioned for some years.

And farther south still until… we can walk south no farther. It is the southernmost point on the United States, and we pose for pictures along with a dozen other visitors. At Mile Marker 0, it is literally the end of the line.

A walk back to the hotel for a shower and then back to Mallory Square for dinner and another spectacular sunset. There are thousands more people milling around than last night; my theory is that most tourists book Saturday-to-Saturday visits, so this is the first night in Key West for many of them. On a Friday night like last night, many of them would be preparing to leave town. After sunset, we seek out some Key lime pie at Meson de Pepe’s. The place is jumping with a fantastic Cuban band and has a long waiting time, but the hostess sneaks us in to the bar where we can order Key lime pie and coffee. Don’t leave Mile Marker 0 without having some Key lime pie! They do use real Key limes here!

I’ve carried my little eTrex all day, and after cutting-and-splicing the track segments so the boat tour was removed, I discover that we have walked 8.3 miles today. My feet and legs feel it!

I feel like I could live at Mile Marker 0. Maybe it’s not so bad to have a destination if the destination is Mile Marker 0. Next time, I’m ready to make this a real destination and stay a while. There’s something about the atmosphere that I find vibrant and exciting, yet peaceful and relaxing. Boats bobbing gently in the harbor, the slap of a wake against the dock pilings, the creak of the boat mooring lines, the cries of the sea birds and their graceful aerobatics, year-round open-air dining in cutoffs (even among roosters and pigeons), these things I find extraordinarily appealing. Kitty, not so much. She struggles with having so many people in close proximity. And at heart she’s not a water girl, she’s a farm girl.

But this has been fun. It’s been good. Tomorrow we revert back to being motorcyclists and turn northward. But today, we went farther south than we have ever been.

For tonight, we are at Mile Marker 0.

Key West or Bust, Day 6

Coping With Destinations
Friday May 16, 2008

This morning is a sleep-in morning but the alarm from my wrist watch sounds at 6:30. Not because I want it to, but because after several failures I apparently got it working and now I keep forgetting to turn it off!

Yesterday in browsing through a booklet at the motel, Kitty happened to see an entry about the Redland Fruit and Spice Park, a one-of-a-kind experimental park with exotic plants from around the world. We’d decided to check it out, and it doesn’t open until 10:00 AM according to the brochure.

I make sure the GPS logs are reset for the day. The unit has four independent mileage logs. I have one set to record all miles the GPS travels, one is unused at the moment, one is for our entire Key West trip, and one is a daily log that I reset every day. The trip log reads 1,253 miles. Kitty notes this and says, “This must be a low-mileage record. I don’t remember ever being on the road for five days and traveling only 1,253 miles.” I think she’s right, and at the same time I am amused at our next-door motel neighbors who are in near disbelief first, that we would actually ride the bike to Key West instead of trailering it there, and second, that we’ve traveled the vast distance of 1,253 miles in just five days! I don’t bother to tell them that I’ve traveled farther than that in just 24 hours, or twice that in less than 50 hours.

So it’s off to the Redland Fruit and Spice Park, perhaps just to prove to ourselves that we actually can do something on a trip except ride. The GPS has a point of interest for the park, so I route to it. Jill seems to have recovered and the unit is operating normally. (I spent some time last night poking around in several GPS newsgroups that I frequent, and it seems there was some unusual sunspot activity plus the sun and satellite positions were in an unusual array, so I now postulate that the weird behavior I saw yesterday morning may well have been to do sunspot and satellite anomalies.)

Arriving at the Redland Fruit and Spice Park, we find we have stumbled into the middle of the International Orchid Festival. People from all over the world come to this thing. Who knew there was so much to know and so much to-do about orchids? It is quite amazing. We see a hundred different types of orchids, none of which I would have recognized as an orchid. We walk around among the various exotic trees from around the world and marvel at some of the strange fruits they bear!

