Tales from the Road

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 13

2010-06-04T21:47:00.003-04:00

Taking You Home
Friday June 4, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

And this love
Is like nothing I have ever known, no no baby
Take my hand love
I’m taking you home
I’m taking you, home
Where we can be with the ones who really care
Home, where we can grow together
Keep you, in my heart forever
- Don Henley/Stan Lynch/Stuart Brawley

You wouldn’t think losing an hour would make much difference, but I find I’m a little sluggish this morning. Instead of rising and shining, I’m dragging and drooping just a little, so it’s actually after 9:00 AM by the time we finish breakfast and load out.

“And there we go!” Kitty says in my headset for perhaps the hundredth time this trip. She starts off this last day’s ride as she always does to signal that she’s situated on the bike and ready to move. Kitty is feeling strong, the way we wish she could have felt two days ago. All vestiges of whatever sickness inhabited her normally healthy frame have disappeared. Last night we rode until the GPS showed an estimated remaining riding time of just under five hours, so that’s about what we have for the day.

As we make the turn for the entrance to I-81 north, I mark a waypoint for the Wildflour Bakery, because I’m pretty sure we’ll be back. It’s a pleasant cool morning with temperatures in the low 70’s and a pale blue watercolor sky painted in wispy white watercolors with a few high cirrus clouds. Heavy storms moved through the Washington, DC area last evening, and more sever storms are forecasted for late tonight, but I’m optimistic we should slide on home between the storms.

Periodically, I hear Kitty repeat seemingly disjointed phrases or snatches of music in the headset. “Veggie Tales – Veggie Tales – Veggie Tales.” “Happy-cake!” “Aw, shucks!” When I ask her about this, it turns out these are all phrases uttered under curious conditions by Carter or Danica. I realize she’s replaying our visit with the Mississippi family in her mind. I judge this a pretty good place to be, so I’m mostly quiet so as not to intrude on her reverie.

We do talk some about the trip. We remember the spectacular white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle that are now being threatened by the greatest natural disaster this country has ever seen, the oil blossoming from the seabed into the Gulf. While we were in Gulfport, the Federal government closed nearly the entire expanse of Gulf fishing waters in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and some of our Gulfport friends were nearly beside themselves because that’s what they do: fish! It’s been an unusual trip because we took some time out of the middle to visit our family, and it was surprisingly hard to make the transition back to biker mode. I smile as I realize we haven’t listened to any music the whole trip; we turned on the radio briefly one afternoon to get a weather report, otherwise it’s just been Kitty and me in our headsets. There’s a combination I can live with!

And here we are, making our last fuel stop 147 miles from home, and we plan not to stop until we arrive home. It’s as hotter and more humid here in Virginia as it was at any point along the Gulf coast, with the temperature hovering in the low 90’s. Running north through the Shenandoah Valley, we see huge cloud banks hovering over the mountains, many miles to east and to the west. The hot air cools as it climbs the mountains that form the valley, and the moisture-laden air forms giant white clouds that stand like a towering line of defense guarding our pathway homeward as we work north and east through the valley on I-81. There appears to be no threat of rain in our vicinity or anywhere we can see, just those monster white cloud banks demarcating the valley. At I-81 Milepost 300 we catch I-66 for the last segment home. I’m glad I have cruise control because it would be hard to hold down my speed for the last 52 miles.

We pull into the driveway, move some vehicles, and park the bike and trailer in the garage. There might be a ride tomorrow with some biker cousins and others, but I opt to leave the cleaning to some future time. We have ridden 333 miles today, and a total of 2,422 miles for the trip. As vacation rides go, this has been another short one for mileage but we sure did enjoy the time with the family.

Maybe next year will the time to pull the trigger on my already-sketched 8,000-mile “Rocky Mountains One More Time” tour that will take us from Jasper, Alberta in the north, and southward along the spine of the Canadian and US Rockies into New Mexico before turning eastward and eventually home.

It’s been a great ride: The bike performed flawlessly; Kitty in fact did not fall off the bike in a fainting spell; we saw places we’ve never seen before; running the back roads of South Carolina and Georgia brought into sharp focus the economic crisis from which we are in some ways shielded here in the Washington, DC area; we made some new friends and got reacquainted with some old ones; we spent five days with our beloved family and grandchildren. So it’s all good. Touring the country with a woman of beauty who is so quick to see beauty is one of the greatest treasures of my life.

So for now, I’m content. But it won’t be long before I once again hear the call of the Slow Road, or perhaps the Long Road, or even the Technical Twisty Road, and I know my bike will be ready to answer the call when it comes.

See you then!

GPS Track Day 13

GPS Track For Trip, Selected Waypoints Included

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 12

2010-06-03T23:01:00.004-04:00

Pokey-Mon

Thursday June 3, 2010

We are sitting in the spacious lobby having a little breakfast. "I'd planned to get an early start this morning, knowing we are losing an hour today," I say to Kitty. "But I wanted to make sure you get your rest after your adventures of yesterday."

She gives me something that could probably be written as "Hmmpphh – and who got up first this morning?"

Our planned ride home is mostly on Interstate routes, but I'd routed a hundred-mile stretch of scenic two-lane roads in Alabama if we have time. I'm not sure if we actually do have time, but, undeterred by this small detail, I strike out for Noccalula Falls just north of Gadsden, Alabama, and find the Lookout Mountain Parkway northward. This is listed as a scenic road that almost exactly parallels I-59 and ends near Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Somewhere along this route is Little River Canyon Scenic Road, which we also intend to ride. I ask the attendant at Noccalula Falls Park if the Lookout Mountain Road automatically runs into the canyon road and am assured it does. So we ride Tabor Road, which also seems to be Country Road 3, northward. While not a scenic must-see route, it's a nice break from the Interstate and Kitty particularly enjoys the many lovely homes with their well-manicured lawns. Many of them feature a shrub-like bush with large blue flowers, bigger than a softball. We've seen these all over the south and while I'm not sure, I've looked up "large blue flowers shrub" on my Google Machine and the description associated with Nikko Blue Hydrangeas seems to match the shrubs we've seen. So for now, that's what we will call them.

At the town of Fort Payne, we expect to find the canyon road but in fact it's five miles east and the road runs about 30 miles south, back the way we came. The park attendant had spoken poorly. I have planned poorly! We decide to ride half the canyon road before following Rt 176 back out to the Lookout Mountain Parkway. As it turns out, my planning is even poorer than suspected, because riding south, all the turnouts are slanted the wrong way to park my big bike, and they are all gravel, and it's just too risky to take 1,400 pounds of bike, trailer, and people onto these heavily graveled lookouts. So we get pictures from just one lookout.

By the time we've made it back off the narrow canyon road to Lookout Mountain Parkway, it's getting to be 11:00 AM local time and we have yet to "lose" our hour, and we have at least 350 miles to cover, so we decide to head for the Interstate and abandon the rest of the scenic road.
I am feeling that I may have planned poorly altogether for this morning in trying to work some scenic riding into the trip homeward. But the good news is that Kitty is doing very well after yesterday's escapades. "I wouldn't win any races," she says, "but I'm feeling just fine today!"

On the Interstate I see a BMW sneak up behind me and position himself in the right track. I see it's a guy we met at the hotel last night and saw several times this morning as our paths crossed on the scenic routes we'd both randomly chosen. It's an RT 1200, and I expect he will pass me shortly as I ride the 70-mph speed limit plus five. But he seems to be content back there in my right-side mirror, and although he has no CB, I can tell he's done this before, so for 130 miles we streak northward together on I-59, through the northwest corner of Georgia where we "lose" the hour we had gained in Apalachicola. We wind our way through the complex Interstate routes around Chattanooga that terminate in I-81 north, until at some point we have to exit for fuel. And he does the same! We go to different gas stations, but we've decided to take a break from the 90-degree heat and sit in a fast-food place for a while to cool off and get a bite to eat. He sees us there and rides up, so we invite him in.

It turns out his name is John, from Houston, a retired Navy and commercial pilot who flew A7 Corsair "light attack" bombers. Ironically, he's come to this very exit to meet some friends who were all pilots together on the USS Saratoga. They get together somewhere every year. This year they are meeting here, riding the Cherohala Skyway, and wandering over to Arkansas to a museum which they've discovered contains one of the actual A7 planes they all flew in combat missions! The museum is holding a special event to celebrate their visit.

I have the GPS routed to our home and I tell Kitty "We'll ride until the number of remaining miles on the GPS is what you want it to be for tomorrow." It's been above 90 degrees and sunny most of the afternoon, but Kitty is doing great, one of her best days in these temperatures that I can remember. She opts to knock it off at Abingdon, Virginia, I-81 Exit 19, at about 6:00 PM local time. The GPS "miles remaining" shows 332, so that's what we will ride tomorrow. We've been riding for over eight hours and have covered 372 miles including my questionable poke-along start.

The hotel clerk recommends a local restaurant named the Wildflour Bakery. We walk to the place, and as we're being seated, Kitty says "I already love this place." I've left my camera in the hotel, but I snap a picture with my cell phone. Abingdon is kind of an artsy-craftsy town, and this restaurant certainly fits into that mold. It's located in an old three-story house, which we learn was built by the owner's grandmother. Original paintings and ceramics adorn the walls and shelves. It is the perfect off-the-beaten-path place to end our day. The exquisite pork tenderloin is served with perfectly crunchy fresh purple and yellow cauliflower and fresh mashed potatoes, the vegetables having been obtained from the local fruit market.

So if you ever stop in Abingdon for lunch or dinner, check out the Wildflour Bakery just east of I-81 Exit 19, 24443 Lee Highway, Abingdon, VA, 24211. They have no web site but they should. You might want to call ahead at (276) 676-4221 – their schedule is complicated. This funky place is real treat!

After walking back to the hotel from the restaurant, Kitty helps me clean and cover the bike. Yes, after all these years, I still do it every night. And as always, Kitty has no responsibilities to help do this but sometimes she does, and it's more fun when she helps!

Tomorrow should see us home.

GPS Track, Day 12

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 11

2010-06-02T23:05:00.009-04:00

A Journey of a Thousand Miles Starts with Good-Bye
Wednesday June 2, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

But the ending always comes at last,
Endings always come too fast,
They come too fast but they pass too slow,
I love you and that's all I know

- Art Garfunkle (Jimmy Webb), "That's All I Know"

We are up and showered early, eating breakfast before the rest of the family so as not to interfere with their plans. The kids are going to an alligator farm today and we will be leaving at the same time they do.

Yesterday Kitty was sick with a fever, chills, and upset stomach. Last night she gathered a thick blanket around herself and was still shivering. This morning she pronounces herself "not quite 100% but ready to travel." I'm not so sure. I'm thinking we should hang out here for a day or two longer, regardless of plans or other commitments. After all, it's not like a sick passenger can sleep on the bike they way one could in a car.

But Kitty is steadfast, so at 8:45 we are saying our tearful good-byes to the Mississippi family and are ready to start our 1,020-mile trek homeward. Any journey of a thousand miles homeward from here starts with good-bye. You'd think this "good-bye" thing would get easier with practice, wouldn't you? But it doesn't, at least not for us.

"Bye, Papa. Bye, Nona," says Danica bravely. We wave good-bye, ease out of the driveway, and in 30 seconds are out of sight around the bend.

"Danica is doing pretty well this time," I manage in the headset. "Better than I'm doing!" Kitty seems to feel what I feel, or maybe she feels the lump in my throat, or it could even be she hears a sniffle in the headset, and rubs my shoulders in an understanding gesture that is beyond words.

It's already hot, 87 degrees under large puffy white clouds, as we run north on US 49. Off to the left are some black cows in a lush green field: Kitty's favorite cow scene. "There's your scenery for the day!" I tell her. "You won't be seeing much other scenery today!" Otherwise, few words are spoken as we each try to make the transition from grandparents to a biker couple. It's harder than I thought it would be.

Normally we avoid Interstates with a passion, but the trip parameters, maximal time with the family in Mississippi, and the need for Kitty to be home for a seminar on Saturday have conspired to create a mostly-Interstate ride home. We catch I-59 at Hattiesburg, and from there through Alabama there's not much to see on the Interstate except trees on either side.

A few miles north of Laurel, Mississippi, Kitty asks "Where's the next rest area?" We've traveled about 100 miles without a break. I check the GPS and see "Parking Area" about seven miles ahead.

"I doubt the parking area will have facilities. We can ride to there and then stop at the next place if there are no facilities," I tell her.

In a minute she says "We'd better stop at the parking area." Her voice is strained and I know something is amiss, because normally she wouldn't be asking to stop at a parking area without facilities. I sense trouble and unceremoniously duck off the Interstate at the exit we happen to be passing at the moment, Exit 104 for Sandersville.

"My eyes won't focus!" Kitty says.

"Are you dizzy?"

"I don't think so, but I really don't feel well and my eyes won't focus!"

I believe she's about to lose consciousness, and I have to admit I'm freaking out as I have visions of Kitty passing out and falling off the bike. I go through a mental checklist on how I'd stop the bike and what I'd do if that were to happen. I keep talking to her to make sure she's still conscious. There's absolutely nothing but trees and a narrow two-lane road here where we are, and not even a suitable shoulder to pull off. If I have to stop, it will be squarely in the roadway. I do a frantic GPS search for medical services, and the nearest listing is more than 8 miles back the way we came, in Laurel.

I slowly ride the mile to the tiny village of Sandersville, which has one gas station. I quickly pull in and help Kitty off the bike. She staggers and nearly falls as she slides off the passenger seat. "I guess I was about to go out and didn't realize it!" she says.

After sitting in the shade for 30 minutes and drinking a bottle of water, she feels much better. "I think maybe we should find a motel back at Laurel and just hang out for the day," I suggest.
Kitty wants to ride at least to Meridian, a larger town about 55 miles farther north. "I feel fine now," she says, "better than I did yesterday. I think it was just a combination of being sick yesterday and maybe not drinking enough water." We are both conscientious about drinking large quantities of water while riding, even if it means more rest room breaks.

I'm still dubious but I finally relent. "Ok, we can try that, but next time don't wait until you're passing out before letting me know there's a problem!" I'm wearing my favorite t-shirt, "Temporarily Out of Service," and I tell her we should swap.

By the time we reach Meridian she's feeling even better and wants to push on. As we roll northeast on I-59 and I-20, my Kriss Amp-U-Tron reads 90.7 degrees and clouds are gathering ahead. I can tell we're going to hit rain but don't think it's a large cell and opt not to put on rain gear. I'm right, it's just a little five-mile rain squall and as long as we keep moving at road speed, we are almost impervious to rain except Kitty's shoulders and front of her shirt where the still air pocket created by the big Tulsa windshield collapses. The temperature has gone from 90 to 73 degrees, a drop of 17 degrees, and it a refreshingly cool ride until the temperature climbs back up into the upper 80s and lower 90s.

I insist that we stop every hour for a 30 minute rest break. As far as I'm concerned all trip parameters are a thing of the past, and my only concern is for Kitty. I'd be happy just finding a place and staying there, but she continues to feel ok and wants to ride, although feeling a little queasy at times, and she hasn't felt up to eating. At noon we cross into Alabama and finally do stop at a Cracker Barrel in Tuscaloosa, Alabama for a late lunch at 3:00 PM. Now, we hardly ever eat at Cracker Barrel, but in this case I choose it primarily because of one of its consistent outstanding features: The slow service will insure that we sit there for at least an hour or more, which is exactly what I want!

We run through several more rain squalls and finally find a new Hampton Inn, near Gadsden, Alabama, so new it is not yet in my GPS map. We've ridden 362 miles in about 8 hours including over 2 hours 15 minutes of stopped time for rest breaks. I can tell Kitty has been feeling better as the day progressed; this evening she says she's tired but hopes she'll be fine by tomorrow so we can push on toward home. As for me, rather than suffer a repeat performance of today's adventure, I'll gladly stay put for a while.

Tomorrow will reveal its secrets when it arrives.

GPS Track, Day 11

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 10

2010-06-01T22:34:00.003-04:00

One More Lazy Day

Tuesday June 1, 2010

"Have a good walk!" I sleepily tell Kitty at about 5:30 AM. She's headed for an early morning beach walk with some other friends.

Ten minutes later she's climbing back into bed. "That was short!"

"There's lightening in the sky. Walk is cancelled!" she announces.

I sleep until inordinately late, and by that time four butterflies have hatched in the habitat. By late morning, all five have hatched. I'm glad we got to see them all be transformed out of their cocoons into beautiful butterflies. Some of them sit on the slices of orange or sugar-water-laced cotton balls that will be their food until they are released. Their expected life span is about two to three weeks.

Kevin is at work today but he calls and we meet him at The Dock for lunch. The place is nearly empty today for lunch, but it seems like it would be a lively weekend place with a live oyster bar, plenty of outside bayside seating, and that"cool place to be" feel with pictures of large game fish and actual fishing tackle scattered throughout.

When the Mississippi family lived in Virginia, Danica was deathly afraid of my Gold Wing and wouldn't go near it. So we've been surprised, this trip, that she's been asking for a ride. So after dinner, I take off the Utopia backrest to have a better sense of how my small passenger is doing. We gravely put her into jeans, work Kitty's helmet onto her head, plop her onto the pillion seat and plug in the headset so we can talk. Meanwhile, poor Carter is freaking out because he wants his turn too. "Mo'cycle! Papa mo'cycle!" he keeps repeating in a plaintive voice.

I give careful instructions to Danica and explain that the motorcycle will lean a little and that we will probably feel a few bumps. We make a sedate turn around the block at 15 miles per hour in first gear. "Would you like to go a little faster?" I ask.

"No, this fast is good enough!" she says.

Next is 22-month-old Carter, who sits between Kristal and myself as we do the little block thing again. He sits very still and is happy to have had his turn on the bike.

Lazy time has pretty much come to an end. Tomorrow we plan to head homeward in what promises to be a mostly-Interstate kind of ride, one that doesn't usually work into our preferences but we opted for more time with the family and less time on the road for this particular trip. Only problem is, Kitty is sick. "We won't be able to travel tomorrow if you're sick!" I tell her.

"You underestimate me! Remember when we went to Key West I had a temperature of 102 degrees the day before? I'll be fine."

So we enjoy a last evening with the family, and repack all the laundered clothes that have been piled helter-skelter into a corner of the room we're using. We've already been making plans for our next visit, which will be via airplane, not on the Wing. If plans hold and Kitty is able to travel, we plan to start our homeward trek tomorrow morning under a very unsettled weather pattern. We won't know how it works out until then.

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 9

2010-06-01T11:28:00.003-04:00

Memories

Monday May 31, 2010

By 8:00 AM when I wonder over to Steve's house, he and Kevin have already been working for an hour on the big flower boxes. One is completely assembled.

Steve's wife appears with some snacks. "Our neighbor put up the US flag and got it right," she says. This is largely a Navy town and a Navy neighborhood, so things such as how a US flag are positioned are important. I can tell Steve is pleased with this news.

On Memorial Day, when we remember those who have fallen in the line of duty serving the United States of America, it seems especially important that a flag be displayed correctly. I think of the US flag flying on the right-side antenna of my Gold Wing, at the moment parked in Kevin's garage awaiting the trip homeward to Virginia. Long ago, before attaching it for the first time, I'd carefully researched how to position it correctly, and on which antenna with reference to the rider it should be placed. I am always happy to see my US flag fluttering in the breeze each time I glance at my right-side mirror as we ride. This is the fifth such flag I've had on my bike. Eventually, over thousands of miles, the wind and rain take their toll: The trailing edge becomes frayed and tattered, and the once-bright colors become muted and gray. When a flag is ready for retirement and replacement, I use a magic marker to write on the attachment edging some notable places it has been, and then it's carefully retired to a place of honor in my collection. This particular flag was new sometime last year and has now logged somewhere over 10,000 miles north to the Gaspe Peninsula, our northernmost ride ever, and now twice to the Gulf Coast plus various places in between. It already shows signs of wear but should travel for many more thousands of miles before retirement.

Kevin and Kristal are planning a Hawaiian-themed barbecue this evening, so we spend much of the rest of the day preparing for that. Steve has offered to mow Kevin's back lawn with his giant riding mower, which he does, and than apparently because he just can't help himself, mows the front as well!

I don't count the guests but there are probably around 25 or so with the kids. Water games have been set up for the kids, and these sometimes spill over onto the adults with or without intent. It's a nice evening to meet new friends and Kevin's neighbors. A storm threatens but it never reaches us. I learn more about the SeaBees and how, though their chain of command is through the Navy, their services are requisitioned by all branches of the US Armed Services. They are deployed all over the world in some places that would be very unexpected to civilians like me.

