MACH 14: Day 14 - A Mother's Day

Day 14: A Mother’s Day

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

“Happy Mother’s Day!” are my first words to Kitty.  It’s Mother’s Day 2014, and like quite a few other Mother’s Day, we are on the road somewhere.  Sometimes just starting a trip, sometimes, as today, on the homeward segment.  It is indeed fortunate for me that what Kitty wants for Mother’s Day is a motorcycle ride!

We have only 345 miles for today to reach home, so once again it’s a lazy breakfast and a late 10:00 AM start before we roll out on I-81 north, which actually runs more east and west in these parts of Virginia as it tracks through the valley between the Appalachian ridges.  

It’s a foggy morning after the night’s rain, and on the XM Weather radar large orange areas of fog overlay the map.  Visibility is fine, though, and the world looks a little mysterious, slightly out of focus, a little fuzzy around the edges.  With temperatures in the 70s, most of it lifts off to the mountains in an hour of riding.

Compared to our trip southward exactly two weeks ago, the trees are much greener, trees are almost fully leaved, clothed in the new green of springtime.  That same green color has clawed its way up the mountain sides to all but the highest peaks, where it will take still longer for foliage to develop.

When I travel by myself, I often spend hours listening to Sirius XM Radio.  This is great because there’s virtually any kind of music, sports, comedy, news, or talk radio one could desire, and it stays with you wherever you go until you decide it’s time for something else.  When traveling to Key West, the Jimmy Buffet channel seems just the ticket.  Or how about some good old southern rock when rolling through Alabama -- hardly anything better in the genre than Lynyrd Skynyrd and Sweet Home Alabama with that iconic guitar riff in the headsets -- or some bluegrass or mountain music while roaming in the Appalachian mountains.  Or when in Georgia, maybe even some funky country music on the Outlaw Country channel.  And it’s hard not to think of country music when navigating the expansive two-lane roads of Texas.

Of the 18 presets I can set on my system, the first three are Channel 63 The Message (contemporary Christian),  Channel 66 Watercolors (so-called “smooth jazz”), and Channel 31 Coffee House (acoustic covers and original singer-songwriter material).  I have 15 other presets with a wide variety of material plus dozens and dozens of other channels at my fingertips.

When Kitty and I travel together, she tends to prefer riding without music although I often have the CB active.  Today, though, she asks for The Message channel.  On Sundays, this channel plays less contemporary Christian music and more praise-oriented music.  As we roll toward the Shendandoah Valley, the songs are like Singalong Sunday:  Songs we used to perform years ago in our church band with various worship leaders, covers of songs we recognize but don’t know the performing artist, along with more current music and special Mother’s Day inserts.  I have to wonder how many songs have been written in the past 30 years!

We make one fuel stop near Lexington sometime after 1:00 PM, consume a protein bar and an apple each, and are back on our way on this beautiful Mother’s Day with what are now white fluffy clouds floating lazily in a seamless blue sky.

I think back over the trip.  I believe this was the first time in all our travels that we had to hunker down and change our itinerary because of severe weather.  Each of our rain suits leaked a little, and in the hours of riding through the Texas downpours we ended up with wet rear ends; we knew this ahead of time (they are very old one-piece Motoport rain suits); I’d tried to order new ones but the matching styles I wanted weren’t available in the men’s and women’s sizes we needed.  One of the best things I ever did for motorcycle traveling is to invest is a pair of Cruiserworks waterproof boots for both of us.  Expensive, yes.  But absolutely comfortable, made for motorcycling, and never a hint of moisture inside even during extended periods in the most rigorous wet conditions.  For rain riding, we have waterproof SealSkinz gloves (now branded as Hanz) with little gripper dots on the palm and underside of the fingers.  In my case, I learned that I need to be more careful in pulling up the cuff under the rain gear; water wicked up under the cuffs and eventually the entire inside of the gloves were wet.  It takes about two days to air dry these things and they can’t be hurried.  The Honda-branded Joe Rocket mesh jackets are far more versatile than I had envisioned.  With the thin 2-layer liner and a sweatshirt, I rode comfortably in 60-degree temperatures, while Kitty was a little chilly at that temperature dressed similarly, but the heated seat helped that a lot.  The passenger always gets more wind than the rider so it’s always colder back there in cool weather.

The bike and trailer performed flawlessly and as expected.  After almost 19,000 miles on this bike, I’m still astonished at how comfortable, strong, smooth, and stable it is, and how well Honda has incorporated creature comforts like GPS and XM, heated seats, heated grips, cruise control, tire pressure monitoring system, and effortless suspension adjustment into the essential DNA of the motorcycle.

We roll the final miles down I-66, onto US 29, and finally into our driveway.  It’s 3:57 PM.  I check the mileage and we’ve ridden 3,833 miles in eight states of these great United States.

And so this ride on this Mother’s Day draws to a successful close.  I cherish these moments and can hardly wait for the next time I hear Kitty’s voice in my headset:  “And there we go!”, or a more succinct and contemporary version, “Click-click!”