Sometime after 11:00 AM we head southward on US 1 toward Key West, some 125 miles and about three hours away. Traffic is moderate but moving at least at the speed limit, which is generally 45 with occasional stretches of 50 or 55 mph speed limits. The Overseas Highway in Key Largo starts out as a nondescript tree-lined, two-lane road with heavy traffic, but the scenery improves as we travel toward Key West. Kitty marvels at the mottled hues of the turquoise waters of the Atlantic Ocean on the left and the Gulf of Mexico on the right. Dark green islands in the distance appear to be floating on a paler sea of green. The elevated bridges offer spectacular panoramic views of the green water on which sails of ships large and small can be seen silhouetted against the blue sky.

And thus to Key West, Milepost 0 by any standard. We have reached our destination under cloudless skies and moderate temperatures of about 86 F. And it is strange, because we are not destination travelers. We are in it for the travel, hardly ever for the destination. But here we are, and we have to figure out how to cope with a destination. What does anyone do with a destination? What do we do with one?

Once again feeling very conspicuous in our long jeans and motorcycle boots (the desk clerk says "It's Ok -- we can tell you're on a motorcycle"), we check into the Eden House hotel where I've made reservations weeks ago (www.edenhouse.com). This is a cleverly restored 1920's era hotel set in a miniature tropical paradise mid-town. Most of the smallish rooms have a little porch with a hammock, and there are swings and hammocks set throughout the property amid the lush palm trees and tropical plants. It's perfect for the social, cutoffs-and-flip-flops atmosphere of Key West.

We decide to walk the half-mile or so to Mallory Square for dinner and to see the fabled Key West sunset. We settle for a supposedly authentic Cuban restaurant, Meson de Pepe (I’m pretty good with Spanish but had to look up the fact that “meson” means “inn”), where we are serenaded by a colorful rooster that wonders in an out among the diners on the outdoor patio. After dinner we wonder off to see the spectacular sunset, which happens exactly as predicted, at 8:04 PM. Wow, it is no wonder that thousands of people gather here every evening to watch the sunset at the southernmost point of the United States! I’ve never seen a sub-tropical sunset, and it’s shocking to see how rapidly the sun descends behind the outlying islands. I take about 30 photographs, not knowing when I’ll get the chance again. It is truly a spectacular phenomenon!

Afterwards we watch some amazing street theater performances for a while and then wonder off to walk along Duval Street where various assorted weirdness is likely to assert itself at any moment.

Tomorrow is a zero-mile day. The bike is covered and in a special parking place where the hotel manager told me it could stay for the duration.

Tomorrow we will discover more about destinations.

Key West or Bust, Day 5

Gator Bait

Thursday May 15, 2008

By 8:00 AM we are making our good-byes to our friend Mary. She’s departing for an out-of-country trip. We’re southbound along Florida's Gulf Coast, Key West or Bust.

For a while, it seems like it might be bust, unless I can recover my navigating skills without the GPS. For an unknown reason, the map screen keeps locking up. The GPS seems functional in all aspects, seems to navigate just fine, but just can’t draw the screen. I’m amused at how helpless I feel without the familiar magenta route line or, even if not navigating a route, the street names displayed crisply on the map. Several time I get off route and Jill announces that I’m off route and offers to recalculate, which she does, but just can’t redraw the screen.

This problem could arise because of a corrupted map segment/file or it could be a GPS problem. I cycle it off/on many times, and eventually it gets better. It finally draws the screen properly and displays the route appropriately; I don’t dare touch the screen for fear that it will once again go into spasm. Tonight I will copy all the routes, tracks, and waypoints to my laptop and prepare to do a hard reset if necessary.

This morning, for no particular reason, we are a quiet couple. Yesterday we were very chatty, talking for hours in our headsets. About why the north Florida soil is black whereas it is sandy in South Carolina. About Kitty’s colleagues at work. About how I love my work. About speedos and Jabba the Hut. About our friends and loved ones at home and how much we appreciate all the people in our lives even while we’re running away for a brief time. About Danica and her antics.