This evening there are three butterflies in the little butterfly habitat, leaving two cocoons still unopened. Kitty, Kristal, and several other women are planning to walk on the beach at 6:00 AM tomorrow morning. For my part, I love the beach and thanks very much but I'll see you when you get back!

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 8

2010-05-31T16:05:00.002-04:00

Sun Day
Sunday May 30, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

Since Kevin is the lead pastor at Gulf Coast Worship Center, he goes to work early on Sunday mornings (http://www.yourfamilyplace.com). This is a very casual church, and Kevin actually preaches in blue jeans as often as not, but we have actually packed some casual clothes into the Escapade trailer's garment bag. Kitty brings in the garment bag from the trailer that's still parked in the garage and we dig out some clothes for the day. We pile into the minivan and arrive about a half hour before the service starts.

We don't know a lot of people here but have made friends with some and it's nice to see them again. I talk to my Harley Davidson riding friend James about riding experiences and motorcycles we've had. "I may not be able to ride a thousand miles," he says, "but I do love the rumble!"

Later, talking to him and the worship pastor, Eddie, I show them a picture of me and a four-and-a-half pound lobster. It was taken last year at Cook's Lobster House on Bailey Island, Maine, while returning from our ride to the Gaspe Peninsula and other parts of Canada. "I want to do what you do. I want to ride to Virginia, pick you up, and we'll ride to Maine for some lobster."

You're on, my friend. I'll do it in a heartbeat! I keep a permanent GPS waypoint for Cook's Lobster House, because you just never know when an emergency lobster run will present itself. I'm ready at all times! And I'll buy!

There's a large US Navy SeaBee base here in Gulfport. "SeaBee" actually comes from "CB", for Construction Battalion. Their motto is "We fight, we build." If you absolutely, positively need a runway in a faraway hostile jungle halfway around the world by tomorrow morning, these are the people you call. Their exploits and capabilities are legendary. Kevin's neighbor, Steve, is one of them. He's in his forties and as fit a man as I've seen, all muscle and bone and lean as a swamp reed. He's offered to build some giant flower boxes for Kevin and Kristal along with several for himself. Later in the afternoon I wonder over to Steve's house where he and Kevin have assembled the lumber and materials for the flower boxes. Steve is attacking this project with the same fervor and precision his SeaBees are known for. These will be the best-constructed flower boxes ever created! Kevin and I offer to help when we can but mostly it's his show, working until darkness stops the project.

Meanwhile, when we return home for the evening, there's excitement because one of Danica's five chrysalises (or, more properly, chrysalides) has hatched into a butterfly. Some time ago, Kitty had given her a little butterfly habitat kit where she could watch the caterpillars spin their cocoon and eventually metamorphose into butterflies. We admire the transformation that has taken place from a drab, lifeless-appearing shell into a gorgeous butterfly that periodically tests his delicate orange and brown wings in a slow folding-unfolding rhythm.

It reminds me that our lives can be transformed through faith and the injection of God's love into our lives.

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 7

2010-05-30T15:32:00.002-04:00

Birth Day

Saturday May 29, 2010

"Happy birthday!" I say to Kitty. Her birthday is always around Memorial Day, and frequently on Memorial Day weekend. We'd decided on our last visit to the Mississippi family that if they couldn't come to us for a birthday party, we'd take the birthday party to them. And thus we found ourselves wondering almost 1,400 miles on our Gold Wing through the back roads of South Carolina and Georgia, then along the white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle to Kevin's house in Mississippi. Today is Kitty's birthday and it's Party Day.

But first, we're off to the Discovery Center, a wonderfully creative fantasy house where the kids can variously transform themselves from train conductors into ticket agents into ladies at high tea into hotel guests into lobster-fishermen into crane operators into mountain climbers into barbers or barbershop customers into grocery shoppers into grocery store owners into tree-house dwellers. Amidst all these venues are some cleverly designed scientific "experiments" from which I myself learn a few things, notably that a golf ball rolled down a variable-pitch incline will beat the one rolled down a straight incline every time, even though the starting and ending elevations are the same.

And then lunch, after which Papa is exhausted and needs a little nap, while others go to a kid's birthday party at a place I think is called Kangaroos - some kind of bounce house where apparently all the venues are related to bouncing onto or off of something. Way too exhausting for the likes of me!

As a heavy black thunderstorm rolls through the area, we head for dinner at Back Bay Seafood Restaurant where we'd eaten a few weeks ago when Solo Guy visited the Mississippi family. I'd ridden the Wing by myself to a crawfish-eating escapade in Vicksburg, Mississippi with about 75 biker friends, and afterwards streaked 200 miles southeast to Gulfport to spend a day there. I'd made a GPS waypoint decided then that I wanted to return to this restaurant, and that's what Kitty has chosen for her birthday dinner. It's a moderately priced place with a large menu of seafood prepared in a bewildering variety of ways. By the time we're finished eating, the storm has, for the most part, passed to the east. We sit by the window watching the orange setting sun as it paints an orange sky shot through with the remnants of the storm clouds, and kisses the rippling waters of the bay with shimmering orange highlights, while the poles of the fishing piers become silhouettes of soldiers standing at strict attention in the fading evening light. On the way home we see a rainbow.

And thus home for the birthday party. Kitty is temporarily banished to the kids' play room while the party gets set up. Danica has been the chief planner for Kitty's party unless, of course, you were to account for some help from Kristal. After the banners and streamers are hung and the balloons are tied to the chair of honor, Kitty is called in and everyone yells "Surprise!" I have to laugh in spite of myself at the absurdity of it, since Kitty has known since March that this is our primary excuse for coming here. Even so, she's a bit teary-eyed while everyone's kazoos trumpet "Happy Birthday!", and it's a great little party with just the family.

I'm glad we could spend this birthday with our family!

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 6

2010-05-29T10:44:00.002-04:00

Lazy Day

Friday May 28, 2010

"Wake up, Papa!" My four-year-old granddaughter Danica pads into our room in giant pink slippers accompanied by Monkey, her stuffed animal of the day. She climbs into bed and we snuggle for a minute, then she's off to meet her day. Through the electronic baby monitor I can hear wake-up noises in 22-month-old Carter's room as Kristal gets him ready for the day.

It's a lazy, lazy day and we're just happy to see our family again. It's been hard to watch them move from northern Virginia to Mississippi, where they've lived for eight months now, and we've taken every opportunity to visit and maintain the relationships we forged with Kevin, Kristal, and our grandkids while they lived near us.

After breakfast, Kevin and I move some stuff in the garage to see if we can make room for the bike and trailer. We are successful, and as I pull the rig in beside their minivan, I'm reminded once again that the Wing with the Escapade trailer is longer by about 3 inches than their Dodge Caravan minivan.

Later, sitting on the shaded patio, I'm watching a furious water battle raging between the adults and the kids. Kevin has a water pistol. The others have these giant tube things that suck up a large quantity of water and shoot it 20 feet with deadly accuracy. "You never bring a knife to a gunfight!" I tell Kevin. "You have a pistol, they have machine guns!"

We plan to be here only for a few days before hitting the road again, but a feeling of indescribable contentment washes over me in the warm Mississippi sunshine as I watch my little family frolic by the little pool. It's a moment to treasure.

The laziest of lazy days passes with a kid's movie on DVD, even a little nap for Papa, ribs and corn-on-the-cob on the grill, and then Kevin and I decide on the spur of the moment to see a late movie. We opt to see Iron Man II. Sequels are rarely as good as the original, and this I think is no exception, but it's pretty good and the special effects are fantastic. The character Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) was eccentric in the first movie, but he's over the top in this one. There's a reason for that, though, and it creates its own dramatic subplot, a tension that runs through the entire script.

This has been a wonderful day. Perfect. Lazy. Day.

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 5

2010-05-27T22:07:00.007-04:00

Virginia to Mississippi
Thursday May 27, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

We skip Park #6, St. Andrews State Recreation Area. The locals we talk to this morning describe it as a lovely beach setting with several nature trails and an alligator observation area. A great place to spend a day or several days, but not a sight-seeing stop for a traveling couple on a Gold Wing.

The early heat already has a firm grip on the day as we climb aboard the bike. Kitty's standard "And there we go" announcement in the headset signals that she's situated, plugged in, and ready. We ease out of the parking lot northward to catch US 98 west where we left it last evening.

The traffic this morning is quite acceptable, so I don't think I'm in danger of violating an important rule, but it's a rather nondescript four-lane as it runs through miles of shopping malls and car lots. After a while decide to try Rte 30-A, which runs hard along the beach and while slower, is also more rewarding. The speed limit is 35 mph and there are some buildings on the beach side of the highway, but we see spectacular vistas of sparkling white sand beaches and the vivid turquoise waters of the Gulf. But after a while, there's too much traffic, too many red lights, and too many kids on bicycles, so we opt for the faster road.

Yesterday saw the emergence of Slow-Down Guy, who's rather the antithesis of Solo Guy (who also rides with me from time to time). Slow-Down Guy generally doesn't exceed the speed limit, and his attitude could be summed up as "If 55 mph is good, then 50 mph must be better." He is here today, and rolls sedately through the beachfront communities that could be along most beachfronts in the US.

We make our way through Destin, renowned for having perhaps the best beaches in the country. Just west of Destin lies Okaloosa Island, a narrow strip of land and an interesting five miles of sand dunes with blue water visible on both sides of the island.

West of Oklaloosa Island we find the first open country we've seen on US 98 for about 70 miles. Slow-Down Guy is fine with the slow-down pace of the morning's ride but it's very hot, about 90F, and coupled with humidity, Kitty is feeling the effects of the heat. I consider making a run for it on I-10, but the Interstate is a couple dozen miles north and there's no major road to get there at the moment. So at Navarre, instead of seeking the Interstate, we decide to veer south across the big bridge to Gulf Islands National Seashore. Pleasantly, the temperature is about five degrees cooler and there's a breeze. This is another 35-mph stretch of about 20 miles but it's very scenic and offers a close-up view of shifting sand dunes and dazzling white beaches that are nearly deserted.

Yesterday, on the bike path at St. Joseph's State Park, we were startled to see dotted lines that separate the lanes, just like an auto route. Today there is a bike path but no dotted lines and mostly impassable to a bicycle because of blown sand several inches deep. At one location where there's no sand on the bicycle path, I park the bike (we've had no traffic coming or going) and walk onto the sand to get a picture of the bike with the large expanse of sand and water on the relatively desolate beach. I notice that the white sand is extremely fine-grained, almost powder-like, and much finer than the sand found on East Coast or West Coast beaches.

On the western end of the island, nearing Pensacola, we see a group of cars and people milling about. As we approach, we can see a Toyota pickup truck sunk to the axles in the fine white sand, with the drivers of several other pickups and a park ranger preparing to connect a tow strap to remove the unfortunate fellow's truck from the sand's grip. A person I presume to be the driver is talking to the park ranger. I'm pretty sure this is not a conversation I'd like to be having!
A long bridge into Pensacola ends our little island detour, and the temperature has climbed to 93F. I look at the route and decide to abandon the planned route and head to our son's house the fastest way. So I call up "KevHouse" on the GPS, and it routes us on I-110 north of Pensacola to I-10. We ride the remaining 125 miles on I-10, through the tunnel at Mobil, across the long bridge over the marsh near Pascagoula, and on to Gulfport.

From a riding perspective, US 98 has been a rewarding ride, one that I'd like to do again and again, from Tallahassee to, say, Tyndall Air Force base east of Panama City. From there until Pensacola, it's about 100 miles of strip malls, car dealerships, marine establishments, and thousands of high-rise and low-rise condos and vacation homes. The beaches appear spectacular and would definitely offer a spectacular place to stay, it's just not a great place to ride through. Those last hundred miles or so haven't offered a great ride but I always try to learn something from every experience. What I learned here is that my perspective of "beach" is somewhat narrow. I tend to think of East Coast beaches where there is a town or a 20-mile stretch of beach. Here, there are literally hundreds of miles of white-sand beaches where you can pick a spot, set up your picnic chair or a blanket, and soak up the sun almost year-round.

We fill up for one last fuel stop right in Gulfport. "I'm ready to be off this bike," says Kitty. I'm sure she's thinking more about the grandkids than the heat but it's been really hot all day and she suffers in the heat.

We pull into the driveway and unload our stuff, wait a few minutes for the grandkids to wake up from their naps, and have a joyous reunion when they wake up. The Virginia family has ridden their Gold Wing 1,352 miles the long slow way to see the Mississippi family.

I'll clean and cover the bike and trailer tonight, and then tomorrow we'll figure out if the rig fits into the garage with their minivan. Here we plan to be for the next five days over the Memorial Day weekend.

GPS Track, Day 5

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 4

2010-05-26T23:31:00.009-04:00

Coastal Ways
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

"Life is full of important choices" announces my t-shirt today. On the back are 18 different bass guitars. My choice today is to hug the coast, mostly on US 98, until we either reach Panama City or run out of time. It's a beautiful, cloudless morning, the first such on our trip. The temperature is a bit cool, with heat creeping around the edges of the day. This is differentiated from a warm morning with coolness creeping around the edges.

We ride out of Tallahassee through a park, and immediately stop to take some pictures of the Spanish moss draped over the live oak trees. A guy comes out of a house to walk his dog. "I guess this is just what you see every day," I say, "but to us it really looks exotic."

"The leaves are the biggest problem," he complains.

The GPS route calls for five hours of riding time, to which I estimate we will add three hours of poke-around time, for a total of a moderate eight hours to our destination. There are six state parks potentially on the itinerary for the day.

After a brief unsuccessful detour to the Leon Sinks Geological Area (unsuccessful because seeing the sinkholes involved several miles of trails and we aren't in the mood for that much walking today), we ride the periphery of Edward Ball Wakulla State Park, to which, interestingly enough, we never really find the entrance. The first real stop is St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge, about 25 miles south. We fill out the paperwork and leave $5.00 in the envelope on the honor system. There's a road to the lighthouse, 7 miles farther south, which the GPS lists as "unpaved." But the park attendant assures us it's paved and we ride slowly to the lighthouse flanked by vast expanses of marshes and pools. At the lighthouse we walk along the levee and take pictures of the pelicans and cormorants sitting atop each available wooden pole from an old decrepit dock. I suppose it's like musical chairs: odd-bird-out.

Leaving the park, I realize we've already used up two hours of our poke-around time but then remember that we'll "gain" an hour today as we cross into the Central Time Zone at Appalachicola. We stop to use the rest rooms as we leave the park entrance, and Kitty keeps her helmet on. Walking back to the bike, she suddenly says "I hear that noise again!"

"You mean the buzzing?"

"No, it's kind of like a snapping or rattling sound."

She moves her head around and suddenly says "It's coming from somewhere in my skeletal system! That's what I was hearing on the bike yesterday!"

"Hmmm. We'll have you inspected for loose parts when we get home!" I say helpfully.

We leave US 98 west for US 319 for a while and ride to the entrance of Ochlockonee State Park but pass it up. After rejoining US 98 west as we travel toward Carrabelle, the highway is ruler-straight and lined with pine trees, a very pleasant if unassuming little ride.

Onward toward St. George Island State Park, where less tree cover exposes large expanses of the sparkling Gulf waters. The houses here are virtually all built on stilts, sometimes sitting impossibly tall and straight, small houses on tall stilts, others so large as to seem ungainly for stilt construction. "It seems like a hurricane would carry them away," says Kitty. One house seems certain of its foundation: Built of solid block, it sports a sign in the sandy lawn that says "Hurricane-proof!"

The bridge over Apalachicola Bay to St. George Island is four and a half miles long and curves gracefully over the dappled waters of the bay. We ride to the park and learn from the attendant at the entrance gate that there are eight miles of beach but only four and a half miles of paved roads. A great place I'm sure, but on a Gold Wing, not so much, so we retrace our steps through the brightly colored stilted houses set amid the shrub-covered sand dunes.
In Apalachicola we decide to stop for our impromptu lunch and the GPS routes us to a tiny park that's closed on Wednesday. It has a picnic bench under a live oak tree, though, and other than the ants that take over the picnic table, it's a great place for our little picnic. The temperature has been warm, mid-eighties, but the occasional cloud cover has kept us very comfortable.
Running west of Apalachicola, US 98 is once again straight and tree-lined on both sides. A seawall of large rocks greets our entrance to the peninsula that terminates in St. Joseph State Park. At the park entrance we ask the ranger what to expect. "Beaches, fishing, camping, boating," he replies.

"We do none of those things on our Gold Wing!" I laugh. So we circle around and retrace our route. The sand dunes here are more pronounced and larger than at any point on our trip.

On our way to the town of Port St. Joe we see a mama duck and her five baby ducklings crossing the road. In Port St. Joe we see a church sign that might qualify for our son Kevin's pantheon of Worst Church Signs: "Hang out with Jesus. He hung out for you." We stop for a rest room break and I find Kitty longingly eyeing a display of Klondike bars. "Stop it!" I say. "Do not waste your ice cream allotment on something as prosaic as Klondike bars! Use your allotment on special ice cream!"

Running northwest on the straightest stretch of road yet, mile after mile, we eventually run onto the southern reaches of Tyndall Air Force Base and are treated to several fighter jets doing aerial maneuvers and the thunderous roar of another lifting off from a runway near the highway.

From Mexico Beach to Tyndall AFB to Panama City, I begin to realize I'm in some trouble. It's a 35-mile 4-lane stretch of shopping malls and car dealers, red lights and traffic. Each time we stop at a red light, I can feel Kitty's heel thumping on her foot rest: Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. From all the miles we've ridden, I know this is not a good sign.

But we do finally arrive at the Hampton Inn in Panama City Beach. Kitty flops face-down on the luxurious bed and gives me the corner of her eye. "You were in violation during the last hour!" she says seriously. I knew it! I just knew this was coming! A quick mental review of Kitty's Kardinal Rules for every motorcycle trip instantly reveals the problem: No snakes. No cities. No traffic. I have clearly violated Rule #3 and I have no defense!

Then her face dissolves into a big grin. "But it's nothing a nice dinner and a little ice cream couldn't fix!"

So I set about atoning for my sins. Normally we try to eat healthily and sparingly on our trips, but sometimes a man just has to do what a man has to do! We start by having a dozen raw oysters at Billy's, just a short walk from the hotel. They serve them New Orleans-style: Freshly shucked, little tins of cocktail sauce and horseradish, and with a plentiful supply of saltines. Break out a saltine, dip the oyster in a little cocktail sauce and a lot of horseradish, put it all on the saltine, and smush the whole thing down in one bite! Oh, yeah, oysters just don't get any better than this! We can't get oysters like this in Washington DC!

Next we walk a little farther to Capt. Anderson's Seafood Restaurant. The captain always abbreviates his title as "Capt." and operates a marina that features evening boat cruises on a large three-story vessel. After being seated by a perfect little table overlooking the marina, we both opt for charcoal-grilled amberjack, which is served with just the right amount of charring and is a feast for the taste buds. It's a memorable evening as the sun sets behind us and the lights come on in the marina and the hotels across the bay.

"Would you care for dessert?" asks David the waiter.

"Well, here's my situation," I say, and explain my predicament. "Is there an ice cream place we can walk to?" The nearest is Brewster's, he explains, but it's nearly a mile from here and there's no sidewalk.

"I can help!" David says. "Let me bring the dessert tray."

And indeed he can! Kitty selects a decadent nut-crusted chocolate-caramel-cake goopy thing with two scoops of ice cream, and we eat it all.

Back at the hotel, I ask if my transgressions have been atoned for.

"Quite!" she says with a contented little grin on her face.

By tomorrow night we should be seeing our grandbabies in Gulfport!

GPS Track Day 4

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 3

2010-05-25T23:31:00.009-04:00

Canopy
Tuesday May 25, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

We sleep in a little longer this morning to make sure we don’t waste the excellent beds the Hampton Inn chain has placed in all its rooms. It’s the same style mattress used by the parent Hilton Hotels, and if I can’t be in my waterbed this is the next best thing.

Eventually, though, we have to get up and wake sleeping monster lying outside our room. We uncover it, raise the CB and radio antenna, and low and behold, it’s a Gold Wing motorcycle with a color-matched Escapade trailer! Once again it’s cloudy, but rain isn’t expected to move in until noon. We’ll be long south of here by then, headed toward Tallahassee, Florida. So once again we opt to ride without rain gear and after fueling the bike, we head southward on US 319 at about 9:00 AM.

