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!