But today, not so chatty. We roll without much talk southward along the Tamiami Trail, US 41, a hundred miles of sun-baked shopping centers, housing developments, and assisted living complexes in pastel shades of coral, peach, and sand. Cross streets and red lights abound between Sarasota and Naples. I had purposed to take the Tamiami Trail just for the sake of having ridden its length from Sarasota southward, but a dozen times I almost bail out and take the Interstate. Great place to visit, not so great for a motorcycle ride, although Kitty says she now has a great many new landscaping ideas!

From the Gulf coast, to get to the Keys you pretty much have to cross to the other side of the state by traveling eastward on Alligator Alley (I-75) or the Tamiami Trail through the Great Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades. As you might expect, I have chosen the two-lane route. So after passing through Naples we turn east and strike a mostly straight course for the 90-mile dash along the Miami Canal through the Preserve and the northern edge of the Everglades.

A series of my favorite road signs occurs in the Preserve: “Panther Crossing 5 Miles”, repeated every mile for five miles using the appropriate mileage indicator. I have traveled all over the United States and Canada and have never seen another Panther Crossing sign, and it just makes me smile. There remain only 30 of the endangered Florida panthers, and we learn at the visitor center that being hit by cars is the chief cause of fatality. Thus the 50-mph speed limit (45 at night) on a straight and deserted road that begs for 70 mph travel. Nevertheless, I hold the speed limit like a good citizen. Fortunately, I do not hit and kill a panther. Unfortunately, neither do we see one.

At the visitor center we get a few mementos and ask about where we might see alligators without taking the Wing and trailer on graveled or dusty roads. “Just walk outside to the boardwalk and I’d bet money you’ll see some. It’s mating season and they’re pretty frisky,” says the ranger.

So we walk outside and sure enough, we see upwards of eight gators, two of them quite large. They don’t seem very frisky. Actually, mostly they don’t move, simply immersing their scaly bodies in the murky water while resting their heads on a rock or the bank of the canal, eyes and nostrils just above water. One seems confused about what an alligator should do, though, as his tail is out of the water and his head is immersed. The most frisky one is swimming lazily up the canal, tail describing a slow series of graceful sinuous curves while his head remains motionless as the water gently ripples out behind him in a v-shaped wedge. The other gators pay no attention.

Minutes after leaving the visitor center and resuming our eastward trek, we both notice the acrid smell of smoke in the air. This is the first sign we’ve seen of the fearsome Florida fires. Days ago, I saw on the CNN website that the area around Naples was declared unhealthy due to wind-blown smoke from the Okeechobee fires, but it was clear today as we passed through. Now, though, the smoke becomes thicker and a ghostly pale fog envelopes the road surface and the trees in the distance. It’s eerie and makes me feel vaguely claustrophobic. It’s all-encompassing in an unsettling sort of way and there seems to be no way out. In about 20 miles the smoke lessens and in 30 miles, by the time we’re 28 miles west of Miami and turn southward onto Rt. 997, the smoke is gone.

Travel for us is so very upside down compared to what I imagine would be the case for normal travelers. When we tour on the Wing, our main purpose is to ride. We don’t do much. Our travel philosophy is really pretty basic: If you see a tour bus parked somewhere, don’t go there. And be afraid — be very afraid! — if ever you might see three of said buses at any one place. I ask Kitty several times today if she wants to do any of those Everglades things that normal people do, but she’s just not that interested and neither am I. I’d love to learn more about the environment, but those tour buses are just too daunting. I can’t make myself do it!

We roll southward on Rt. 997 through the heartland of Florida’s plant nursery. Kitty loves it, as I knew she would. There are miles of nurseries filled with exotically graceful palm trees of various kinds, whole sections filled with red bougainvillea, fields of beans and potatoes, nurseries with all types of concrete creations, potted flowering plants in profusion. It’s a veritable feast for a plant-lover. I always think that a palm tree with it's perfectly graceful fronds and the symmetrical yet asymptotic curve of its branches, is just about one of the most perfectly appealing plants God ever created!