We ride past miles of newly-planted fields whose gray sandy soil bears no hint of what is to grow there. We don’t know what’s planted there, but a good guess would probably be cotton or peanuts, judging by the number of both cotton gins and peanut processing plants, identified by the name of the company on the building.

Rolling southward, rain occasionally splatters onto the windshield but only in one brief section is there anything that could actually be called rain. The abandoned homes of yesterday have mostly but not entirely been replaced by well-maintained homes on beautifully landscaped property amid tall pine trees or stately pecan trees.

But the abandoned businesses are still present. I suspect that if one could do an inventory of businesses out here in the heartland of southern Georgia, there would be more abandoned than functioning. Amid the apparent pockets of prosperity there are still the haunting reminders of plans gone sadly awry.

“I hear a buzz,” Kitty says.

“Is this in your helmet?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says, “because that’s where my ears are!” I don’t know what causes the buzzing, as I don’t hear it, but it’s a clever answer and we both laugh. After a while it’s gone.

We talk about our impressions of this ride. I wonder, if one could create a panel of impressions that register with both of us and then compare them, how many impressions would overlap? Naturally we often point out things of interest to each other. But then Kitty sees a “baby horse,” as she calls it, lying at its mother’s feet while I see the tail flukes of a life-size blue whale as its body disappears into someone’s lawn. I have no explanation for this but that’s what I see. Kitty sees a beautifully manicured and landscaped home at the same time I see the hulk of an abandoned house and wish it could talk. But in spite of our different impressions, or perhaps because of them, I often think it would be hard to improve on my lot in life: Riding a great motorcycle through an expansive countryside with a beautiful woman of exquisite sensitivity who actually loves to do this!

We hold US 319 through all its twists and turns as it is joined at various times by a bewildering variety of other route numbers. In Thomasville we stop for fuel and a lunch break, which usually consists of some carrots and peanut butter, maybe an apple or other fruit, sometimes something we pick up at a roadside stand.

When I insert my credit card at the gas pump, it displays a sign about seeing the attendant. “Sorry, Hon, we’re closed. Our whole system is down,” says the woman who greets me at the door. (As a sidebar, I’ve learned that the farther south you travel, the more likely it is that a waitress or a service station attendant will call you “Hon,” at least if that person is a woman and you are a man. I find this disconcerting but I believe I no longer cringe or look startled when this happens.)

I can’t help but point to the t-shirt I happen to be wearing today: “Temporarily Out of Service.” Everyone in the station gets a good laugh as we ride across the road to another venue.

We leave US 319 at this point and take local Route 122 for the last 10 miles or so into Florida. “Welcome to Leon County” says the small road at the state line. It’s a very unceremonious entry to Florida. Tallahassee is noted for a number of so-called “canopy roads”, where canopies of moss-festooned oak trees cover the highways that fan out of the city center like spokes of a wagon wheel. I’ve mapped the “Centerville Canopy Road” in honor of our hometown, so we ride the last 20 miles into Tallahassee under an exotic archway of giant live oaks draped with grey-green banners of Spanish moss. It’s been a light 195-mile day.

My friend Emma Wood and I haven’t seen each other in several years. We’ve run into each other in places that have run together in our minds, from New York to Texas to North Carolina. We met once on a remote road in Utah, Kitty and I heading north, Emma headed south, just a 30-second conversation on CB but one we both remember because neither had any idea the other would be there. So we’ve been plotting so see if we could get together this trip. We finally hook up by phone, and she rides the 50 miles or so to meet us at a restaurant within walking distance to our hotel. After an evening of talking about rides, riding, family, and life, we wave good-bye as she literally rides her Gold Wing into the sunset toward her home.

After riding for nearly 900 miles through the fields and forests of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and now Florida, we’ve gone almost as far south as we can go toward the Gulf coast. Tomorrow we hope to find some coastal routes as we head west.

GPS Track Day 3

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 2

2010-05-24T22:49:00.014-04:00

Tall Trees in Georgia

Monday May 24, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

“It’s been great to see you, my friend,” I say as I shake Ray’s hand. I’ve just backed my Wing and the trailer out of his long driveway and we’re headed west and south. It’s just a little after 9:00 AM, later than I hoped after a bit of difficulty uploading yesterday’s blog text. We have two days to make Tallahassee, Florida, almost exactly 600 miles away. My GPS route is mostly on two-lane roads, so 300 miles is a nice two-lane ride. In Solo Guy fashion, I have not scoped out the likely intervening stopping points. We will ride until we feel like stopping for the night and find a place we like.

We roll southwest out Goldsboro, North Carolina, and after a brief stint on I-95 start our two-lane trek through North Carolina, across the expanse of South Carolina, and into the heartland of Georgia if we decide to ride that far. In spite of yesterday’s lessons regarding the proper Dance of the Rainsuit, I have once more opted to ride without rain gear. The weather radar display on my BlackBerry makes me think the front has moved out to sea, leaving only heavy cloud cover in its wake.

Almost immediately rain and mist spit down onto the windshield and I wonder if, after almost half a million miles of riding, I will never learn. Undaunted, we roll into the countryside under heavy but “fuzzy” clouds that I’ve learned seldom carry significant rain. At times the clouds are at ground level and produce a mist that mysteriously shrouds the open fields of corn and tobacco, and covers the windshield with tiny droplets. Other times the pelt down enough rain that the droplets form a graceful convex “V” characteristic of the big Tulsa windshield as it clears raindrops. But we never hit wet road or need rain gear.

We try to identify the crops in the expansive fields lying on both sides of the highway. Tobacco is easy because, well, it just looks like “baby tobacco.” Corn, sorghum, wheat, and oats are also relatively easy to identify. There are fields of beans whose green twin-leafed stalks are just pushing through the black soil. And there are fields that appear to have been planted recently, some with a hint of greenery as the plants push through the soil, but some too newly planted to identify any plant. We’re not sure when cotton is planted, but we wonder if it’s cotton: whatever it is, there’s a lot of it, hundreds or thousands of acres of bare fields that later in summer will be vibrant with whatever is germinating now.

I normally associate cypress swamps with more southerly states, but here we are, rolling through miles of cypress swamps with the characteristic black cypress boles that widen dramatically just above the water line.

We hold US 13 for many miles, a route that I call “easy country,” the kind of road that just makes me happy to be here. It’s not spectacular but it’s ever-changing and interesting as we roll at moderate speed through the countryside. We ride for 75 miles and never have a single vehicle in front or behind us, a delightful ride under clouds pregnant with moisture but never dropping their load of water on us. Kitty and I talk, as we have many times before, about how motorcycle riding is so different from the typical car ride. For most drivers, a trip is all about the starting and finishing points, and the “between” is an entity to be tolerated. For us, the “between” is the whole deal, where starting and finishing points have little relevance. It’s the ride that counts. Thus we find ourselves on the Slow Road, not the Short Road, and not the Long Road that Solo Guy loves. It’s just a ride to soak in the geography and the culture.

Riding into South Carolina, we pass through numerous little towns that slow us only briefly, for some don’t have as much as a single traffic light. I ride gently and with a certain reverence, for I become aware this is like riding through a landscape wrecked with the debris of a thousand shattered hopes and broken dreams, the detritus of a generation of lost hope. For every perfectly-maintained antebellum mansion with its perfectly-shuttered windows, set back from the street in a lush green lawn set about by giant magnolia trees that are just past their bloom – for every one of those homes, there are 10 broken-down and abandoned homes, and a dozen businesses that are shuttered and dark and dusty, many with windows broken out by mischievous teenagers. I am saddened as I wonder what stories these hulks, relics of a now-defunct lifestyle, could say to me. I wonder what I could learn if they could teach me. In town after town, we ride through what used to be their little Main Street, and in some towns there appears to be not a single business open. What happened here? And what happened to the people who built these towns with hope and passion, and what keeps the remnant hanging on?

My reverie is interrupted by Jill, my GPS voice, saying in our headsets, “Drive 1.8 miles to three-eight-seven-fifteen-four-oh-one-bypass-west!” It’s one of the waypoints I’ve created near Bennettsville, South Carolina. Kitty and I both laugh and I press the “Speak” button to make Jill repeat this several more times.

We ride nearly 190 miles across the breadth of South Carolina, spending about 130 miles on I-20 even though I’ve billed this as a two-lane day. Without changing the trip parameters, it was difficult to find a way through South Carolina without using the Interstate. By the time we make Columbia, there’s as much sky as cloud cover. By the time we make the Georgia line at the Savannah River near Augusta, we ride under brilliant blue skies and just a few puffy white clouds.

Riding west of Augusta and out of the hilly banks of the Savannah River, we pass through miles and miles of pine trees. At the moment we are on US 1, which is four lanes wide here. “I like looking through the pine trees at the other side of the road,” Kitty comments. The pine trunks in the quarter-mile-wide median flit by like a million strobes as I steal a glance across to the northbound side. Georgia is justifiably noted for its stately pine trees, and I think of a cut from one of my all-time favorite CDs:

Tall trees in Georgia,
They grow so high
They shade me so
And sadly walking
Through the thicket I go

Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote this mournful ballad about turning down suitors in one’s youth, and now, in old age, none come around; but if you’ve never heard Eva Cassidy’s gut-wrenching cover of this tune, run, don’t walk, to your Google machine and find out the quickest way to get the CD “Eva Cassidy: Live at Blues Alley.” It may forever shape the way you think about the tall pine trees of Georgia.

By now it’s about 4:00 PM we have ridden over 300 miles, well into Georgia, and even though it’s early, decide to find a place to spend the night. Now I haven’t scoped out this trip segment at all, so we’re at the mercy of whatever we find. Approaching the town of Wrens, 10 miles distant, the GPS displays two motels and several restaurants. The next town is Louisville, about 12 miles beyond that. After that, it’s another 55 miles to the town of Dublin. We chat about this and decide to take whatever we find. In Wrens, one motel looks ok but we decide to ride on to Louisville where several motels and restaurants are listed. We decide to pass on the first one. Riding off the route to the second one, we find... nothing! No hint of an inn, no sign of a lodging establishment. We do see a Chamber of Commerce building that I suspect may at one time have been an inn.

“This has never happened to us before!” I say to Kitty in the headset. “That’s because I usually plan ahead! But this segment wasn’t scripted at all.”

We have two choices: Backtrack to Wrens, or ride 55 miles to Dublin, which is near I-16 and has plenty of services. “Let’s ride!” says Kitty.

And thus it is, on a day designated as a slow-down two-lane day, in 8.5 hours and with only 1 hour 17 minutes of stopping time, we accidentally ride 404 miles from Goldsboro, North Carolina, to Dublin, Georgia on 19 different route numbers that I can only recall by looking at the GPS route. I’d never try to ride such a convoluted route without a GPS! After checking in to the Hampton Inn we choose to walk a half mile to dinner.

“What was your favorite thing today?” I ask Kitty.

“Not having any rain!” she answers without hesitation.

GPS Track Day 2

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 1

2010-05-24T08:53:00.002-04:00

Showers II
Sunday May 23, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

At 2:40 AM I am awakened by torrential rain splattering forcefully on the metal bathroom vent atop the roof. At 5:00 AM I am awakened by a peal of thunder. I’d looked at the weather forecast, though, and the showers were predicted to diminish by late morning.

So we hang out until after 10:30, when the cloud cover is broken by patches of blue sky and the road is almost dry. Our destination today is our friend Ray and Deb’s house in North Carolina, only a 280-mile ride, so we’re in no hurry. The last of the luggage is loaded into the trailer and I hook it up to the bike and back it down the driveway. By now a fine mist is once again in the air and covering the windshield in a thin film. I’ve decided to forego the Dance of the Rainsuit, though, as the weather radar earlier showed the front to have been east of us.

Kitty is moving vehicles around, putting the car into the now-vacant garage, and moving the truck into the driveway. “The weather forecast on the radio says thunderstorms are moving in,” she warns. “Why don’t you want to put on rain gear?”

“Because I think the front has moved through and we won’t really have much rain,” I respond confidently.

I chose poorly. Within eight miles we are sitting at a red light while the rain is pounding down on our leather gear and we are looking for shelter. I hadn’t fueled prior to starting out, so we need fuel as well. We find a gas station and park strategically downwind but the wind is so strong it is blowing the rain all the way through the gas pump shelter, soaking the cloth seat and us.

We do the Exaggerated Dance of the One-Piece Rainsuit under the shelter, exaggerated because when you’re already wet, it’s hard to slide the suits over the wet boots and clothing. “It’s sure nice having waterproof Cruiserworks boots,” I say to Kitty.
The sky is angry and dark, and the rain continues pounding down while we cover the cloth seat, switch a clear helmet shield for me, and fuel the bike. There is no reason we have to be riding in this downpour, so we opt to hang out for almost a half hour under the gas pump shelter, until the dark heart of the storm passes.

It’s still raining hard as we pull out onto US 29 south, and we ease gently into the flow of traffic and head southward toward US 17 and I-95. Sunday traffic is fairly light and the rain diminishes. By the time we reach Richmond the sky has cleared and it’s 85 degrees, so we stop for a little lunch break and take off the rain gear. I send Ray a text message that we are running late because of the rain.

I choose poorly. Thirty miles later we are beside the Interstate doing the Second Dance of the Rainsuit. It’s not raining much where we are, but just a quarter mile away we can see a seething mist on the road surface from the pelting rain.

For the next 150 miles we ride intermittently out of downpours and blue skies, through this very unsettled weather pattern. One storm covers about 60 miles as we ride through it, including 40 miles of 45-mph, four-way-flashers engaged, standing-water, minimum-visibility travel. I stay relaxed but alert, and when we finally take the exit off I-95 for the last 30 miles to Ray’s house, the road is drying and the sky has lightened once again.

I have never come to Ray’s house from this direction. Always from Jacksonville, or San Diego, or Atlanta, or Asheville, but not from the north. So I just follow the GPS-generated track over what to me are confusing North Carolina secondary roads. About five miles from his house, the road is blocked by an accident.

“Can we go straight through?” I ask the flagman.

“No, you have to turn right or left,” he responds.

Having no idea which is better, we turn left and the GPS generates a new route on yet more confusing North Carolina secondary roads. We arrive a little before 6:00 PM and Ray waves us into his carport. It is great to see our friends again. Ray and I have ridden together for more miles than anyone in our collective acquaintance, but he’s had to stop riding because of health issues. We’d done an emotional last ride together almost a year ago now, and hadn’t seen each other since.

At dinner, to which we travel in their new Honda Odyssey, another heavy storm moves through the area. “I almost always want to be on a bike,” I say, “but sometimes there are advantages to being in a car!” We enjoy a great evening of catching up, and he convinces me his Blu-Ray DVD player kicks up HDTV to yet another notch. Kitty and I don’t watch many movies but this is definitely awesome!
Tomorrow’s weather looks a little better than today, so I’ve done a minimal wipe-down of the bike and trailer, hedging my bets in case it’s sunny. It just won’t do to ride on a sunny day with water spots on the vehicle.

Tomorrow we plan to start wandering across North Carolina and Georgia, mostly on back roads.

Rainy or not, here we come!

GPS Track, Day 1

Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 0

2010-05-23T09:34:00.003-04:00

Showers
Saturday May 22, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

Tomorrow Kitty and I plan to start our two-week two-up tour, our Gulf Coast Getaway, and today is Packing Day. We plan to wander southward to the Florida Panhandle and the Gulf Coast, and then spend 5 days with our Mississippi family before heading home. Our original plans had to be modified a bit because Kitty has a seminar she needs to attend on Saturday June 5, so we’ll be getting home two days earlier than we might, and I had to reverse all my GPS routes to accommodate the changes.

But instead of packing, we’re heading to a baby shower for my niece who lives about 100 miles away in Harrisonburg, Virginia. We’d more or less planned to take the Gold Wing to the baby shower but there are rain showers all over the area, so we opt for the comfort of our SUV. I’m not the most frequent attendee of baby showers but I hated to send Kitty up there by herself to find her way in what to her is an unfamiliar area. In spite of the fact that I feel a certain urgency to be packing, I relax and enjoy the time with various family members and meeting some new people. Among all those women at the shower, there are four guys. My creative and clever sister has strategically placed tiny baby clothes on a makeshift clothesline draped in front of their large high-definition television screen, apparently to make sure the party doesn’t get co-opted by Guys Watching Sports.

When we get home at around 5:00 PM I slowly start packing and fitting things into the trailer and saddlebags while Kitty does the last laundry for the trip. It’s a bit of a different packing technique than usual because we will be spending five days in Gulf Coast shorts-and-flip-flops weather at Kevin’s house. Don’t you just hate those long walks on the beach in long jeans and motorcycle riding boots?

I’d detailed the bike and trailer last weekend, so there’s little to do in terms of cleaning or polishing. Using my digital air pressure gauge, I carefully make sure the air pressure in the trailer and bike tires is perfect for the estimated load we’ll be carrying: 21 psi for the trailer tires, 20 psi for the trailer suspension, 33 psi for the front bike tire, 41 psi for the rear. For all those years when I ran Dunlop Elite series tires on my Gold Wing, I always inflated to the maximum recommended pressure of 41 psi, but with this Michelin StreetPilot GT set I’m running manufacturer’s inflation specifications. We’ll see how that works out – after about 8,000 miles there’s no sign of wear front or rear so the early results of my experiment seem positive.

I have a moment of panic when I can’t find the locking pin for the trailer hitch. Then I remember I bought a new key-lock system last year and had put it into one of the interior side pockets of the trailer when I last parked it. I treat all the locks and fittings on both the bike and trailer with WD-40 oil and my preparations are complete. Extra tools are packed; GPS routes and waypoints are loaded and the GPS is mounted on the bike: we are taking along an extra bag filled with memorabilia from Kevin’s childhood that Kitty figures rightfully belong with him; the laundry is done and our bags are packed.

Tomorrow I imagine we will need to do the Dance of Rainsuit before heading southward for a lazy day’s ride. I fall asleep dreaming of leaky rainsuits that strangely enough, pool water on the inside of my waterproof Cruiserworks riding boots and soak my socks.

Crawfish Caper, Day 6

2010-05-11T20:04:00.006-04:00

Together
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

I check the Weather Channel and see that there will be no escaping the rain for me on this day. Here in Kingsport, Tennessee, it’s 62F now, and I reflect on how to dress for the day’s ride. I’m wearing just a T-shirt
(well, not just a T-shirt!), and with the rain gear, I often add only one layer: An old sweatshirt that always travels with me in the right-hand saddlebag. Kitty always laughs when I wear this thing and won’t let me wear it in public because we got it probably 20 years ago in Ocean City, Maryland during a cold snap in August; it has something like a big square target on the back. In addition to the sweatshirt, if the weather is chilly, I also take out the jacket liner from my leather jacket and put it on under the sweatshirt, thus adding another layer of effective insulation. I imagine the weather will get cooler as I ride into the rain, so I add the insulated jacket liner and the sweatshirt even though I’m instantly too warm.

I chat with Blair and Blair and learn that they are heading for Memphis today and have likewise decided to dress in their rain gear even though it’s not raining at the moment here.

I have not cleaned the bike so it is adorned with filthy water spots from yesterday’s ride. I fight my instinct to clean them off. It’s like a Pavlovian response to me: See water spots, clean. See fingerprints, clean. See dust on finish, brush with lambs-wool duster. At end of day, wax and polish.

As I back out of my parking space, I notice that the front wheel leaves a tire track and I realize it’s because last evening in the darkness, I parked right in the middle of a giant grease slick — the accumulated engine
droppings of countless cars parked in that same parking space! So now my front wheel is covered with oil! Even as I gently apply the front brake to stop my backwards progress, it slides! And as soon as I move forward, my
rear wheel will also covered with oil, having picked up the oil track the front wheel has graciously laid down. The pavement is dry, but even so, I am more than extraordinarily careful as I ease out of the parking lot, onto
the street, and navigate to the on-ramp of northbound I-81. I imagine that in a few miles the oil is off the tires, but I’m very cautious for quite a few miles before leaning into any corners or lane changes.

I stop for fuel within the first 40 miles. Solo Guy doesn’t always fuel up when he starts the day unless it’s with a group or an Ironbutt timed run. It’s still 62F and I’ve been riding with my rain suit open at the top to
keep cool. After fueling I run to the men’s rest room. There’s a sign that says “No key required. If the door is locked, someone is inside.” I knock on the door and get no response, so I push the door open and walk inside,
and am startled to find someone already there. Then I realize that he is more startled than I, because I’m wearing my full rain gear and haven’t removed my helmet. To an unsuspecting men’s bathroom user, I must look like someone from outer space!

