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.