By the time we reach Homestead and find a Comfort Inn for the night, the GPS seems to be working flawlessly again. I suspect a corrupted map segment as the cause of this morning’s problems, but still I download all the GPS information to the laptop in case I need to do a hard reset. For now, it’s all good.

Tonight is laundry night. See you tomorrow!

Key West or Bust, Day 4

Finding Love on the Interstate Wednesday May 14, 2008 Last evening the hotel valet people put us in the underground parking garage. This is always a cause for pause, because the guard gate arm doesn’t always properly sense the motorcycle and returns early to its guard position, which is especially inconvenient if the motorcycle is being followed by a little Escapade trailer, and said trailer is higher than the bar at rest. So the valet guard manually opened the gate for me as the bike passed through. This morning, I fear the same problem. Kitty goes to find the attendant while I test the exit gate. I pull up to the gate and it opens on cue. I sit there for a while and it stays up, then I back away and it closes. I decide it senses the bike and will stay retracted, so I try again and hurry through without a problem. Kitty hasn’t found the attendant, so we are on our way. This is a day of mostly Interstate travel. We have almost 400 miles from Savannah, Georgia to Sarasota, Florida where we are scheduled to meet a long-time family friend. We plan to travel I-95 into Florida, and before we get to Jacksonville, take Rt. 200 west to US 301 south and follow it until we hit I-75. It’s not a particularly long travel day for us as Interstate days go, but it is the longest day of the trip and a bit of mental positioning is in order for this day. I have stood front and center and declared my aversion to Interstates when Kitty and I are traveling together. But the day is what it is, and I can meld into the moment, so the long straight stretches become, not a boring Interstate, but a part of the biker experience. Because Interstates need love, too. So while we’re rolling down the seemingly endless four-lane highway lined with palmettos and pin oaks, let me explain a few details for the non-bikers who might be reading this. For my biker friends, you can skip this just like you would skip the Interstates we are riding today. We tow an Escapade trailer (http://www.californiasidecar.com/) that has a capacity of over 25 cubic feet, about the size of a Honda Civic trunk. Quite sufficient for Kitty’s makeup kit! (Actually, Kitty travels light — it’s all my stuff that takes up the space.) Our 1500 Gold Wing SE has adjustable air suspension, cruise control, CB radio, regular radio, and a tape deck. When we talk to people about taking long trips, I think they envision Kitty perched precariously on the back of a tiny little seat with no support, frantically clutching onto the rider for hundreds of miles on end. Actually, Kitty’s seat is as comfortable as a rocking chair, with a back support that reaches her shoulders and armrests on either side with various pockets to put stuff. We have Shoei helmets outfitted with microphones and headphones. The bike’s stereo system can be played using the on-board 4-speaker system or routed through the headsets. We always use the headsets. When a musical passage is playing and either of us talks, the music is automatically muted for the duration of the conversation, after which it returns to normal volume. My Garmin StreetPilot 2720 GPS unit is pre-loaded with maps and over six million waypoints for the entire US and Canada, and I can upload or download waypoints, routes, and tracks to and from my laptop, which always travels with me in the already-described trailer. The GPS is connected into our headset so that Jill’s voice (there are over a dozen different voices and languages) can guide us to whatever destination we have chosen. US 301 strikes an arrow into the heart of Florida until it reaches Ocala, featuring a speed limit of 65 mph except for the occasional towns along the way. In one of those towns we stop for fuel and break, and I’m reminded of a recent Sunday sermon by our son Kevin. He talked about when speedos go Star Wars. That is, the speedo wearer has the body hair of Chewbacca and the physique of Jabba the Hut. He described walking on a glorious white-sand beach and seeing such a creature. Here he was with his gorgeous wife Kristal, in the exquisite surroundings of a beautiful beach, and all he could do was stare at the speedo guy. Kevin, my son, I now understand how truly upsetting this can be! At our fuel stop, I saw a bicyclist with skinny legs that didn’t look like he could even pedal a bicycle, skin-tight speedos, and… a huge stomach that lapped way down over the speedos. I now agree: speedos should be outlawed. It may take quite a while to recover from this unsettling image. Today Kitty has discovered that she has a voice and she continues to feel better, which is a good thing because we will take the minimum number of rest breaks. Since Kitty lost 50 pounds, she is like a different traveler. Used to be we’d stop every hour or hour and a half max, and now we sometimes ride nearly tank-to-tank, or about three hours, if the weather is cool. Hot weather affects us both, and as we travel, the temperature rises from a cool 67 F to about 86 F, and we do stop oftener than planned. Still, we reach Sarasota by about 4:30 PM. Our Sarasota friend Mary had asked us to stay with her tonight, but it turns out she’s going out of the country tomorrow and I’d sent an email telling her we’ll get a hotel and just hook up for dinner. I give her a quick call my cell phone. “Hey, Mary, we’re here!” “What?!” she nearly yells into the phone. “Where are you? Why aren’t you here?” I explain and she insists that we cancel the hotel and come to her place for the night. I have a GPS waypoint for her house and Jill leads us flawlessly to her beautiful Florida home. After cleaning up in a shower filled with an alarming number of bottles, vials, sponges, and other objects that I only vaguely recognize, we head out to a local seafood restaurant, Stonewood. I order seared Ahi tuna, which turns out to be delightfully rare with a complex layer of tastes. The wasabi, though, is covered up with lettuce and comes as a complete surprise when I scoop up a mouthful with some lettuce and a piece of tuna! Mary and Kitty and I talk about old times and new, and, as is often the case with long-standing friends, about good and not-so-good times. As we’re finishing dinner, Kitty gets a call from Kristal (daughter-in-law) and Danica (granddaughter), and I get a call from our dear friend Karen with some fantastic news on their life project (http://www.updateonbabyclark.blogspot.com/). And so back to Mary’s house, where I clean and cover the bike parked in her driveway. It just goes to show that if you’re looking for love in all the right places, you can find it even on the Interstate.