The rain starts in earnest 120 miles into Virginia on I-81. It’s heavy, sustained, and unabated. I’d forgotten to treat my Tulsa windshield at the first fuel stop; the accumulated pounding of falling rain and road spray from 300 miles of Interstate travel has taken its tolland the windshield isn’t clearing as well as I’d like. Nevertheless, I’m able to ride at speed and decide to wait until the next fuel stop to re-apply the “210” windshield polish I routinely use on my windshield.

Now I’m glad I added the extra layer of my jacket liner, as the temperature drops to 45F and stays there for the duration of the trip. I’m warm and dry as I ride out the miles toward home. My hands are a little chilly, though. I use SealSkinz gloves (http://www.sealskinz.com), from a company that manufactures diving suits. These gloves are extremely competent wet-weather riding gloves, completely dry, with gripper dots on the palms and fingers to provide a great feel for the control surfaces on the handlebars. However, they do not offer much insulation and they have an outer layer that is, ironically enough, water-absorbent, which leads to additional heat loss by evaporation. It’s the only negative I’ve found in these otherwise spectacular gloves: They don’t provide much heat retention at 50F or below in rain.

I run north on I-81 in moderate to heavy rain to Mile Marker 300, where I-66 splits off for what is usually my last 50-mile leg on a homeward journey. One benefit of the rain is that the Shenandoah Valley, which only 5 days ago
reeked with the stench of manure spread onto the fields, now has only faint vestiges of that odor. At one point on I-66, always the coldest spot in the area, the temperature drops to 39F. I would not be dressed for sustained riding in this temperature! The rain finally stops about 18 miles from home and I finish the ride on wet pavement but without rain.

I’ve ridden 370 miles today, most of it in rain. About 600 miles of rain in the last two days, in fact. I don’t mind riding in rain but it’s never as relaxing as a sunny day: You have only one chance to get it right on a motorcycle, and a moment’s lapse or a moment’s misjudgment can have disastrous consequences. The vinyl rain cover for the passenger backrest has blown off somewhere on I-66 so I’ll have to see about ordering a new one. I had checked the antifreeze level at Kevin’s house in Mississippi, and while it was down a little, the level was ok. I’ll top it off before the next trip.

And who knew, when fighting 95-degree temperatures on I-20 down there in Mississippi, that I’d be riding in 40-degree temperatures several days later! If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that I had no lessons learned. I was prepared with multiple layers of clothing and rain gear. If I came close to the edge of comfort for riding in the weather I encountered, it was the gloves. For sustained riding in temperatures below 50F, I would take a heavier pair of gloves and my old Aerostich “lobster-claw” gauntlets, which are three-fingered waterproof gauntlets that will fit over a heavier
glove and do an admirable job in keeping the hands warm and dry. SealSkinz gloves are unsurpassed in dexterity and operation of control surfaces, but the lobster-claws can offer comfortable wet-weather riding in a much wider range of temperatures.

I pull into the driveway and Kitty runs out to greet me. “I’ve been a little troubled, leaving you alone on Mother’s Day,” I say.

“It’s ok,” she says. “I’m just glad you could see your friends and spend a little time with our family.” She has a hot cup of Gevalia coffee waiting.

I pull the bike into the garage without cleaning it.

In Nova Scotia a couple years ago, in a delightful rustic out-of-the-way inn called the Shipwright Inn, Kitty and I saw a sign that eventually became the title of that trip: “Together is the Best Place to Be.” It resonates with
us. Solo Guy enjoys his time and space, and revels in the opportunity to do a ride where he can do just as he pleases. But at the end of the trip, at the end of the day, at the end of anything, I always want to come home to
Kitty.

“Together” works better for me than anything!

Crawfish Caper, Day 5

2010-05-11T09:28:00.002-04:00

Rainy Days and Mondays
Monday, May 10, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

Goodbyes are the hardest. But shortly before 9:00 AM, I am saying goodbye to my Mississippi family and with a wave and a little toot on the horn, ride slowly away. Away from the hugs of my grandbabies (they’re not really babies anymore, it just seems good for a grandpa to call them that) and the family. Off toward home, which is one of my other most favorite places to be, and toward Kitty, who’s my most favorite person to be with.

I’d taken a quick look at the Weather Channel and it doesn’t look like I can outrun the large weather pattern that has spawned giant red splotches on the Oklahoma map and extends eastward across the country. The severe weather won’t reach me today, but rain appears inevitable.

But for now, it’s a beautiful and sunny cool morning as I head up Rt. 49, fuel within the first 60 miles, and pick up I-55 at Meridian. By that time I’m under a light cloud cover. At the Alabama line, rain spits onto my windshield and there’s evidence of recent rain, but I at 250 miles an my second fuel stop at 12:30, I haven’t hit any rain although I’m under heavy overcast skies. I check the GPS: 67.5 mph trip average. This is Ironbutt territory, where 62.5 mph is required to ride 1,500 miles in 24 hours. I am feeling great, and Solo Guy is thinking he might want to ride the thousand-plus miles home in one stretch.

It’s gotten steadily cooler as I ride deeper into the large weather pattern and I’ve been closing vents and opening heat vents. Now, at about 60F, I switch to a slightly heavier summer pair of gloves and add the jacket liner.

I hit real rain at 2:00 PM, 330 miles into the trip, between Birmingham and Gadsden, Alabama. So I do the Dance of the One-Piece Motoport Rainsuit. I have waterproof Cruiserworks riding boots, so no change-out necessary there, and I don my SealSkinz rain gloves. In a rare moment of lucidity, I remember to keep my key out of my jeans pocket before zipping up.

For the next 85 miles the rain is steady and sometimes heavy. During the heavy stretches, I switch off cruise control as I always do when there may be standing water on the road. Motorcycle tires by nature are not prone to hydroplaning as a car tire might in heavy water but there have still been reports of cruise control sensors gone wild if the front wheel (which generates the sensor pulses) breaks free of pavement contact, making the cruise control brain think it needs to speed up. So just when you want to be slowing down, your cruise control is speeding you up!

The rain continues unabated through Georgia, Chattanooga, and Knoxville as I pick up the routes eventually leading to I-81 north. Even with the rain, Solo Guy is feeling the Long Road and wants to ride the rest of the way home. I’ve lost an hour and would arrive at about 2:00 AM. This has been one of my best riding days ever. I am startled when I check the elapsed time on the GPS and find I’ve been riding for over eight hours. I feel like I just started. I haven’t listened to the radio or any music. I’ve thinking about my family and the ties that keep us together when we’re apart.

By dusk, I switch on a radio station to check the weather reports. I haven’t checked WeatherBug on my BlackBerry. It’s still raining, although I seem to riding out of the worst of it. But unless it’s necessary, I prefer not to ride in rain at night. Tonight it isn’t necessary, so eventually I make a reluctant stop in Kingsport, Tennessee after 655 miles. It has been a spectacular riding day and I’m finding it really hard to stop. This whole day was just a unique Solo Guy groove! I never felt tired, never felt the need to take a break. Fuel stops were made only because they are necessary. Rainy days and Mondays have no effect on Solo Guy!

At the hotel I meet two bikers whose names turn out to be Blair and Blair, doing something like a 32-day memorial ride tour. They write a blog about their adventures at http://www.goodrides.webs.com/.

I check the Weather Channel in the hotel and decide tomorrow will be more of the same. In a rare concession to reality, I cover the bike but don’t bother cleaning it.

Tomorrow’s ride home awaits!

Crawfish Caper, Day 4

2010-05-09T22:45:00.004-04:00

Twenty-Nine Point Five
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

After getting out of bed this morning, I carefully replace the large fuzzy yellow stuffed animal I’d found sleeping there last night. I’m not sure what he did in the hours he was deposed from the bed, but I imagine my creative granddaughter will have plans for him later.

I’m still trying to find normalcy in being a thousand miles from Kitty on Mother’s Day, but she had really encouraged me to do this ride, and we exchange several text messages during the morning.

Since Kevin is the pastor of their church, he usually goes to work early on Sunday morning. Kristal and the kids go later. I could ride in the van with them, but decide that since I came on the bike, to church I’ll go on the bike. I’m dressed in riding boots and jeans but that seems to be a normal look at this church. I enjoy the chance to once again meet my Harley-Davidson-riding friend James and the team at church.

Afterwards, all the mothers get to choose a long-stemmed rose from a giant vase in the front of the sanctuary. Kristal holds out one of the red roses while I take a picture and send it to Kitty. Is it really the thought that counts?

After a Mother’s Day lunch at the Back Bay Seafood Restaurant in Gulfport, we head back to the house in our three different vehicles. The remainder of the day passes in a lazy nap, talking to Kitty, calling my own mother, chasing kids around the yard, and bedtime stories.

My GPS says I’ve traveled 29.5 miles on my Gold Wing today, but the memories of this day are a priceless treasure. It reminds me that while Solo Guy may often rack up well over 1,000 miles in a day, when you’re a grandpa, 29.5 can be exactly the right number.

Crawfish Caper, Day 3

2010-05-09T09:44:00.007-04:00

Metamorphosis
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

Overnight a strong weather front with torrential but short-lived downpours moved through the Vicksburg area, leaving behind a beautiful crisp day with temperatures in the 70’s, perfect for a ride. Most of the riders are out drying off their rain covers, some draped across the second-story balcony railings, flapping in the breeze like giant flags of questionable origin.

We are to form up at 9:00 AM for the group ride today. After a leisurely breakfast, my bike cover has dried but several towels are soaked, so I stow them as best I can. The cover generally protects the entire bike but it is not waterproof, so in a heavy rain some water always soaks in the cloth covered seat. I climb onto the seat to move the bike to a place in line, and immediately my entire rear end and inside of my thighs are soaked.

I move my Wing into line and dismount. Jack Sides, apparently seeing my soaking wet behind, walks over and says, “Beachy! How many years have you had that cloth seat? And how many times have you had to dry it after an overnight rain? Can’t take you anywhere without Kitty!”
As the bikes are starting up, I suddenly notice a couple teaspoons of antifreeze on the pavement under my bike! I quickly look at where it was parked overnight and that area is dry. If there were a problem I’d expect to see some drips there, too. I poke my head under the bike and there’s nothing dripping, no evidence of a leak. I conclude it’s a “Gold Wing hiccup”, which has plagued my Wing for a long time in spite of being checked over by several bike shops. Sometimes when the engine is started and runs only for a short time, like this morning, it spews out some antifreeze through the overflow hose. No-one has been able to describe what causes this. I’m pretty confident this is what I’m looking at, so I mount up and ride off with the group. I will check the antifreeze level when I can, but there’s no evidence of a problem.

There are several dozen motorcycles, most of them Gold Wings. I’veobserved that my bike and Woodie’s trike are the only 1500’s in the group. J.R. has a bike of, well, various vintages since it seems to be composite of many bikes, but it’s a 1000cc Wing. Otherwise, all the Gold Wings are 1800’s. How times have changed since the Alamo Run when the first 1800 showed up!

There’s always a bit of apprehension riding in a large group of unfamiliar riders. But this group seems well-mannered and steady. Ricky, whose last name I didn’t catch, is from the local Gold Wing Road Riders Association chapter and is a great leader, holding a brisk but manageable pace. I never do find out who the tail gunner is, but he’s likewise excellent: Every CB transmission is clear, measured, authoritative, and concise. Tail gunner, if you’re out there reading this, congratulations on a great job!

We ride roughly southward from Vicksburg but the track captured by my GPS is a winding back-country route that crosses the Natchez Trace three times. Mostly we pass through heavily wooded areas where canopies of live oak trees are draped with Spanish moss. The occasional vine loops down from the trees as though to snare the unsuspecting biker, but fortunately these are all on the left side of the road and don’t interfere with our leisurely journey.

I am the 12th bike in line, roughly in the middle of the pack. On these roads, with this many riders, counting bikes in the mirrors is not a wise idea and so I wait until the first stop to count. There are 23. We lost one who, to a bit of concern, suddenly went AWOL without any CB announcement and didn’t make one of the turnoffs. He couldn’t have missed it, as all the bikes were bunched together. At last check, no-one knows why he bailed out.Our first stop is Grand Gulf Military Park, on the hilly banks of the Mississippi River, where there were fought some notable battles between Union and Confederate troops. There’s no cell phone service but I check my messages and there’s one from Kitty. She’s gotten my Mother’s Day card! On the first day, I stopped in town in Virginia to find a card shop and a post office. I was not able to mention this fact prior to this because with Kitty’s newfound Internet awareness, she’s reading my daily blog too so I couldn’t tip her off! Glad it got there on time.

After poking around for an hour or more, including a brief stop for some to climb the lookout tower, we retrace our track back out to Rt. 61 and head south through the town of Lorman for lunch.
The “Old Country Restaurant” is a place you would need to know about to stop there. It’s a very unassuming place. But folks around here apparently do know about it, as there are several groups of bikers and quite a few cars in the parking lot. This is a unique throw-back to an earlier time where one establishment served all the functions of a small town. On the walls are thousands upon thousands of business cards, some so old and brown that I wonder if they would crumble if I touch them. There are decades-old advertising billboards for products that I haven’t the slightest knowledge of. The restaurant is a buffet featuring chicken and beef ribs. The owner is Arthur Fine, and at one point he comes out and explains the history of the building and his purchase of it. He’s a graceful African-American man who then proceeds to entertain us with several heartfelt a cappella songs in the American Negro style. He gets a large round of applause when he’s finished. This is a place that deserves a waypoint in my GPS, and I mark it when we walk outside. I’ll be back!

My intention for this trip from the beginning has been to split off from the group sometime today and ride the 200-plus miles to Gulfport, Mississippi to spend a bit of time with our family there. I just couldn’t be this close without seeing them! So after lunch, this feels like the time and place. “I’m metamorphosing from a biker into a grandpa!” I tell several people. And suddenly, as if from nowhere, tears come to my eyes and Marlene gives me a sustained hug. She says something like “That’s a good thing, you go and be a grandpa!”

And so while dozens of bikes head north toward more country roads and the hotel, one black Wing heads south. I follow the GPS-generated route and end up running Rt. 98 to Mccomb, Mississippi, and then on to I-55 south, where I pick up I-12 east. 209 miles pass and I arrive at Kevin’s house to be greeted by grandkids screaming with joy.

And so the metamorphosis is complete. It is a little disconcerting to be here without Kitty.

But tonight, I’m just a grandpa.

Crawfish Caper, Day 2

2010-05-07T23:31:00.006-04:00

Transitions and Mud Bugs
Friday, May 07, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

No alarm clock is set for this morning. It’s just 260 miles to Vicksburg, about a four-hour ride, so I plan to sleep in. That plan fails when I wake up at 6:30 local time because I suppose my body clock thinks it’s already 7:30 and refuses to let me go back to sleep. I putter around and finally roll out at about 9:00 AM, another beautiful southern spring day in my windscreen.

Yesterday I listened to music almost the whole day, interspersed with the big-truck CB chatter. I don’t usually talk a lot on CB when riding alone but occasionally a trucker will strike up a conversation that lasts for many miles. This drives Kitty crazy: When playing music, the incoming CB transmission will mute the music passage, and then the music resumes as soon as the CB reception is over. Then when I respond, the same thing happens, and sometimes Kitty can’t tell if I’m talking to her or talking on CB. So her headset is filled with a confusing barrage of music, incoming CB transmissions, and my outgoing CB transmissions. I’ve learned not to mix music and CB when riding two-up! But Solo Guy has none of these constraints, and yesterday I happily listened all day to music and CB chatter.

But this morning, for no particular reason, I just want silence, so I turn off the CB and the radio and listen to the wind whispering around my big Tulsa windshield and my aerodynamic Shoei helmet. The morning is suffused by a pleasant, heavy, sweet smell that seems to emanate from a white-flowered shrub that grows along the Interstate banks. This pleasant aroma accompanies me all the way to Vicksburg while the medial strip and roadsides are sometimes covered in carpets of purple or white flowers.

I reflect on the crawfish feast planned for tonight. The last time I had crawfish I ordered them very hot then got back to the hotel and realized I had to remove my contacts. After repeated hand washings I finally dared to touch my eye and it was instant fire, unrelenting, that lasted about three minutes before subsiding. I then had to repeat this for the other eye! I wonder how that will work this evening. I always pack my eyeglasses but it’s very hard to get them on under the helmet, so I virtually always wear contacts while riding.

And thinking of crawfish reminds me that they are often called “mud bugs” in the South, and this in turn reminds me of one of our two-up motorcycle trips, coming home from the Alamo Run in San Antonio, where we explored the southern coast and bayous of Louisiana. We took a little bayou cruise with Cajun Man, whose real name is Ron Guidry, having retired from a career in Special Ops Armed Forces and the Louisiana State Highway Patrol. He gave us a tape and a CD of his music, and it has had a lasting impact on my understanding of the Cajun culture. His songs speak of trapping muskrats, paddling a pirogue on the bayou late at night, eating jambalaya and crawfish pie, working hard and playing hard, and methods of hunting rabbits that are, as he explains, “illegal in all parts of the world with the exception of extreme southern Louisiana, where, if you are hungry, anything is legal.” One of his captivating songs describes a plain down-home restaurant where all they have on the menu is “crawfish – crawdads – mud bugs and other things.” He describes high-class people wearing suits and diamond rings sitting in this joint eating “crawfish – crawdads – mud bugs and other things.” I wonder how Toney’s, tonight’s restaurant, might compare to this dive!

Solo Guy has no preconceived notion of whether his world should be silent or raucous. Both work at different times. So I break my cone of wind-whispered silence and cycle twice through the rough-cut Cajun music of Cajun Man. In a strange way I now feel more prepared to eat crawfish tonight. I doubt that Vicksburg is much like extreme southern Louisiana in many regards but I hope the mud bugs are the same!In the 261 miles to the hotel in Vicksburg, I make one 7-minute fuel stop and average 70.4 miles per hour according to the GPS. I arrive at about 1:00 PM and see several Gold Wings in the parking lot. I presume most of the group is out for a ride somewhere.

I’m greeted by my old friend Rick “Skippy” Melling, and suddenly Solo Guy is in an awkward state of transition. Solo Guy practices few social graces and actually needs even fewer, and suddenly I’m struggling to switch environments and become Normal Guy, who actually talks and listens to people! Soon enough dozens of Gold Wings show up from their day trip and I’m talking to friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in years, and meeting new people as well. Gordo and Gibby and Roger and Marlene and Woodie and Gloria and Charlie and Bobbye and many others – it’s good to see all of them again. Almost everyone asks about Kitty, and in a text message exchange she mentions that maybe next year we can do a longer ride and she could come too.

Of course someone quickly points out that it was Gordo who sucked the diesel fuel out of my Gold Wing’s tank on that hillside a mile out of Leakey, Texas. Yes, I will forever be known as Diesel Boi to this crowd after that misadventure! And in my garage, on my Wall of Shame, I still have the gas can they made me ignominiously carry home with me from Texas!All the bikes and one car, maybe 40 or more, form up at 6:00 PM for the short ride to Toney’s Restaurant. It’s not a dive – the dining room looks nice. But the back room, where we are taken, now this is a no-frills crawfish-eating place! They do have a menu but most of us opt for all-you-can-eat mud bugs. The loud crowd numbers, to my count, about 55 people. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten crawfish and I find I’ve lost the knack.

Gordo shows me how to twist the tail away from the body, and then lacerate the back end of the tail with a thumbnail to easily extract the meat. “So you can do more than suck diesel fuel out of a tank!” I tell him.

“I’ll have to update my resume when I get home.”

I eat four heaping plates plus one non-heaping plate of these steaming succulent mud bugs, and then I’m done. I can eat no more. Wow, I wish we had these things in Virginia! I decide it is worth riding a thousand miles to eat them!

Back at the hotel, everyone chats and mingles in the parking lot. Roger Riley distributes necklaces with little crawfish attached. My transition to Normal Guy seems to have gone well. It’s good to see my old friends, some of whom have shared thousands of miles of riding with me.

I haven’t removed my contact lenses, so when I get to my room I carefully wash my hands several times and try to clean under the fingernails to remove all traces of the cooking spices. When I remove the lenses, there’s only a minor burning for a second. I must be getting better at this!Tomorrow there’s a planned ride activity, from which I will peel off sometime, or maybe wait until we arrive back at the hotel, and slide on over Gulfport to spend a bit of time with our son and family, who now live there. Being within 200 miles of Gulfport, I just can’t let the opportunity pass.

