Friday July 3, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
- Excerpts from Here Comes the Sun by George Harrison and The Beatles
For the first time in a week, when I look upward at the sky like every motorcyclist does every morning, whether in a tent, a picnic table at the Iron Butt Motel, or in a five-star hotel, I see blue sky and sunshine. It’s a wonderful thing and it just makes me happy. We may yet need our rain gear today, but for now we pack it up and stow it in the right-hand saddlebag. All the covers for the bike and trailer are wet, and we have multitudes of damp and waterlogged cleaning cloths. Water is everywhere and we drape the stuff all over the bike to dry out just a bit while we have breakfast. Yesterday we made a tactical error in not covering the cloth-covered bike seat in preparation for the heavy rain even though we have a fitted vinyl cover, and by the time we could stop it was too late — water runs off the rainsuits onto the cloth seat where it collects, and now we have a wet seat. But at least we have sunshine!
Packing up and figuring out what to do with all our wet stuff is a slow process but finally we’re finished and ready to go. I replace yesterday’s clear helmet shield with the customary dark one. Our dark shields are the darkest allowed by law, so dark they look black from the outside; I actually prefer the dark shield in rain, but only my clear shield is fitted with a Fog City anti-fogging setup and I had to use the clear shield yesterday in the heavy rain.
We run through a few little sprinkles this morning but sunshine rules the day on this last leg of our journey. It’s been a great ride even though, as Kitty says, we’ve have more rain and fog than any other trip. We’ve learned to make friends with the weather and take it as it comes, but still, everyone loves a sunny day. Yesterday riding through the pouring rain, Kitty started laughing as she noticed the car beside us videotaping the Wing and its passengers. Nobody takes pictures of us on a sunny day.
We’ve done pretty well with Kitty’s Kardinal Rules: No snakes, no cities, no traffic. Although, yesterday’s six miles of backed-up traffic approaching the Tappan Zee Bridge pretty much violated Rule #3, but there were extenuating circumstances: I actually tried to find a better country route but a large vicious thunderstorm blocked my way. I’m hoping I’ll get a pass on this one. Otherwise, her trip parameters have been met. We haven’t seen any snakes, and we’ve not been to one large city. However, New York City is not far away, probably 30 miles or so, and on the GPS I watch it slide by to our left as we travel southward on I-287.
“Hey, Baby, I hope you notice that we’re not in New York City!” I volunteer, trying to regain some points from yesterday’s deduction for the traffic jam I got us into.
“Yeah, but I see road signs for New York City,” she says.
“Yeah, but if you notice, we’re not following them!” I respond hopefully.
“Yeah, but even if the name is on any road sign, there’s always a danger of being too close to it!” she says with finality.
We catch I-78 West and head west toward Pennsylvania. We have one more toll. “I’m sure they will charge us for the extra axle!” Kitty says. She’s right. Almost always, our motorcycle and trailer get charged tolls for three-axle vehicles, same as a typical dump truck. It has 10 wheels. I have four, and the entire weight of the bike (815 pounds) and trailer (300 pounds with luggage), and two passengers (say, another 300 pounds) is probably one-fifth of just one of that truck’s wheels even empty. What’s up with that?
Rolling west on I-78, an old waypoint for my WOTI friend Bill Jermyn’s house slides into view on the GPS. I select the waypoint and see that it’s less than five miles off the Interstate. “Let’s check it out!” I say. I let the GPS generate route to the waypoint, and we arrive to find Bill relaxing and getting ready for the big NASCAR race tomorrow. His wife has just left for an out-of town trip. We sit around for half an hour, talk about some old times, old friends, and new adventures, then we’re off again. I haven’t seen Bill in years and it was great to renew our acquaintance on this spur-of-the moment drop-in visit.
We follow the GPS instructions around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and catch US 15 south. Sunshine and blue sky continue to be our good friends.
“I’ve been thinking about something all day,” I tell Kitty. “I’ve given this careful consideration, and I do believe I prefer this kind of riding day more than yesterday!” I get a nice little back rub for my lame attempt at wittiness.
We talk about our favorite parts of the trip. Both us of were somehow charmed by the town of Percé, a friendly little town with comprehensive services but completely without pretense or commercialism. Just a working seacoast town doing its best to transform visitors into friends. It sure worked for us! I’m sure our experience was enhanced by our stay at Hotel la Normandie, and we had a most wonderful evening walking hand-in-hand on the boardwalk through the fog and sea spray to a nearby restaurant, La Maison du Pecheur, where the charming bilingual staff did their best to help us laugh our way through a spectacular (if expensive) seafood dinner and French language “lessons.”
In our travels, I asked many people in many businesses how the economy has affected their livelihood. Almost universally, in Canada and the United States, the answer was that bookings and business are off by fully one-half compared to last year.
One pleasant surprise was the availability of high-speed Internet access. Before the trip, I was concerned about Internet access, but we’ve had high-speed Internet availability every single night, even in the smaller towns of the Gaspésie.
Cruise control on the Wing worked perfectly after that second-day switch-cleaning in Binghamton, New York. There were no other mechanical flaws, although there was the trailer tire thing in Paspébiac. I just think of it as bringing home some good Canadian air. I’ve checked the mileage log I keep with the trailer and wow, was I wrong about the tire mileage! The trailer tires I replaced had nearly 18,000 miles of service and had been to Nova Scotia, twice to Texas, and to Key West. And there was the electrical problem that may have been caused by an erosion of the insulation in the trailer electrical pigtail. I’ll never be sure what caused that fuse to fail.“And now,” I say to Kitty, “it’s time for a most important question.” I wait for a couple beats, then finish: “Where do you want to go next year?”
She laughs and says something about the grandkids. “And where do you want to go?”
“Well, I still have that three-week tour sketched out starting from the Canadian Rockies all the way to New Mexico and then home through Texas.” We will see.
We arrive at home around 4:50 PM, still enjoying our sunny day. We’ve ridden 327 miles today, 2,828 total miles according to the GPS. The odometer shows 2,841 miles and I always defer to the GPS. It has been one of our shortest trips and certainly the wettest but yet filled with rewarding moments when we least expected them, and a store of great memories to cherish always.
So another trip is on record, in digital pictures, and in our memory. I made friends with Slow-Down Guy even though he seemed to be in hibernation during the last two days of the ride. Kitty is the ultimate travel companion and I am extraordinarily blessed to share my life and my trips with a woman of such exquisite sensitivity for the small blessings and the tiny things, yet such a perfect sense of balance for the big picture. It makes me happy just to be with her. Being with her on a motorcycle is a bonus.
I haven’t been everywhere but it’s on my list. — Susan Sontag
GPS Track Log, Day 12
GPS Track Log for Entire Trip
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