Key West or Bust, Day 3

Bikers and the City

Tuesday May 13, 2008

Since we have a very light riding day, we sleep in as long as possible. But eventually, the lure of a perfect southern day entices even the most sleepyheaded into action and to embrace the day.

And it is a perfect day, unusually crisp and cool for this time of year, 51F and perfectly formed. By 8:30 AM we have fueled the bike and are ready to head southward on I-77. But Jill, my GPS friend, keeps clicking in my ear. I've never heard her do this before and it's actually quite annoying. It appears I've created a spurious waypoint and it is corrupted, because the GPS keeps going back to the "touch-screen-waypoint" screen regardless of what I do. "Won't that annoy you?" Kitty asks.

Well, yeah, but what am I to do? Can't sit here waiting for Jill to fix herself. After trying various things without success, I finally think of trying to delete the wayward waypoint, and that seems to fix the problem. I've never had this issue before with any of my GPS units, so it's a mystery to me.

With that problem resolved, we set off southward. I think of motorycling, of life and its rewards. This is such a perfect day, and to think that only two days ago we were slogging through vicious downpours! It occurs to me that this perfect day is emblematic of life in general: The best rewards come after the times when it's hard to perservere, when hope most difficult to maintain. The brightest days often come after the darkest.

After an hour and 40 minutes of perfectly delightful riding, we stop for a break, and I'm standing in the lobby of the rest area idly looking at a map. Kitty walks up and I describe our intended route. I-77, as Interstates go, has been a lovely ride this morning, but at heart, when traveling with Kitty, I'm not an Interstate kind of guy. "Can we avoid I-95?" Kitty asks.