They tell me the ride leaves at 9:00 AM sharp, although nobody seems to know where we’re going. That pretty much works for me. I plan to be ready.

Crawfish Caper, Day 1

2010-05-07T09:47:00.006-04:00

Magic Ribbon
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

BRAWCKK!!! BRAWCKK!!! BRAWCKK!!! BRAWCKK!!!

I cower in confused terror as the huge screeching bird of prey swoops down to carry me away into certain oblivion. But at the last instant… I reach out and turn off the alarm. It’s 5:00 AM, time to hit the Long Road! I haven’t attended a WOTI (Wings Over the Internet) function for quite some time, and I’ve been musing about this year’s iteration of the Mississippi Area Crawfish Hunt (MACH 2010), held in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Kitty has been gently encouraging me to take a long ride. I guess she knows when it’s time! Even on Mother’s Day weekend.

By 6:15 I’m heading west on I-66 in the 55-degree morning chill. The moon is a half-slice of California white pizza in an early-morning pale blue sky. I haven’t fueled before starting out so I find myself fueling less than 15 miles from home.

After that brief stop, the Long Road lies before me! It’s been a while since Solo Guy has manifested himself on my rides. He seems to emerge mostly on the Long Road, and he is here today. Solo Guy rides his own ride, eats when he is hungry, stops when he is tired, sleeps when he needs to, talks when he wants to, or not, and isn’t much into counting miles or milestones. Unlike TV’s Cheers jingle that says “Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name,” Solo Guy revels in the fact that he can go where nobody knows his name! It’s just the Long Road and Solo Guy. I’ve described in other stories how Solo Guy is often mistaken for Lonely Guy, but even in this, he cares nothing for those perceptions.

As I head south on I-81, the early green of a Virginia springtime rolls into a blue haze in the distance. This seems to have been the week to clean out the chicken and livestock barns; the Shenandoah Valley reeks with the perfume of rotting manure spread liberally on many of the fields. It reminds me in a small way of the stench that Kitty and I encountered on last year’s ride to the Gaspe Peninsula. But that’s in a different story. Herds of black cows dot the fields, many accompanied by a frisky black calf, or “baby cow” as Kitty and I usually call them when traveling together. Kitty has a soft spot for all babies, and I presume she believes they are cuter if she calls them “baby cows.” For a moment I’m a little nostalgic to be traveling without Kitty, taking a quick inventory of the wonderful trips and the miles we ridden together, but Solo Guy re-asserts himself and I roll southward with a smile.

The morning warms slowly under a pristine sky, and over a period of hours I close the heat vents, open my jacket vents, open the fairing vents, and finally, the windshield vent, one by one. Still, it’s a pleasant 82 degrees.

I have found the sweet spot on the seat, hitting the groove, and I feel I could ride the entire day without stopping. I’m on a magic machine following a magic ribbon that appears just in time for me to ride over it, and slowly disappears behind me. Solo Guy is reluctant to stop, but each 200 miles I’m forced to stop for fuel.

Somewhere in Alabama later in the afternoon, between fuel stops, Solo Guy decides to take a break at a rest stop to drink some water. Solo Guy cares nothing for the concept of riding “tank-to-tank” without stopping though he often does that, about 200 miles each time. It’s very simple for Solo Guy: When he is thirsty, he stops to drink. Under a shaded area at the rest stop, I prepare to sit down on the grass with my back against a tree, and then notice that my walking has disturbed thousands of ants in dozens of tiny anthills. Resting against this tree suddenly seems a lot less inviting and I beat a hasty retreat.

The temperature has hovered in the low to mid nineties all afternoon, and I finally to have stow my jacket. I don’t like riding without my leather jacket, but I’m just getting too uncomfortable.

Having run through the northwest corner of Georgia, I’ve “gained” an hour in Alabama as I approach a potential stopping point 20 miles south of Birmingham. It’s relatively early local time, just before 6:00 PM. I’ve traveled almost exactly 750 miles, and Solo Guy considers riding out the nearly 300 or so miles to Vicksburg. But what to do with the second day of a two-day destination ride if you finish it on the first day? In the end, I decide to knock it off here, get a nice dinner at a restaurant within walking distance, and get a good’s night's rest.

It has been a great day. Tomorrow’s adventures await.

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 12

2009-07-04T00:26:00.008-04:00

Here Comes the Sun
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

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 11

2009-07-02T23:16:00.004-04:00

Country Roads
Thursday July 2, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

This morning, Bailey Island is fog-shrouded, rain-lashed, and wind-whipped, just as it’s been for the past 34 days if we are to believe the locals. Kitty and I are in the Bailey Island Motel intently watching the Weather Channel. I am indecisive. Centered on Boston, 125 miles southwest from where we are near Brunswick, Maine, is a monster red splotch, a huge storm churning northward, dumping inches of rain and generating 700 lightning strikes per hour. The mountains of New Hampshire, where we intend to ride today, are relatively quiet at the moment but this storm will reach them this afternoon. A quick BlackBerry WeatherBug check on several cities in New Hampshire and Vermont shows that they are forecasting extremely heavy rain this evening with flash flood warnings in all the places I check.

So there’s the dilemma. Do we ride the mountains and hope we are in a motel somewhere before the heavy stuff hits? Or do we ride into the storm and find a rest area if it gets too bad? And if we skip the mountains, should we try to make it home in two days? Or should we hang out at Bailey Island for a day in this warm and friendly environment?

Working through the possibilities, I finally decide that with a 34-day history of bad weather and with no sign of any new emerging weather pattern, hanging out for the day on Bailey Island probably won’t help all that much. So that leaves two possibilities, both of which involve riding somewhere today, so I tell Kitty “Let’s pack up. By the time we leave, maybe I’ll know what to do.”

Kitty recuses herself from any decision-making process. “You’re the driver!” she keeps saying.

Checking out of the hotel, Doreen tries her best to entice us to stay until tomorrow. I have to admit that is a tempting option with the temperature at 53F and the landscape shrouded in fog and lashed with rain. “I’ve never seen him so indecisive!” says Kitty. “Usually he can make up his mind in a minute and we have a plan.” She’s right. I am indecisive.

We have already done the Dance of the Rainsuit and are wearing our helmets so everything stays dry as we walk out into the rain and I back the bike and trailer out of its parking space. Just then a hotel employee comes running up in the pouring rain holding my leather riding jacket. “Is this yours?” she asks. Wow, close call! I’d hung it in the closet with Kitty’s last night and she thought I’d wear it this morning, but I usually don’t wear my leather jacket with the rain suit, just layers of other clothing. Somehow I missed it in the last-minute room sweep we always perform. We’ve never left anything behind but this was close.

I still don’t know what to do as we slowly ride the 14 foggy and soggy miles back to the mainland where I refuel the Wing. Finally I say, “I almost feel irresponsible taking us up into the mountains knowing there’s big dangerous weather moving in. I guess that settles it. Sorry, but I think we need to stay on the Interstates today.”

To this moment, never in all our travels has weather caused us to eliminate or change a major trip component. We have circled around thunderstorms or waited a few hours for weather to clear, but never have we completely deleted a part of the trip. But today we will. No mountain riding for us on this trip. We’ve been over nearly every road in New England and we’ll be back, but for today we resign ourselves to a day on the Interstates. And thus we ride onto I-295, I-95, I-290, I-90, and other Interstates that will bypass Boston and New York but are basically heavy-duty business routes. My least favorite routes! Country roads, not!

We run into the big storm within 50 miles, much sooner than I anticipated. It has been raining hard but soon after we pass a rest area where we could have pulled off and waited, the rain intensifies; it comes pouring down, snapping hard raindrops that sound almost like hail against our helmets and the Tulsa windshield. Traffic is slowing to 35 mph. The Tulsa windshield actually doesn’t clear very well at such speeds, but visibility is decent. Fortunately, as the rain has increased, the fog has dissipated.

“Remember those times I said I didn’t want to think about my tires?” I say to Kitty in the headset. “Now this is what I’m talking about! Wouldn’t you just hate to be wondering right now if we should have changed the bike’s tires?” These new Michelins are amazing. To add to the complexity of this morning’s little ride, in the midst of this downpour we have a 9-mile stretch of construction where the road is milled. I’ve ridden over lots of milled surfaces, and my fellow bikers well know the twitchy feeling in the handlebars and the seat as the bike constantly tries to find its line and never quite achieves it. Kitty hates riding those surfaces because the bike feels so unstable to her. At least the rider gets feedback through the handlebars and can feel what the bike is doing. These Michelins defy logic as they refuse to twitch on the milled surfaces we’ve experienced on this trip. Of all the tires I’ve had, never has a set been so impervious to the “twitchies”! It’s very gratifying as we ride through the downpour.

I don’t use CB Channel 19 a lot when traveling with Kitty, but in this weather, it’s important to be able to talk to the truckers so I have it on, very loud in our headsets, apologies to Kitty. I’ve discovered that in general, truck drivers really look out for motorcycles and when they find out they can talk to us they are usually as fiercely protective as a mother hen with her brood.

They are talking about our motorcycle, the “Evel Knievel” in the right lane. Now, since this is a family story, I have to edit out about two-thirds of the actual words we hear over the CB.

“***, there’s a *** Evel Knievel in the *** right lane!” says one. “That guy must be trying to collect a *** insurance policy on whoever he’s carrying on the back, or he doesn’t have any *** brains!”

“***, I know I wouldn’t want to *** be out here on a *** motorcycle. I know I’d do something *** stupid and fall down.”

I let them talk for a while without saying anything. Finally I key up my own CB and say “Hi, y’all big trucks, I’m the Evel Knievel in the right lane. That’s my wife I’m carrying on the back, and I sure don’t want to collect any insurance policy. So I guess that leaves me without any brains!”

“***, you *** ok back there?” asks another driver.

“Yeah, we ok here,” I respond. “Just easin’ down the road, 40 mph. Only problem is when you guys pass me, then I can’t see much for a while!”

“Where you headed?”

“Been in Canada for week, just wondering home to Virginia. Lovely day for a ride!”

Suddenly, at the limits of my forward visibility, the world disappears into a white cloud of mist.

“Oh, *** *** ***!” yells a driver over the CB. “We just hit a *** big puddle of water up here! I mean a *** POND of water all the way across the road! Can’t see ***!”

I’m riding 40 mph and there is no time to slow or for evasive action (whatever that might be). My big bike plows into the standing water and I pull the clutch, hold my breath, and it’s the longest 5 seconds of my life with a complete white-out as torrents of water cascade over the entire rig. It must be like standing under Niagara Falls. Then we’re through it, and I can breathe again, and I can see again, and we’re still upright, and the engine is still running, and a trucker is yelling “Hey motorcycle! Did you make it through ok?”

“Yeah, we made it,” I say on the CB. “I just pulled the clutch and rode through it. The bike never wobbled or had any indication it was in trouble.”

“You’re a lot more *** calm than I’d be!” says the driver. “I think I’d need me a new *** pair of shorts! We were three abreast up here and couldn’t see a thing! It’s a good thing one of us wasn’t beside you!” It is indeed! After this, many of the truckers that run up beside us to pass issue a fair warning over the CB. They do protect their motorcycle buddies.

At a little before 1:00 PM we stop for fuel, then enjoy a welcome warm cup of soup and a full lunch in a nearby Chili’s Restaurant. We take our time and talk about what we want to do. One option that would get us some more “country roads,” albeit Interstates, would be to ride I-84 to Albany and then return to Binghamton, New York on I-88. At least that would get us out of the East Coast business corridor.

We travel over 250 rain-soaked and weather-slowed miles until we are finally out of the worst of the weather and there are patches of clouds and even a hint of blue sky. At the cutoff for I-84 West, we see another huge and well-organized storm exactly in the path we would be taking.

“I’ve had enough vicious storms for today!” I say. “Sorry, Baby, looks like even this attempt to find a country road is going to fail.” And so we keep to a route that will eventually take us to I-287 and bypass New York City.

From lunch until we stop for the night at 6:30 PM just across the Tappan Zee bridge in Nyack, New York, we’ve ridden 198 miles on a single tank of fuel, farther than I ever remember riding while two-up and towing the trailer, and the low-fuel light hasn’t come on yet. I suppose the rain-slowed pace has had a good bit to do with the unusually high fuel mileage. Kitty and I have been on the bike without a break for exactly four hours. Once again I’m astonished at how much longer she can ride than in the old days.

And thus a rain-soaked 342-mile day draws to a close. We’ve ridden 2,502 miles total. Because of the vicious weather that blanketed New England today, we have decided to just ride out the miles until we get home, which will probably be tomorrow, a day earlier than I’d sketched it months ago. Slow-Down Guy is in serious hibernation today!

It was sunny and 72F when we arrived at the motel in Nyack, but now rain is once again pouring down and thunder is booming across the sky. It seems fitting that we should end our search for country roads in the rain and fog. We’ll see about that tomorrow.

See you then.

GPS Track Log

(Blue route is the foiled New England country road plan)

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 10

2009-07-02T07:46:00.008-04:00

Beyond Gray Skies
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

“Have you looked outside?” Kitty asks sometime before 7:00 AM.

I am hoping for sunshine but instead there is more of the same fog, mist, and rain we’ve seen for almost a week now. So after breakfast we once again do the Dance of the Rain Suit and head into the fog and rain with our newly-cleaned motorcycle and trailer. It was so dirty and covered with grit and grime yesterday that I couldn’t even entertain the notion of not giving it a new start regardless of today’s weather.

We stay on the slow coastal road, Rt. 1, which for the most part is a pleasant and well-surfaced road. The coast once again is always to our left and in good weather we would probably ride off the main road into some of the little villages and historic sites but as it is, we keep to US Rt. 1. Within 50 miles the rain has mostly stopped and only the relentless fog remains. At some point we see a majestic bald eagle perched in a large dead tree of the type where eagles might pose for postcard pictures if eagles would pose for postcard pictures. Kitty and I laugh as we watch his eyes clearly lock onto our rig and his head slowly swivels to follow us as we pass. I hope he is not contemplating us as a potential breakfast. Or perhaps he noticed the Gold Wing’s eagle emblem on the side panels and the front bumper and is thinking of investigating.

We talk about our experiences in the Gaspé Peninsula and hope our Canadian friends are enjoying their day of celebration. Yesterday we noticed many of the neatly-maintained and brightly-painted homes draped with Canadian and New Brunswick flags, so they appeared ready to celebrate. “Au revoir a Canada!” Kitty says.

After a fuel stop where we take off rain gear for the day, the GPS estimates our arrival time in Brunswick, Maine, at 2:30 PM. “Well,” says Kitty, “that will give us time to do some shopping at Wal-Mart, do our exercise workout, and make it to Cook’s by six.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” I say. “Except I’m thinking more along the lines of a nap instead of exercise.”

I suppose if one were so inclined, a traveler could follow this road from Maine to Miami with the coast always on the left. There would be many different experiences to enjoy. One of those is Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. We almost always stop at Bar Harbor when we’re in the area but we talked this morning to a couple on a Wing from Ohio who’d been there for three days looking for any kind of break in the pervasive fog and found none. As we look to the left across the bay toward Bar Harbor, the banks are solidly immersed in a gray blanket of fog that hangs near the horizon. There seems to be little point in going to Bar Harbor today unless it were a destination, which it isn’t, so I watch a little sadly as Bar Harbor slides by on the GPS screen and we continue past Ellsworth toward Bath. It’s one of our favorite places when we come to New England.

Route 1 runs through some towns between Ellsworth and Bath but in general it’s not too bad. It is lined with bed-and-breakfast places, inns, and cottages for rent. For the history and “quaint village” buff, this could be a three-day ride in itself to explore every nook and cranny along the coast and visit all the villages and historical sites.

We reach Brunswick, Maine at about 3:00 PM and decide to shop for a few items at Wal-Mart before checking in to the motel. Since we haven’t made reservations, we can go where we want, so we decide to try a small motel on Bailey Island within walking distance to Cook’s. This will avoid the 14-mile ride to and from Cook’s; the ride back is always at night, and almost every time we’ve been here it has been foggy. I call and learn we will not need reservations but I am concerned about whether the parking lot is paved or graveled. The clerk tells us it is hard-packed gravel; but both she and the owner have motorcycles and understand the problems with gravel and a big bike, and she assures me we will have no problems.

We approach the famous Harpswell cribstone bridge, the only one of its kind in the world, a building-block like arrangement of large granite blocks that allow the tide to rise and fall and still perform its function as a bridge. It’s under repair! There’s no roadway on the top and some of the blocks are missing. There’s no place to pull off for a picture, and by the time we cross onto Bailey Island on the temporary bridge, the fog has closed in tight and we can’t even see the bridge. If you are reading this on my blog, you can check out some pictures in the Nova Scotia blog on a page named “Cook’s!”

Doreen meets us outside, talks about motorcycles and rides for a few minutes before checking us in. “Do you offer a AAA discount?” I ask her as we are checking in.

“Sorry, no,” she replies.

I lean over and depress the “Help” bell on the counter.

“I’m the only one here!” she says.

“Well, I was hoping I could find someone with a better offer.”

She laughs as she explains she can’t give us a price break, but ends up putting us in an upgraded room. She says there is a water hose right where I parked the bike and I am welcome to use it, so after unloading I clean it again while Kitty showers. I cover the bike but not the trailer.

We walk to Cook’s Lobster House from the motel. We both order the Cook’s version of New England shore dinners with mussels, featuring lobster as the main attraction. The only difference is that I want more than a 1¼ pound lobster. I ask about the price and it turns out they are running a special on 4-pound lobsters that makes a 4-pounder cheaper than a 2½ pounder. Thus do I order a 4-pound lobster at Cook’s. The thing comes out and it’s a monster, with a shell much too thick to crack at the table, so the waitress takes it back to the kitchen to have it taken apart.

Now lobster is my very favorite food. I enjoy many types of foods, but lobster holds a special place for me. I have to say that this is the very first time I’ve ever eaten as much lobster as I could eat. This monster’s claws are much bigger than my own hands, and the tail itself contains probably half a pound of succulent lobster tail meat. I have to give some to Kitty and she’s not complaining.

Another Cook’s adventure draws to a close until the next time we’re in New England. It’s always a highlight. The fog drapes over the brooding landscape, sometimes intense, sometimes mysteriously receding. The locals are telling us it’s been this way for over a month without a break. Our waitress, Lindsey, had joked “Winter will be here in three weeks. Summer had better hurry up.” I, on the other hand, have made friends with this fog and rather enjoy it as long as it doesn’t affect my driving visibility.

We’ve ridden 231 miles today for a total of 2,159 miles. Our route during the next couple days will likely take us through New England’s mountains on our way home, pending any weather developments that might change our plans.

I feel like rather like Ikon with this excerpt from Beyond Gray Skies:
Far away
Another place
Beyond the stars
Beyond the sun
In my dreams
I have seen the colours
In my dreams
A forgotten world

I actually don’t know our exact route yet or whether it will involve sun. You’ll know when I know. See you then.

GPS Track Log

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 9

2009-06-30T23:40:00.009-04:00

Over the Borderline
Tuesday June 30, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

“Shall we go with Atlantic Time, Eastern Time, or split the difference?” Kitty asked last night. We “lost” an hour riding into New Brunswick because the province is on Atlantic Daylight Time. We decide not to follow the New Brunswick time zone since we’ll be here only for two days at the most; when we cross back into Maine at Calais, we’ll be back to Eastern Time.

So, because time is relative, we don’t set an alarm and, when we are ready, pack up the bike and trailer, conveniently parked overnight in the warm, dry garage offered to us by the hotel. What a blessing that was to find shelter from the torrential rain that accompanied us to Bathurst! Now, using yesterday’s newly-formed trip parameters, we have decided to try to make Cook’s Lobster house on Bailey Island, Maine, in two days, leaving more days to ride through New England’s White and Green Mountains without riding Interstates. It’s about 930 km (580 miles). This will put us completely out of sync with any of the towns I’ve researched, so we are winging it on our Gold Wing with our trusty Garmin GPS to help us find our way.

We set out a little after 8:30 AM Eastern after doing the Dance of the Rainsuit. At the moment it is very foggy and chilly (about 53F, 12C) but not raining; however, we expect that to change. We have one-piece Motoport rain suits that we may re-evaluate if Kitty learns to love her electric suit. (The one-piece suit is a sealed garment and has no openings for an electric cord to plug into the bike; a two-piece suit would solve that problem.) We have waterproof Cruiserworks riding boots that actually look like normal boots that one could wear into a nice restaurant, and we wear them all the time while riding. It seems odd that they are waterproof, because they look just like normal boots. We have SealSkinz waterproof riding gloves, manufactured by a company that makes diving wet suits and dry suits. They know how to keep a body dry! Kitty wears her balaclava along with the rain suit.

Thus attired, we strike out for more coastal riding, roughly following Rt. 134 and Rt. 11 along what is known as the Acadian Peninsula region, and within 30 minutes we are once more engulfed in torrential rain and enveloping fog which, while preventing us from viewing the seacoast, does not hinder our riding vision. In the midst of all this, we see several cars stopped and first think there’s an animal in the ditch, but it’s just folks picking what I imagine to be wild strawberries by the road. It’s too early for blueberries, which ripen in August, and I remember the delicious tiny wild strawberries, hardly bigger than large peas, that we found for our picnic lunch dessert somewhere on the Cabot Trail during our last trip to Nova Scotia.

“Oh, no!” I say with dismay. “We have to go back to Percé! We forgot to get coffee cups!” We’ve made it a tradition to pick up coffee cups from wherever we travel on our motorycle, and we have cups from all over the North American continent. It makes for some great morning conversations at home as we each choose a cup and reminisce about where and why we got that cup. But in Percé, we inexplicably forgot to purchase our cups. Someday I hope we can return for our coffee cups. I could be content to stay there a while.

Eventually, at the village of Caraquet, Rt. 11 turns southward and we run along the coast to Miramichi. For six days now the sea, always on our left, has been our constant companion. Several times Kitty would look across an expanse of water and ask “Is that where we’re going?” My answer was always the same: “If you see a place where land and water meet, yes, that’s where we’re going unless we’ve already been there!”

I’d like to take some pictures of the foggy seacoast when we can see it; frequently I will ride all day with the camera around my neck so I can easily stop for a photo. But with the foul weather, I can’t risk exposing the camera to the elements, and it is difficult to find the right place to pull over, get off the bike, open the trunk, take out the camera, take the shot, put it back, and continue. And thus to Miramichi and onward without a single picture. At Miramichi, we must leave our restless blue-green friend who has brought us fog and rain and hidden the sun for many days, but has also yielded some great vistas and many great memories. “Good-bye, Ocean,” I say.

“Au revoir a la mer!” says Kitty in my headset. We’ve had a great time learning to speak better French, and almost invariably, when people saw that we were making real effort to learn, they would light up and go out of their way to explain things in both French and English, and laugh with us as we tried to form the idiosyncratic French vowel sounds. It sounds so lyrical when they do it, so awkward for us. Nevertheless, there were several times we were able to order off the menu in French or ask for something in a store and people didn’t appear to give us a second glance. It has been fun!

With our new trip parameters, I’d envisioned riding as far as Fredericton today, but that will take us off the road by 2:30 PM (Eastern) and we think we can do better than that. “Shall we make a run for the border?” I ask Kitty in the headset.

“I’m up for it!” she responds.

I haven’t researched this area carefully, and at a fuel stop I inspect the route. Not many towns there, no amenities listed in the GPS along that route. The waypoints in Garmin’s Canadian maps tend to be less accurate than their US counterparts, so I’m not too concerned. But what I am a little concerned about is that tomorrow is Canada Day, and I wonder whether all the existing services will consumed by travelers. But we make a run for the border at St. Stephens (Canada) and Calais (USA), hoping not to need the scarce services of the New Brunswick interior. From Fredericton on Rt. 8 and Rt. 3, it promises to be a ride of about two hours plus. I’m still a little concerned about housing: Will all the motels be booked by Canadians escaping tomorrow’s madness? Or perhaps by vacationing Canadians eager to return to their home for the festivities? Or perhaps even by Americans escaping to Canada for a day of revelry?

Without any research other than issuing a GPS command to find hotels near the town of Calais, Maine, I find the Calais Motor Inn in the GPS. I make a call from my cell phone and book a room. The place has a restaurant and a bed. For us today, that’s good enough. Lord willing, tonight we will be south of the northern border!

For four days straight, we have seen no sign of bright sun or blue sky. Suddenly, somewhere between Fredericton and Calais, we see a patch of blue sky. It makes me so happy I create a GPS waypoint and title it “BlueSky.” But 20 minutes later we are once again in a foggy downpour that lasts most of the way to St. Stephens.

We arrive on the Canadian side of the border at 5:10 PM. Except that now the time zone matters because it’s really 6:10 PM and all the international money exchange places have closed at six! We were told they were open for “extended hours” which I’d interpreted as “at least until eight.” I’m glad I didn’t know they close at six, because I would have stressed all day about whether we’ll make it in time. Even so, Kitty had earlier remarked “Slow-Down Guy has gone into hibernation today, hasn’t he?” I go into the Canadian duty-free shop where the attendant tells me the duty-free shop on the US side can exchange our Canadian money for the US equivalent.

While sitting in line to cross the border, I reset the GPS back to statute units instead of metric, and I retire British Emily Version 1.50 to reactivate American Jill 1.50. The unit reboots and automatically issues the next appropriate routing command in its new American Jill persona. “Emily is done?” asks Kitty with a note of sadness. British Emily has guided us faithfully for nearly a week through the metric mazes and has been flawless.

We cross the border by surrendering our passports to be swiped and by answering only a few perfunctory questions, then stop at the US duty-free shop where indeed they can change out our several hundred dollars Canadian for US. And just like that, we are back in the USA and back in Eastern Time.

At the Calais Motor Inn, I ask if there’s a car wash in town. The GPS lists no car wash services. Black Satin and the trailer are as dirty as they have ever been. Between two days of pouring rain and wet fog, mist and drizzle, muddy wet construction areas, and dusty dry construction areas, the rig is covered with grit and dust. “Don’t even think of touching any surface on this bike!” I’d told Kitty at the border. I can’t stand it one more day! Even if it starts all over again tomorrow, I will clean this bike tonight!

Instead of a car wash, the motel guy offers us a complete little motorcycle-wash setup just outside the motel office, replete with soap, sponges, drying towels, a water hose, and a bucket; he encourages us to park the bike in the shelter and wash it right there. After dinner at the motel restaurant (which closes at 8:00 PM Eastern), where we each order prime rib that turns out to be large enough we could have split one between us and have some left over for a moderately hungry stranger from the street, Kitty helps me wash and dry the bike. I appreciate this, because one of our rules is that she never has to help with my idiosyncratic care habits for my bike. But it’s a lot faster and a lot more fun when both of us do it!

In our quest to make Cook’s Lobster House by tomorrow night, we have ridden 324 miles (521 km) today, a third of which was in slow-down mode in pouring rain and fog. We’ve ridden 1,914 miles (3,080 km) in total. I have added two potential routes to Cook’s: a “fast” route and a “coast” route. I believe Slow-Down Guy might make an appearance for the coastal route tomorrow. But on the other hand, even Slow-Down Guy doesn’t want to be late for Cook’s!

Tomorrow alone can reveal how this might play out. See you then.

GPS Track Log (Yellow)

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 8

2009-06-29T21:59:00.011-04:00

Bring on the Rain
Monday June 29, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

I hear the shower and check Kitty’s cell phone clock. It’s 6:10 AM.

“Uh, honey, we were gonna sleep in till 7:00. You couldn’t sleep?”

“Oh, bummer, I looked at my watch and thought we overslept,” Kitty says. “Look outside.”

I step to the glass door and see that fog has retreated overnight and the spectacular rock is fully visible this morning. It has rained overnight but is not raining now and the fog seems to have receded farther out to sea than since we got here.

Nevertheless, we nap for another hour, pack up our stuff, load the trailer, and have breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We say au revoir to the lovely and friendly staff of Hotel la Normandie, plug in Kitty’s electric vest, and head out into the chilly 53F (12F) morning air.

Kitty’s only complaint wearing the electric suit was the cool air around her neck. The “still air” bubble created by the big Tulsa windshield puts me right in the middle of the bubble, but it starts to collapse around Kitty’s helmet and she always gets more wind than I do. She solves this by wearing her balaclava, kind of a ski-mask silk scarf thing that always makes me laugh because I think she looks like a monk until she puts on her helmet and looks just like a normal biker. This does the trick nicely for her this morning, and she is toasty and content in the chill damp air.

The weather, threatening to spit rain at any moment and sometimes filling the air with a mist that clings to my windshield and to my bones, is not conducive for much picture-taking and wandering around; nevertheless I manage to get several pictures.

We’ve ridden eastward from Montreal and Quebec for days, but now we have passed Lands’s End and are riding westward along the Bay de Chaluers for a time until the coast turns eastward once again. The wind is strongly at our back, and we ride in a strangely silent cocoon of still air that is very unusual. There seems to be no wind noise, no wind flapping my flags; it’s almost like riding in a vacuum. When I stop for a picture or two and walk back the way we came, the wind is strong and filled with a cold mist that fogs my camera lens and my helmet shield. We ride through some wet pavement and a few little rain squalls that never cause us to consider rain gear in spite of the gray skies.

At the town of Pasébiac, we stop for a fuel break. At every break, I have a routine where I check the trailer. I yank on the trailer hitch to make sure it’s intact; I push on both trailer wheels to make sure the wheel bearings are ok; and I compress the edge of the tires to make sure tire feels like the air pressure is ok (I only carry 20 psi in the trailer tires). This morning I perform my little check and… hello, is the right trailer tire a little soft? I check both tires and I’m convinced the right tire is a little low. I’ve been watching the tires because this will be their last trip. They will be down on the wear bars by the time I get home.

“We just passed a Canadian Tire place a kilometer back,” I tell Kitty. “I’m going back there to see if they can check it out.” So we backtrack and find Sylvain at the tire place. Sylvain speaks exactly as much English as I speak French but we figure out what the problem is and he asks me to ride my bike and trailer into a bay, first making sure I’ll be able to back it out after it’s in there.

I go one better and back it into the bay using the Wing’s reverse gear. Kitty later says his widen with surprise as he stammers something about “motorcycle… back up!??”

I help the mechanic find a piece of wood to keep the jack from damaging the bottom of the trailer, and we jack up the rear of the trailer, remove the wheel, and inspect it. He paints it with some soapy water but no bubbles (evidence of a leak) are visible. Of course, I only carry 20 psi in those tires so there’s not much pressure. I make a snap decision.

“You have these?” I ask. “I buy two – duex!” I say. I’m thinking that these tires are nearing end of life and rather than fight with a repair and then have to replace them anyway as soon as I get home, let’s just replace them. Here I am in a large store well-equipped to do the job, and it’s a lot easier here than somewhere in wilderness of Maine when I discover we really didn’t fix the leak after all. I will check the mileage when I get home, but I think I have only about 6,000 miles on these tires.

So the mechanic mounts two new tires and in an hour we are off again into the darkening skies. About 50 miles (80 km) the temperature rises 10 degrees F but it starts to rain in earnest. Kitty convinces me that it’s time to put on our rain gear so we stop and do the Dance of the Rain Suit as we have done so many times before.

This is a little more complicated because Kitty’s electric suit has to be unplugged and secured, as there is no opening in our one-piece rain suits to allow the cable to connect. So she’ll have to ride the rest of this day without the electric suit that has kept her toasty and warm.

I’d originally sketched out a stop in Campbellton, New Brunswick, just across the provincial border from Quebec province, but since there have been no slow-down backtracking and slow rides through villages for pictures, we arrive early and decide to just keep riding. This will put us out of sync with the places I’ve researched for Internet access and close-by restaurants, but we’ll wing it.

Unlike this morning, because of the undulating coastline, we are now riding into the wind, then quartering to the wind from our left, and I finally decide I’ve had enough of the fierce wind and heavy rain on the slow coastal route (Rt. 134 in New Brunswick), so I duck onto Rt. 11 south to Bathhurst, New Brunswick, where I’ve selected a motel at random using the GPS. The rain is torrential and the wind, now from our left, is seriously affecting the bike’s lean angle on the highway, which has standing water in both right and left tracks, so I have to make an exception and run right down the middle of the highway. Even in this heavy rain, though, the Tulsa windshield is clearing beautifully and visibility is not a problem except for the two seconds after passing oncoming trucks on this two-lane, limited-access route. It takes about two seconds for the windshield to clear after each such adventure.

By shortly after 3:30 PM we reach Bathurst and as we get off the exit, Kitty sees a sign for Atlantic Host Hotel. “It has a restaurant,” she offers.

“Works for me,” I say. Kitty has been on the bike for nearly four hours without a break other than to put on our rain gear. This would have never happened in the old days, and I’m astonished that she’s been completely settled and apparently comfortable during our dash through the driving rain.

We pull in and we are warm and dry in our rain suits and the rain is pouring down and the wind is whipping my flags even while sitting in the parking lot and there’s not even a canopy to unload and I’m wondering if this is a good hotel after all. With the torrential downpour coupled with the vicious wind from the side, this has been one of the most intense 50-mile segments I can remember ever riding with Kitty. We walk dripping into the lobby and I try to communicate with the desk clerk in French, and then realize that in New Brunswick, a truly bilingual province with two official languages, everyone basically speaks English and French. They do have a room, and I say “Ok, now that we know we have a room, I’ll take off my helmet.”

“Hi there!” says Julie, laughing from behind the counter.

“Do you have a shelter for my motorcycle?” I ask Julie.

We haven’t listened to the radio or any other music for a week, but I can’t help but think of Jo Dee Messina and Bring on the Rain:

It’s almost like the hard times circle ‘round

A couple drops and they all start coming down

Yeah, I might feel defeated,

I might hang my head

I might be barely breathing - but I’m not dead

Tomorrow’s another day

And I’m thirsty anyway

So bring on the rain

I’m not gonna let it get me down

I’m not gonna cry

And I’m not gonna lose any sleep tonight

Julie offers their garage for the night, and the manager happily runs out into the pouring rain to unlock the doors. I pull around the back and find a large three-bay garage, heated and dry, into which I pull the Wing and trailer. I’m startled for a second because in the bay next to mine sits a two-tone green 1998 50th Anniversary Honda Gold Wing. It looks exactly like my buddy Ray’s bike, complete with a mascot that looks very much like his Twinken, and my first thought is “How in the world did he know we’d be here?” We’ve found each other in so many other places that it wouldn’t have surprised me. Then with a jolt I’m saddened to realize it’s just a generic bike, not Ray’s bike at all, because Ray has retired and it will never again be his bike that finds me in some place I’d never expect. But what a blessing to have this warm and dry garage to park my bike for the night!

At dinner in the hotel restaurant, I pass up dessert this evening. Last evening at Hotel la Normandie Kitty had a goat cheese appetizer in honor of her brother, Norman, who once raised goats and has a great affinity for goat cheese. However, I won the dessert battle with the maple cheesecake, but have now sworn off desserts for the rest of the trip. Kitty apparently hasn’t, and orders an apple-berry kind of pie. The waitress slyly brings two forks and I have to admit I scarf up a few bites of Kitty’s dessert.

Looking at the Weather Network, it appears there’s a rather stationary rain system that will be in the area for quite a few days, but I think perhaps as we head south tomorrow after our final flirtation with the slow-down coastal roads, we might run out of it. But I expect more rain tomorrow, especially in the morning. The only hard stop for us on this trip is Cook’s Lobster House in Bailey Island, Maine because we just always do that when we’re in New England. We seem to have two major riding options: We can try to make the 580 miles (930 km) to Cook’s in two days and then take three days to ride through the White Mountains and the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire, or we can take three days to get to Cook’s and then take two days to ride the approximately 700 miles (1,125 km) home.

Today’s ride was 358 km (222 miles), for a total of 2,559 km (1,590 miles). Although we've discovered that we crossed into Atlantic Time Zone when we entered New Brunswick and it's an hour later than we thought, Kitty says at the moment she’s in favor of Option 1, Cook’s in two days, so we’ll see how that works out. We’re not finished with the slow roads yet! As most of our tomorrows on this trip, the story of this one will only be revealed as it arrives. We’ll see how it works out.

See you then.

GPS Track Log (Yellow)

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 7

2009-06-28T22:23:00.007-04:00

I Am a Rock
Sunday June 28, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

We are in the area called Land’s End and have planned zero riding miles today. As it happened, it has worked out very well for us to be in Percé rather than Gaspé as originally sketched out, although it involved 30 extra miles yesterday riding in extremely dense fog and wet roadway. But Hotel la Normandie is a fine full-service hotel and is within walking distance of the cruise ticket offices, the wharf of Percé, and has direct access to the boardwalk that runs along the sea. And there’s a lot to explore within walking distance should we choose. For a fog-shrouded, misty interlude, we couldn’t have picked a better place.

Days like this, with zero riding miles, are actually quite unusual for us; I believe that last year’s several-day hiatus in Key West was the first time in all our travels that we’ve stayed in the same hotel more than one night. Usually we just ride to see the country and absorb what we can as we explore and research the area we’re in. On this trip, we watched the dramatic skylines of Montreal and Quebec slide by to our left as we kept moving in spite of invitations from several people to help us explore the cities. Generally we aren’t about cities (Kitty’s rules: No snakes, no cities, no traffic), but are all about areas that keep the cities apart. Here at foggy and chilly Land’s End, all of Kitty’s criteria are met.

We have a lazy breakfast. “I can’t imagine there could possibly be a whale-watching cruise,” I tell Kitty. The fog has been relentless and all-encompassing, and it’s hard to imagine it would be any different on the open sea 8 km from land.

But we dutifully walk the several short blocks to the billeterie or ticket office of les Bateliers du Percé to find out. As I expected, the cruise is cancelled. But Slow-Down Guy is in a hanging-out mood today, so we exchange our whale-watching tickets for a $50 refund and a new pass to a cruise to L’Ile Bonaventure, which features the world’s largest nesting colony of northern gannets.

Kitty is not a water-lover, unlike those swimmers we saw yesterday in 65F (18C) temperatures plunging into the frigid waters of the Bay of Saint Lawrence! And she’s definitely not fond of small boats on the open sea, and especially not when fog has closed in and visibility is only a stone’s throw. But she gamely takes her Dramamine an hour before departure, and we clamber aboard the 40-foot boat. It’s a rough ride, and even the park naturalist says it’s “not too good” today.

But we arrive safely, drop some people off at the island, and then circle it once to see the northern gannet colony from the seaward view. We see thousands and thousands of the large white birds lining the cliffs and rocks. Amidst the brooding fog, it’s a spectacular view and we’re glad we made the trip. Kitty has done quite well with her Dramamine kicking in, unlike some others who spent the whole trip hunched over the buckets liberally distributed throughout the boat.

The boat drops us off at the dock and we set out on foot to traverse the island to see the bird colony from the landward side. It’s said that only one-third of the colony is found on the cliffs, the rest on the slopes above. It is those nesting birds we are making the 5.6 km (3.5 mile) round-trip to see. It’s a more arduous walk than we expected, and the path is frequently muddy.

Eventually we can hear the cries of the thousands of birds, and as we approach, the cacophony is deafening. When we are finally able to see the expanse of nesting birds stretching into the distance as far as the fog will allow us to see, it is a stunning, jaw-dropping sight. 120,000 couples, the naturalist tells us, the world’s largest colony of northern gannets (fou du bassan). They will all be gone by September, wintering on the coasts of North Carolina and south to the Gulf of Mexico. They return to the same nest every year for life.

These are large white birds with a delicately colored yellow-orange-brown head and neck. They mate for life and lay one fertilized egg per year. Each nest is basically a small hollowed-out mound in the dirt, and we see many males returning to the nests with huge mouthfuls of plucked grass or seaweed they’ve collected on their journeys. They are constantly engaged in home improvements. Fascinatingly, each nest is the same exact distance from each adjacent nest, all equidistant in every direction. It turns out this distance is exactly the distance beyond the pecking reach of the jealous bird sitting on each adjacent nest, guarding its territory.

The chicks are just now hatching, and as some of the birds exchange roles (the males also take their turn sitting on the nest) or shift positions on the nest, we are able to see the large pale reddish speckled eggs, and some nests already contain a small gray featherless chick. The naturalist tells us that the young birds remain dark even after their plumage comes in because it’s their free ticket to being an extra body within the nest territory. Otherwise, they would be treated as an imposter, attacked, and driven from the nest.

The nearest birds are only a few feet away from us and show no interest or fear. Near the rope that marks their territory from ours, we see a number of birds that don’t have nests. The naturalist tells us this is where new couples meet and form mating relationships. Apparently it’s a kind of gannet singles bar. They become a couple one year but don’t mate and nest until the next year.