Well, yes, we can. And so I choose a route where we work our way off the Interstate and westward about 10 miles using a "shortest-distance" route that only Jill could love. We have to deviate several times because Jill, in her zeal to create the shortest route, doesn't always consider whether all the routes are paved! At the town of North, we turn left on US 321 South, which immediately pays riding dividends.

This is the rural South, with long smooth stretches of pavement interspersed with small towns featuring the occasional white southern mansion with its tall columnades and live oak trees exotically festooned with hanging strands of moss, giant magnolia trees holding their own space in the expansive green lawns. Some of these live oak trees must be large enough to overspread my entire property! The primary field crop seems to be corn, which appears to be about 12-18 inches tall this time of year. In one field we see a giant machine with a spraying apparatus that must be at least 80 feet wide. A white fog emanates from the spraying. Logging trucks and the implements of logging are everywhere. We ride due south through miles of tall green forests that are mostly pine but also, until corrected by someone who really knows, what I'm going to call pin oak forests. To our right is a railroad track; we never leave it for 80 miles or more, but Kitty is disappointed that we never see a train.

I am so happy Kitty gently urged me to find a route that escapes I-95! This has been a low-key and relaxing but captivating ride! On a motorcycle, two lanes are better than four just about any day! We get to Savannah at a little after 1:00 PM, check with the hotel to make sure everything is in order (we can't check in until about 3:30), and then ride 15 miles east along a scenic Rt 80 through the swampland to Tybee Island, Savannah's beach and the locale of several historic old forts. On either side are brown grassy swamplands and shrimp boat docks.

On our motorcycle, Kitty & I really are the antithesis of city folks. We usually avoid cities entirely, so Savannah is a bit of an experiment to see if we might actually like dabbling in city life. But we are strangely out of place here, out of synch, and I can't help thinking we do better together on the open road. This is never more evident than when we walk on the North Beach of Tybee Island in our long jeans and motorcycle boots, surrounded by beautiful people in tans and beach attire. On vacation and off the bike, I could be one of those people, and frequently am (well, except for the beautiful part); on the bike, well, I just want to be on the bike. Much as I crave my beach time, somehow this leaves me a little empty and I'm ready to be back in the saddle again.

On the way back to Savannah we stop at Old Fort Jackson, which has quite a colorful history with regard to defending Savannah against the British and later against the Union forces. Ironically, its last stand was ended by a command to evacuate when the Union General Sherman arrived in Savannah on his famous march, and in that confrontation not a shot was fired from the venerable old fort. The Savannah River is wide and deep here, and several oceangoing vessels pass into or out of the harbor while we are there.

As we unpack, I can only marvel at the bewildering assortment of stuff we pull out of our trailer and into the elevator to our fouth-floor hotel room. "What ever happened to those people who threw an extra pair of jeans into the saddlebag and were off for a week?" I ask Kitty. She has no answer. But as I recall telling my son, "We are the people I warned us about!"

My WOTI friend Roger Riley recommended Uncle Bubba's for dinner, or Paula Deen's (Lady and Sons), also recommended by some others. Well, by the time we get back to our hotel in the historic district, we are hungy. We talk about riding to Uncle Bubba's or walking to Paula Deen's but in the end, Mazlo always wins: we walk to the waterfront and enter pretty much the first restaurant we see, which happens to a Cajun place named Huey's. Cajun with a South Carolina flair: they serve Kitty's grilled salmon with garlic and parmesan cheese grits! I have a crawfish etouffee and thus Mazlo is happy and so are we.

Tomorrow is our longest riding day for this trip, about 400 Interstate miles to Sarasota. We've been watching the news about those terrible fires in Florida, and this evening I actually called our friend in Sarasota. We think our southbound route probably won't be affected, as we're tracking mostly along the Gulf coast, but the return trip was scheduled to run by Lake Okochobee, one of the hardest hit areas.

It's a lot to think about. And we'll think about it as we need to, and we are quite ready to abandon or modify any plans we've made.