After spending probably an hour and a half observing and taking pictures, we walk back across the island, board the hourly cruise back to the dock at Percé, and pick up a few things for the grandkids in the Boutique Natural.

It’s raining and still very foggy, so we decide to eat at the hotel tonight. Slow-Down Guy is so mellow he even convinces me to take a little nap while Kitty launders our muddy clothes. Just before leaving our hotel room, we notice that the fog has receded and the famous rock off shore is suddenly visible for the first time. “It really does exist!” says our next-door neighbor as she, like everyone else, comes out of her hotel room to gaze at the rock or take a picture. We’d learned that it weighs 370 million tons. Which begs the question, just how do you weigh a rock that big? And where do you stop measuring? The waterline? The bottom of the ocean? The center of the earth? Whatever, it’s a truly imposing spectacle and a rewarding moment. I’m glad we have an hour to see Rocher Percé while enjoying our dinner before the fog once again rolls in to protect the monster rock from mortal view.

At the end of dinner, I tell Kitty I don’t want any dessert. I’ve had too many on this trip. When the waitress brings the carte du dessert, of course I immediately order the cheesecake tart with maple sauce, which turns out to be stunningly excellent! Many desserts may have just a hint of maple; this slice of cheesecake is drenched with a buttery sauce made with maple sugar that’s almost caramelized, and maple becomes the dominant flavor of the whole dish. Spectacular with a strong cup of café noir! But no more desserts while we’re in Canada! We still have to eat at Cook’s Lobster House on the way home!

This has been an extremely gratifying zero-mile day and I’m glad we didn’t decide to hit the road when we learned the whale-watching cruise was cancelled. Tomorrow, if the weather deteriorates even further, perhaps we’ll wish we would have made a run for it today, in the fog but with no rain. Meanwhile, we're in a nice hotel listening to the surf crash against the seawall; we have enjoyed this day and will deal with tomorrow as it arrives.

See you then.

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 6

2009-06-28T08:58:00.006-04:00

Foggy Mountain Breakdown
Saturday June 27, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

I’m sleeping as late as I possibly can. This is because at 4:00 AM when I got up and looked out the window of our hotel, the fog was so heavy I could not see the cars across the parking lot. So I decided to sleep in, since not only could we not see anything of scenic value, it would be downright dangerous to ride in those conditions.

Everybody has to wake up sometime, and by 8:15 I’m awake. I’m stunned to see that it’s sunny, it’s warm, and the fog has lifted save for a few wisps drifting by the hills behind the hotel. We’ve noticed that all meals here seem much more relaxed compared to our fast-paced lifestyle at home. Food seems to be prepared in leisurely fashion and is savored slowly. Breakfast is no exception. So after another episode of us practicing our French and the same waitress as we had last night practicing her English, it is 10:00 AM when we finally roll eastward out of Ste. Anne-des-Monts on Rt. 132.

The fog and temperatures conspire to play tricks on a traveling motorcycle couple. We start out under sunny skies and warm temperatures, then a mile later find fog drifting in from the sea with temperatures 15 degrees cooler. This route has some rough spots but in general this is a well-graded and well-paved road.

The bay is always on our left, and we pass miles of picturesque shoreline with millions of birds perched on the black rocks that line the shore. With the blue-green sea to the left and rocky cliffs towering above us to the right, the road winds a sinuous path as it skirts the shore and runs along the base of the cliffs. Every little bay seems to have a little village, and sometimes we get off the route to ride through a village or catch a fog-shrouded lighthouse on a hill.

Some of the topography reminds me of the Cape Breton Highlands along the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia, but a major difference is that this road is flat, running along the sea, while the Cabot Trail runs along the elevations off the mountains and cliffs. All bikers have experienced roads where they are torn between riding and looking; this road is made for looking, as there are few technical challenges in this section between Ste. Anne-des-Monts and Cap Madeleine.

The times when the road does climb away from the sea and over the hills, I’m surprised every time that the temperature increases dramatically, sometimes as much as 15 degrees. I finally conclude that it’s a function of the very cold body of water that generates cold wind, but when we climb the mountains, we find rising instead of falling temperatures because the road is sheltered by the mountain. This happens again and again as we ride eastward.

At Cap Madeleine, where we ride off the highway to a little lighthouse park, things change dramatically. The temperature has dropped to 56F (13C) on my fairing thermometer and the wind whipping around the complex makes it feel much colder. Fog shrouds the seascape but I manage to get a few pictures. For the first time this trip, Kitty decides to put on her “new” electric suit contributed by Ray Smith. After connecting it and making sure it is working, we set out.

In about five minutes, I ask her, “How’s that electric suit working for you?”

“I had to turn it way down,” she says. I’m glad we have it. Thanks, Ray.

About this same time, the road makes a little run for the mountains and before we can even adjust, the temperature skyrockets to 75F (24C). We are tempted to stop and take off layers, but I look at the GPS and see that in about 8 clicks (5 miles) we’ll be once again riding along the shoreline, and if history repeats itself, we’ll be glad we have these layers.

History does repeat itself, and soon we are back into electric-suit temperatures. Fog sets in again and this time it is not the on-again-off-again variety we’ve seen earlier in the trip and today. This time it’s for real, and a light mist covers the windshield as we enter Parc Forillon. The fog is relentless and increasingly intense, and we can catch only very occasional glimpses of the shore that lies only several hundred yards off to our left.

This isn’t exactly what I had in mind in coming here, and I’m sure we are missing some of the best scenery of the trip, but Slow-Down Guy takes it as it comes. We’d planned to spend the afternoon in Parc Forillon, maybe stay in Gaspé or Percé, maybe book one of the many whale-watching cruises available at any of these locations. But with the steady fog and light mist, we decide to simply ride out the afternoon until we arrive in Percé where I’d booked Hotel la Normandie this morning. The last 60 km, 35 miles or so, have been just a little tense because of the winding, hilly road with less that great road surfaces and the intense fog. Thankfully the road isn’t wet for the most part, and we are welcomed in the mist and the cold and the fog by the inviting environs of the Hotel la Normandie at around 4:00 PM.

I call les Bateliers de Percé, one of the many cruises available here, fully expecting them to be closed or certainly not running cruises. Much to my surprise, a very pleasant fellow named Julian answers the phone and says in English that they will have one whale watching cruise tomorrow. So I walk to their pavilion about a half kilometer up the street and book the tickets. I want to practice my French but he insists on speaking English. He insists that tomorrow will be nice and the cruise will run at 11:00 AM as scheduled, or if not, our money will be refunded. We shall see about all that.

Now here we sit in the coin-operated laundry at an adjacent hotel doing laundry for the first time this trip. Kitty is reading and I’m writing, a familiar scenario on our trips and especially while doing laundry.

Today we have ridden a fog-intensified 315 km (196 miles) for a total of 2201 km (1,368 miles). Tomorrow we hope to see les baleines on our little cruise, and I think we’ll probably stay at the same hotel tomorrow night since Slow-Down Guy packed about 6 days of riding into 14 days. For some reason the pleasant (English-speaking) hotel clerk upgraded our room at no charge to one facing the sea. We can hear the sea crashing against the seawall that has been build all along Percé, and off the shore lies the spectacular Rocher Percé, (literally, “pierced rock”), one of the major landmarks of this area… except that all we see is a blank wall of gray fog that begins a hundred yards from the hotel room.

Tomorrow will reveal much more about our plans than we know today. See you then.

GPS Track Log, Day 6 (Yellow)

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 5

2009-06-27T00:46:00.006-04:00

Old Man River
Friday June 26, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

In the town of Rivière du Loup, River of the Wolfe, a foggy dawn has birthed a ghostly gray morning that appears vaguely out of focus as shapeless banks of fog drift silently past the hotel window, sometimes obscuring the brightly-colored buildings across the street, other times rendering them in water-color pastel shades of blue and red.

I actually don’t mind fog, and some of our most rewarding experiences have been surprises offered to us by a fog-shrouded day. But this day, I’d like to see some of the mighty St. Lawrence River, and with this fog I’d be lucky to see the guardrails on the far side of the road. So we make lazy once again, hang out for a while, and finally the fog begins to lift and we roll at a little after 10:30 AM.

The river is always to our left as we head east, practicing our new French vocabulary in our headsets. Our vocabulary is growing little by little every day. (They tell me I have a credible rendition of “Rivière du Loup.) This is quite necessary because the available number of English words spoken by the people we meet diminishes with each kilometer farther from the big cities of Montreal and Quebec, so we must balance that with an increasing number of French words spoken by us. The people are friendly and laugh with us at our attempts to communicate, and we have a good time with the language. It’s a barrier only in the sense of easy communication, but never in the sense of enjoying the interpersonal interaction with the people we meet. In the visitor centers (Information Touristique) where we stop, they always speak English much better than we speak French, but when we talk to other bikers, we sometimes have to resort to pulling out maps and pointing. Yes, I still do carry a map although I generally never use it because I have the GPS.

It’s a bit chilly this morning, about 61F (16C) as we ride in and out of fog banks that mysteriously appear and disappear off the river. Sometimes the gray fog recedes off the banks and lies offshore like a giant white blanket thrown aside and rumpled as though by someone just getting out of bed. When the fog is off the shore, bright blue sky appears through the wisps that escape landward. I’m just a little disappointed that we can’t see more of the expanse of water, but the fog does create quite a picturesque rugged coastline. The tide appears to be out and we can see large expanses of exposed shoreline that presumably will be covered later today when the tide returns.

I have mapped several interesting potential stopping points today, but Slow-Down Guy is in evidence, and we wander slowly and stop often to take pictures, explore a visitor center, or walk to the shore to explore whatever we find there. Several times we get off the highway and ride through the villages to take pictures and enjoy the well-kept, brightly colored, neatly trimmed homes, and marvel at the architecture of the village church with its giant single or double spires. By the time afternoon rolls around, we still have 140 km (almost 90 miles) left until we reach Ste. Anne-des-Monts where we have tentatively penciled in a stopping point. Slow-Down Guy doesn’t really care if he makes it to that destination, but as it happens, the timing and the availability of accommodations more or less dictate that as a stopping point.

We have been watching in fascination all day as the topography demonstrates slow metamorphosis from massive expanses of flat, fertile farmland that to hills that slowly creep closer and closer to Rt. 132 where we are traveling. Finally there is no farmland, only the hills and trees, and we see glimpses of our first sea cliffs as we round the curves. We have definitely made the transition to Haute Gaspésie! Just about then the fog, which has never really left us all day, returns in earnest, and we ride the last 30 miles (18 km) or so entombed in a relentless dark gray shroud that, while rarely causing difficulty in seeing the road, nevertheless obscures any scenery we might otherwise be able to see.

It has not rained on us since we left home, but we narrowly escape at least one local rain squall and ride through some wet pavement; the fog is heavy enough that water is dripping off the mirrors and collecting in droplets on the big Tulsa windshield.

We arrive in Ste. Anne-des-Monts by about 5:30 PM, find a small hotel with a full-service restaurant (Hotel a la Brunante) and I wash the road grime off the bike and trailer and cover the bike. I’ll leave the trailer uncovered tonight because a light rain has started to fall and putting the cover on the trailer in the rain is worse than leaving it uncovered.

In the restaurant, the waitress speaks no English, but we have a great time practicing our meager French and figuring out what we are ordering. We seem to have ordered at just the same time as a private group of about a dozen people. The somewhat harried waitress comes over and offers what we think is an apology for the wait, and we do our best to reassure her, but dinner turns out to be a leisurely affair. Quite leisurely. We sit and talk while watching the other patrons. It strikes me that, although we can understand only small snatches of what anyone is saying, their facial expressions, laughter, body language, and vocal inflections are the same as in any restaurant we’ve been, anywhere we’ve been. It’s gratifying to realize so forcefully that a smile is the same in any language! Let’s use it often!

I check the GPS and we are, by 150 miles, farther north than we have ever been, farther north than our previous excursions to Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island or the northern tip of Maine. Today we’ve traveled a slow-down 299 km (186) miles, and 1,886 km (1,172 miles) total for the trip. I find daily amusement in how few miles we are traveling. I do believe this is probably the lowest daily total for any trip we’ve ever taken. But I’ve become pretty good friends with Slow-Down Guy and we are doing well! We’ll travel a little farther north tomorrow but mostly east, and then begin heading south. We might hang out for a few days in the same area after tomorrow’s travels, maybe do a little whale watching around Gaspé or Percé, but only tomorrow knows the plans that will be made or changed.

We’ll see you then.

Gaspesie Gambol, Day 4

2009-06-26T09:19:00.008-04:00

Wolf River
Thursday June 25, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

We have another lazy start, rolling out at 9:30 under partly sunny skies and temperatures that are much warmer than I expected this far north, nearly 80F (27C). Slow-Down Guy just doesn’t seem to care that it’s two hours later than the usual start. We head east on Aut-20, which for practical purposes is like a US Interstate, through vast flatlands of rich crop farmland. Some fields have freshly upturned soil, incredibly black and vibrant in the morning sun. The horizon seems endlessly far away in every direction, and our meager progress at the posted limit of 100 kph (about 62 mph) seems ineffective in reaching the limits of what we can see. Slow-Down Guy runs the speed limit, and I am surprised that many of the Quebec drivers are similarly inclined. When I see Quebec license plates in the State, I usually figure they are running 15 mph over whatever the posted speed limit happens to be, but that is not the case this morning. I don’t know about Canadian law enforcement’s attitude toward running over the speed limit, and they are out in force this morning.

After about 48 km (30 mi) I say “I think we’ve seen all there is to see along this road. Let’s duck off and find a road near the river.” The mighty Saint Lawrence Seaway has been on our left all morning, and so we find a way to Trois Rivières and wander eastward on Rt 132, which will be our primary route for the circuit around the Gaspésie. This road is a bit rough in stretches, especially within the little towns, but other than that it’s a nice slow-down road that mostly follows the great river to our left. At times we can see the great expanses of the valley on both sides of the river, a massive carpet of verdant farmland sloping gently on both sides down to the river.

We stop in a few small quaint towns just to take a look or take a picture or two. The architecture of churches in particular is unique in this region: Most of these centuries-old structures are constructed of grayish-white stone feature two giant spires, sometimes seemingly incongruous with the size of the building, and many of them have red doors. Often these spires are the predominant feature of a town as we approach, visible through the trees long before there’s any other evidence of a settlement.

At one curve in the road we are startled by a field of brilliant fluorescent yellow in a sea of green farming country. We stop for a picture and conclude it’s probably canola. Canola, one of whose chief uses is for cooking oil, is produced from the rapeseed plant. Due to its unfortunate name, “canola” was a new name crafted in 1978, originating from the phrase “Canadian oil, low acid.” I remember huge fields of it in Idaho amongst the potatoes, but I guess since it has Canada in its name, it’s logical that it be grown in Canada. We see many other fields of the same but whose blooming stage is less advanced and thus the distinctive yellow is just beginning to appear.

We continue our northeast meandering with the Saint Lawrence to our left. Even this close to its origin, this is a huge river. From our vantage point looking south-to-north, the north coast looks to be much more populated than our southern coast, and we ride along many miles of shoreline that feature a headland

“My overdrive indicator light just went out,” I tell Kitty.

She wonders if that’s a problem or if I can replace it without dismantling the fairing. No, it’s not a problem, and I think I have some spare bulbs in my stash of such stuff, and I replaced it once without dismantling the fairing. It’s possible if you have small hands.

Then I notice the fuel gauge and temperature gauge are not working either and I conclude it’s a fuse. On a Gold Wing, the various components affected by a given fuse are baffling, so not knowing what else might be affected, we pull over and sure enough, I find a blown 15A fuse for “Tail and Position Lights.” Most times, a fuse failure is just that, a fuse failure. But they are there for a reason, and sometimes there really is a short in the electrical system that causes the failure. I turn on the bike, holding my breath that everything will work, and it does, no apparent electrical problem.

Later, we see a giant “honey wagon” spreading liquid manure onto one of the fields to our left, between us and the great river. I’ve never seen a honey wagon this big: It is a green monster, a tractor-trailer in fact, with a tank nearly as large as a standard fuel tanker truck you’d see on the highway. Three huge arms project from this thing one to each side and one out the back. Attached to the arms are giant rotors rather like helicopter blades, spinning slowly. Attached to these rotors are nozzles that are spraying tons of the putrid contents liberally onto the field, turning the green field dark and leaving a broad black swath in its wake.

“I bet that smells really, really good,” says Kitty. We smell nothing out of the ordinary.

And then suddenly, as the wind shifts, or we ride into the downstream wind current, the odor is so stunningly overpowering as to defy description. We’ve smelled 40,000 sheep in a sheep enclosure in Wyoming, smelled 50,000 head of cattle in a North Dakota stockyard, and growing up in the country I’ve smelled the fields after the farmers clean out their pig pens. But I will tell you that I have never smelled anything like this. This is overpowering, gasping-for-air, throat-constricting, breath-stopping, awful.

“I know one town that’s going to be eating out in some other town tonight,” I tell Kitty in the headset.

Ten minutes later, Kitty says “I can still smell that stuff in my helmet.”

About 50 km (30 miles) from our destination, we witness one of the most unusual phenomena we’ve encountered. The temperature has been over 85F (30C) and in the space of five miles it plummets to 65F (18F). I’ve seen temperature shifts of that magnitude associated with severe weather patterns or a sudden climb in altitude, but never on flatland without an associated severe weather pattern. Apparently we are out of the heat belt!

We reach Rivière du Loup, River of the Wolf, some time after 5:00 PM. We learn that the name is derived not actually from a wolf, but from a long-ago incident when a pirate crew sailed into an Indian settlement here to escape American capture. There ensued four days of great revelry and great hospitality until the pirates made the mistake of carrying off the intended maiden of Lone Wolf, the heir apparent to the chief’s position. It turned really ugly after that and things were never quite the same in Rivière du Loup. But things seem to have settled down in the intervening years and the town seems quite normal.

After a brisk power-walk with Kitty, she’s helping me clean and cover the bike when I notice a small section of exposed copper wire in the trailer wiring harness, the part that extends from the bike to connect to the trailer pigtail. I’d redressed my wiring harness last fall, and apparently did something that lets the pigtail slide down and expose more of the cable than I’d like. Apparently it rubbed through the insulation against the plastic. Hmmm… what are the chances of a coincidental fuse failure that involves the taillights, and finding an exposed wire, all on the same day? Not high, I’d guess, although there’s no apparent metal that the wire could have contacted, just plastic. I’ll never know.

Kitty looks for my electrical tape to make a quick repair, and it’s nowhere to be found. I always carry electrical tape in my trunk but must have absentmindedly put it back in my toolbox when I was working on the bike recently. We ask the hotel staff where we could find some, and they tell us about Canadian Tire, probably a 2-km walk. We walk to the place, retrieve some electrical tape and wiring in case I have to splice something together. I peel apart the insulation and make the repair; only one wire in the harness has exposed copper, so I carefully dress it as best as I can, liberally wrap it with electrical tape, and we should be good to go.

We have a great dinner at a restaurant within walking distance, entertained by a charming waitress whose English just about matches my French, so we have an interesting time asking each other about words and how to pronounce them. I have a secret plan that by the next time I come to Canada, eh, I will be able to carry on a decent conversation in French. I’m a little embarrassed to have so little French at my disposal.

We’ve ridden 395 km (245 miles) today, 1587 km (986 miles) today. Fog and rain are moving in tonight across the river, so we will see what the morning holds.

See you then.

Track Log, Day 4

Gaspesie Gambol, Day 3

2009-06-24T23:21:00.016-04:00

O, Canada!
Wednesday June 24, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

I am floating effortlessly and peacefully in a soft puffy white cloud that somehow supports my weight although it has no mass of its own, and slowly become aware of a shadow falling across my upturned face. I struggle to make out what it is, and finally realize it is Kitty standing next to the bed saying something that sounds a lot like “Are you going to get up today?”

I struggle awake and glance at the bedside clock. 8:17 AM! I thought we’d be rolling by this time. “Can we be on the road by nine?” I ask in confusion.

“I thought we weren’t in a hurry,” says Kitty, an ocean of calm in the face of my agitation. Oh, that’s right, I forgot: we really aren’t in a hurry, and today it’s not a disaster to oversleep. Well, this has been the best night of sleep I’ve had for some time, and after I calm down I realize that she is right, we really don’t have to hurry. Even if we don’t make the 220 miles I’ve roughly sketched out for today, we have plenty of time to make it up and we have no hard points in the trip. We finally roll out at 10:00 AM. Kitty has put our passports into her purse in the bike’s trunk, and we set off for Canada via the slow road.

We veer right on Route 9N out of Lake George and head north along the lake. Greg and George had recommended this last night as a possible route. It was great to see them last night. They knew we were in Lake George because I’d posted a mini-message to the WOTI message board. George and I had met once or twice before; “Somewhere in Texas or Florida or Maine,” he said, or maybe it was right here in Lake George at Americade. Neither of us could remember. I’d ridden with Greg, joining up with him and some other folks for a ride to the WOTI Alamo Run near San Antonio, Texas. Under my helmet is a wry smile as I recall the next day’s ill-fated event that will follow me as long as I ride. After dropping the rest of our group for the night in Austin, Greg and I had arrived safely in Kerrville, Texas, in the dead of a deer-infested night after a 600-mile day, and the next morning we were rousted by a group of WOTI friends eager for us to ride the Texas Hill Country with them. Out of sync with the rest of the bikes’ fuel tanks and in a hurry not to hinder the rest of the group, it was in Leakey, Texas that I filled my Wing’s fuel tank with diesel fuel! And thus will I never escape the ignominious title of “Diesel Boi.” I am now and will be forever greeted as “Diesel Boi” whenever anyone from WOTI sees me, frequently accompanied by sniffing noses and wondering if anyone else smells diesel fuel.

9N generally follows the lakeshore, but wanders off to the west at Westport, and we choose Route 22, proceeding northward to join the shores of Lake Champlain. This is a nice if unspectacular road with minimal traffic today.

We run sedately through the curves, up and down the hills, skirting the shore and then ducking away into the hills. There is one eight-mile rough stretch that requires some serious slow-down. But this is not a problem today, as I sense the emergence of a new person I’m just learning to know: Slow-Down Guy. Unlike Solo Guy, with whom I’m most familiar and who has a definite need for speed — lots of it for many hours! — Slow-Down Guy would never set cruise above the speed limit. In fact, if 55 mph is good, 50 mph is better. Slow-Down Guy makes it up as he goes, not to worry if there’s no plan, no magenta GPS track, no guiding GPS voice from American Jill announcing the next turn. Slow-Down Guy barely uses the routing feature of the GPS. And he is quite content to let the miles and the hours play out as they may, the destination a moving target that ceases to be important; the destination is wherever the day happens to end. I actually think I’m starting to like this guy.

I’m wearing my T-shirt with the inscription “If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” I’m not the lead dog, don’t even think of myself as one of the big dogs, but today we find plenty of ever-changing scenery as we wander along the shores of Lake George and Lake Champlain, ever northward toward Canada. Across the expanse of the lake we can see Vermont’s Green Mountains, hiding the even mightier White Mountains lying still farther to the east in New Hampshire. From many miles away and across the lake, the mountains still look somehow regal with dark cloud-crowns that wreath the tops of the tallest peaks.

I think back over the trip so far and think of an email I got last night from Wes St Onge, another WOTI friend that I don’t think I’ve met in person. He said that yesterday he saw a black Wing and trailer with two people taking pictures of the old locomotives near his home and thought it might be us but then abandoned the thought. I checked our GPS log and yes, Wes, that would have been us at Cooperstown Junction taking pictures of the “GG1’s”. Sorry we missed you yesterday!

Somewhere along this route we stop at an overlook for some pictures and talk for a while to a biker named Brian, from Quebec City. He comments that today is Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, the National Holiday of Quebec, celebrated annually on June 24. As nearly as I can figure out from a quick Google search on my BlackBerry, St. Jean-Baptiste is the patron saint of all French Canadians, so it’s probably good to have a holiday in honor of John the Baptist. I’m sure most citizens of Quebec will find something considerably better to feast upon than locusts and wild honey. Humble apologies to my excellent French Canadian friends if I got it wrong. Leo, Lenny, Furface, Joe Drummond and others — I know you’re out there and won’t be shy in correcting me!

Given this newfound information, I’m just a little concerned about not having any reservations, although from what I can tell in talking to Brian, the day prior is actually the big day of celebrating and fireworks. So at a rest stop filled with an inch or more of soft cotton-like castoff from a grove of cottonwood trees (which I think of as a southern tree but various subspecies occur all over the US and even Canada), I call ahead to a hotel; between the little French I can muster and the clerk’s considerably better attempt at English, we figure out that there will not be a problem with rooms tonight.

North of the town of Au Sable, in a dramatic shift of topography, the hills give way to vast expanses of flat land that is relentless until we stop for the day. There’s a whole lot of farming going on here!

Soon we cross the border into Canada. I’d prepared for an hour to cross the border but in fact it takes about 10 minutes. “Are you meeting anyone in Gaspe?” asks the agent. “Hooking up with a group or anything? No? That’s a long way to ride your motorcycle. You’ve done your homework? Know how far that is?”

“Well,” I say, “we’ve been pretty much all over on our motorcycle. This trip is about 3,000 miles home-to-home.” After entering our license plate number and scanning our US passports (now required to travel between the US and Canada), he seems satisfied and tells us to have a nice trip.

Later, Kitty is talking about how surprised he seemed that we were riding all that distance.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “I think he just wanted to see if we were legit, if we actually had a clue about what we’d just said we were going to do, and weren’t just making something up. You never know what’s behind those questions they ask.”

“And now,” I say, “We’re officially in Canada. I’ve already set the GPS to read metric units instead of statute miles. The most important decision is now yours to make: What GPS voice will we use?”

Kitty mulls this over for a while. “Do you have a French girl?” she asks.

“Well, uh, er, no, I don’t, actually. But I do have a French text-to-speech voice in the GPS.” So I select “French Europeen-Virginie 1.50” and the GPS reboots. Now we have a completely exotic but to my untrained ears, completely incomprehensible GPS guide. French Virginie issues a number of instructions for which I can find no common ground between the speech and the text on the GPS screen.

“I think you’d better choose someone you can understand,” says Kitty, always helpful.

“Ok, you choose,” I say. “Remember that I also have Hungarian.” Secretly, I am hoping that this time Kitty opts for Australian Karen (who is a real Australian person with a real website – http://www.karenjacobsen.com), but eventually she selects, as we did on our last trip to Nova Scotia, British Emily 1.50. So a female British voice it shall be that guides us as we traverse the shores of the Saint Lawrence Seaway and beyond.

Slow-Down Guy is ready for his day to end just before 5:00 PM, so we check in to a hotel in Drummondville. After an excellent meal artfully presented and perfectly prepared at la Verrière Restaurant in the hotel (which I actually learn to pronounce and the waitress says I’m doing a good job), we ask the English-speaking hotel clerk if there’s an ATM within walking distance. She gives us directions and after a several-block walk we find the CIBC ATM and withdraw some using with our ATM card. This is a great way to get cash, because the exchange rate is figured into to withdrawal automatically. So for every Canadian dollar the machine spits out, our account is debited, as of today, about 86 cents.

Today we have traveled 369 km (229 miles), and 1189 km (739 miles) for the trip so far. I will need to spend a little time tomorrow morning reviewing the trip parameters and remembering the location of the special points of interest I’ve discovered in my research.

So tomorrow promises to be another day in the life of the newly-discovered Slow-Down Guy. We’ll see you then.

Track Log, Day 3

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 2

2009-06-24T00:18:00.007-04:00

New York, New York!
Tuesday June 23, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

Another lazy sleep-in day because we have an appointment at 9:30 AM at Binghamton Honda, just minutes from our hotel, so Frank can look at my cruise control problem.

Kitty packs up our drinking water in the cooler, ice-cold bottles of water that have been immersed in an ice bath all night. By giving them a new ice bath in the morning, we always have ice-cold drinking water. Kitty will sip on cold water all day, while I will down a bottle periodically at rest stops.
Binghamton Honda is just across the river from our hotel, but it’s a 6-mile ride to get from one place to the other. I suppose it’s the confluence of river and mountains, but this town has the most fascinatingly bizarre intersections and service roads I remember seeing. We arrive a little before 9:30 AM, unhook the trailer, and Frank goes to work while we sit outside and Kitty reads her book.

In less than an hour Frank comes back and says “I think your diagnosis was dead accurate. I took apart and cleaned the cruise control switch. It was pretty cruddy and not very eager to light up my test lamp when I tested it.” So by 11:00 AM we are headed out, and for now my cruise control is working as we head in the general direction of Lake George, NY. Frank did us a great favor by working us into the schedule, and I ask permission to put in a good word for him and the shop. He certainly did right by us! Incidentally, he is looking for a pulse generator for 1200 Limited Edition (was that a 1985?) that apparently has been discontinued by Honda. Anybody out there who knows where to get one?

After about 40 miles on I-88 headed east toward Albany, I decide I really want to get off the Interstate. NY 7 parallels the Interstate between Binghamton and Albany; I think I rode this once, or at least part of it, many years ago, before I-88 was completed. I remember having what I believe was my first A&W root beer at a little stand along this road, and to this day I wander I-88 looking for that root beer stand. I haven’t found it. It’s probably a parking lot now. Route 7 turns out to be the perfect choice for this slow-down day, and I set cruise exactly on the speed limit. This is, I have to admit, not quite always the case. Some days I’m trapped in a hurry-up mode on a slow-down road, other days I’m in a slow-down mode but have a destination to make, but today is a perfect example of “All those who wander are not lost.”

Route 7 is a non-technical but winding road that runs roughly along the Susquehanna River as it meanders through the mountains at about 1200 feet above sea level. It’s a beautiful ride, with towns small enough to add interest but not big enough to be a hindrance. For someone who loves arts and crafts and quaint little shops, this road could be a three-day ride! Unadilla, Otego, Oneonta, and many other towns are all filled with quaint shops, restaurants, and crafts establishments.

“Do you want to stop at some of these places?” I ask Kitty.

She responds with a decisive “No.”

“Why not?” I ask. “At home, you’re all over shops like this, but why not while traveling?”

“Well,” she replies, “Because we’re traveling!” I scratch my head at this logic — actually, it’s a virtual scratch, because I’m wearing a helmet. We usually don’t really look for a lot of things to do while traveling. Mostly we ride to enjoy what’s there — doing what’s to be done there, well, usually, not so much.

I decide to get back on I-88 for a few exits to bypass the town of Oneonta. But in a perverse twist of fate, I’m too late, and by the time I find the next entrance to the Interstate, we have nearly passed through the town and it’s a moot point.

A few miles out of town I am startled by the sight of an old, apparently abandoned locomotive. A sign appropriately enough, reads “Dead End.” We talk for a while with the man who lives on the corner, Mike. “There are only three of those engines in the world, he says, “and right here are two of them.” It turns out they are apparently relics of the true electric train era, where the electric power was supplied by huge batteries instead of current locomotives that use diesel. "They are going into the Smithsonian," Mike explains.

"So when we go visit them in three years," I tell Kitty, "we'll know exactly where they came from!"

“This road will be the demise of those rubber extrusion thingies on the tires,” I tell Kitty. “These curves will bring them to a swift end.” At Cobleskill we stop in a little park to eat our small picnic lunch, and I inspect the front tire. Sure enough, the rubber thingies are gone at 416 miles into the trip, save for some survivors along the edges of the tire.

Route 7 has been the perfect ride for a perfect day, and I decide to bypass Albany by finding some other routes. This is called making it up as you go! But I wait too long to find an alternate route, and when I find a waypoint on Route 50 that I can use for the GPS to bypass Albany, it is once again too late. The GPS generates an insanely complicated route. “This will be complicated,” I tell Kitty, “and I have no idea where I’m going.” We’re in the town of Scotia, New York before I know it, and then we’re on Route 50 and two-lane roads that are not bad, but the congestion is too much for me to really enjoy. In an ironic twist, I think I should have stayed on the Interstate. In slow-down, make-it-up kind of touring, not every choice gets a gold star.

Nevertheless, after a short day in which I did not cruise above the speed limit, we get to Lake George around 5:00 PM and I route to a motel I remember. But it’s the wrong one, so we ride around trying to find the one I want, but it has changed names I recognize it by the roof line. We check in and inexplicably the clerk upgrades us to one of their best suites at no extra charge. I’m pretty sure this will be the nicest place we stay in during the whole trip!

After we do our workout in the motel’s gym, I clean and cover the bike (yes, I still do that every evening!) and we walk together to the Gold Post Grille, attached to the motel, for dinner. Kitty is looking good in a nice-jeans, nice-shirt, cool-spiky-hair, really-friendly biker chick kind of way, while I’m slumming it in my sneakers and an old pair of cutoffs, wearing a T-shirt given to me by my boss: “If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”

I have my BlackBerry in silent mode during this trip, but I glance it and notice the red light blinking. It’s an email from Greg DeNoyer, a WOTI (Wings on the Internet) friend with whom I’ve ridden some thousands of miles: “George Hockousen and I are in Lake George right now!” I fire back an email telling him where we are, and about 20 minutes later, in walk Greg and George in person. Mostly we know each other from the WOTI newsgroup but we've run into each a time or to before, but not for a long time. They have a seat while Kitty and I finish eating, then Greg takes us all to Martha’s for ice cream. Everyone who comes to Lake George has to go to Martha’s for ice cream, and it is just as I remembered it: dozens of people lined up for their ice cream sundaes, banana splits, and ice cream cones. We have a great time renewing our acquaintance and talking about the various interesting ways to ride from Lake George into Canada, where we plan to be riding tomorrow. What a surprise to run into two of my friends here!

We rode only 193 miles today, 509 for trip total, but what great day of stretch-out-the-miles, slow-down touring this was. Next time, I will look sooner for alternate routes to avoid Albany.

Tomorrow if all goes as planned we will cross into Canada, eh? Now just where did we put those passports?

We will learn what tomorrow holds when it arrives.

GPS Track, Day 2

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 1

2009-06-22T23:00:00.014-04:00

Start Me Up
Monday, June 22, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

“And there we go.” It’s always magic. Those of you have traveled with us before know the routine: I get on the bike first, turn on the engine or the accessory key and plug in my headset, then Kitty slides into the pillion seat, connects her headset, and says those three magic words that are the key to whatever we want them to be. She does it every time. Just start me up.

We’ve slept in this lazy beautiful morning and it’s just a few minutes after 9 when we finally roll out the driveway and up the street. We are headed northward and will travel as far (or not) as we feel like traveling. Binghamton, New York, an easy 300 miles away, is a potential but not mandatory destination. We have about three days to make the 700 miles to the gateway to Gaspe, and even that has some free time. This whole trip promises to be a lazy-day ride, one day after the other.

I contemplate various routes to occupy the first 30 miles or so of our trip. “Which way do you want to go to Leesburg?” I ask Kitty in the headset. “We could go up 28 past Dulles or we could take some back roads.”

“I’m with you!” she says.

“Nope, this is going to be your decision,” I insist. We haven’t traveled 100 feet and already we can’t decide where to go. That’s because, apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, “Not all those who wander are lost.” Because sometimes you just don’t care!

“Not past Dulles Airport,” Kitty says decisively, and just like that, our trip starts out on back roads a few miles from our house, heading more or less northward.

Motorcycling is different from normal vehicle travel. A normal trip seeks to minimize the time between points of interest. A motorcycle trip seeks to maximize the journey; the destination becomes secondary and sometimes downright unimportant. My sailing friends who are also bikers say some aspects are a lot like a sailing trip. There are exacting details that must be exquisitely cared for, lest the experience turn on you and consume you in an instant. But the rewards are stupendous. I often think of the Chinese proverb, “The journey is the reward.” For me this is never truer than on my motorcycle. The senses are alive, attuned to the ride and the rider; the bike and its riders and the experience are fused into something that becomes a part of the greater whole. We are more than those interlopers we might see running amok through the scene, desperate to get to the next vantage point wherever it may be, thus failing to appreciate the extraordinary beauty of each moment.

Just start me up! And let me live in each wonderful moment!

We head north on US 15 to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where eventually pick up I-81 north. Some of you will remember Kitty’s three trip rules: No snakes, no cities, no traffic. It strikes me that, only 120 miles from home, we come close to violating two of her rules.

“Well, at least it’s not rush hour,” she says, giving me a pass as we circle around the southern side of Harrisburg.

Our first break is more than two hours later. Some time ago Kitty lost a good bit of weight as we’ve tried to live a healthier lifestyle. This has had the effect of doubling her time in the saddle without breaks. Now, if the temperature is moderate, we frequently ride for hours without stopping, sometimes riding tank-to-tank.

An elderly couple (elderly, I say, because they are older than I) meet us as we walk into the 7-Eleven. “Be safe!” the woman says, smiling. It occurs to me that no elderly ladies talk to me when I’m on a Solo Guy run. And now that I think of it, actually, young ladies don’t talk to me either. Kitty softens the image, and somehow they instinctively know it’s Ok to talk to us. And when we travel together, moms with kids, kids with dogs, dads with moms, all want to come up and talk to the biker couple.

We stay on I-81 after our lunch break and, held hostage by my lazy-day mantra, I inexplicably set cruise just at the speed limit. I think about my new Michelin tires. I’ve been monitoring those little rubber thingies that remain from the rubber extrusion process, just because I want to know how long they last. At 150 miles, 200 miles, they are still hanging.

And I love these tires! Kitty even notices that they are much quieter, and they feel very secure and stable in both sharp curves and sweepers. Ray, my friend, I know you are out there reading this, and thanks for the recommendation! Of course I don’t know how long they’ll last, but as a ride, they really hit my sweet spot.

Shortly before pulling in to a rest area for one last quick break, the speed limit changes and when I try to re engage cruise control, it won’t engage. This happened once earlier today and I fiddled with all the controls that have cruise interlock switches and it started working again. But not this time. I ride the last 10 miles to the rest area without cruise and contemplate what to do.

This isn’t a show stopper, but I’d sure miss having cruise control. I remember a ride just after completing a 48-hour coast-to-coast run with Ray: just after we finished, my speedometer cable broke (which kills the cruise control function) and I rode the 750 miles from Jacksonville, Florida to my home without cruise, using the GPS as my speedometer. I’d hate to do that again.

I pull out my Gold Wing Road Rider’s Association Gold Book and find a dealer in Binghamton. I talk to Frank, the service manager, about what might cause the problem and he says he can look at the bike tomorrow morning. I decide to ride to the shop this evening and talk to him. During the last 40 miles, cruise control starts working again. I test all the interlock switches: left-side clutch, right-side hand brake, foot brake, and throttle, going on and off cruise so often that I envision poor Kitty getting seasick. I conclude that the problem is likely the switch itself, because once engaged, cruise function is normal and none of the interlock switches cause a failure. It always reengages when clicking the “Resume” switch. Frank agrees with me when I describe my diagnosis. I’ll have the bike back to his shop at 9:30 AM tomorrow and he’ll take a look, if only to clean the contacts in the switch.

I laugh as we load out our bags at the hotel we’ve found. How can two bikers need that much luggage? As I once told our son, “We are the people I warned us about.”

Doing our workout in the hotel gym, I'm horrified to see on CNN that there has been a terrible Metro train crash back home in Washington, DC. Many of my company's employees commute on the Red Line including people from my team. I fire off some emails from my BlackBerry but get no responses, then finally a BlackBerry Messenger message from my friend and colleague Christie to the effect that she doesn't believe any employees from our company were injured. Even so, that doesn't minimize the shock and loss to the families of those involved. This makes a cruise control problem see rather trivial.

Well, every day is an adventure. Today’s adventure was yesterday’s tomorrow, and in similar fashion, tomorrow is today’s future. We’ll see what tomorrow holds and whether I will have cruise control for the remainder of the trip.

Meanwhile, those little rubber thingies on the tires are still hanging on at 316 miles!

We’ll let you know about tomorrow as it finds us.

GPS Track for Day 1

Gaspésie Gambol, Day 0

2009-06-21T17:07:00.010-04:00

A Day for Fathers
Sunday June 21, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy

It’s Sunday afternoon, and the family is at Outback Steakhouse. Somehow steak and Father’s Day seem to be made for each other. If I’m choosing, as today I have been asked to do, then steak it will be.

We enjoy the time with Kevin and Kristal, and grandkids Danica and Carter. Our son Kevin has turned out to be quite a great father in his own right and I should be buying his lunch today! We talk about many things including our upcoming trip. If the mood strikes, we might even head out this afternoon or evening.

Last year, Kitty and I traveled on our Honda Gold Wing to Key West, farther south than we had ever been. This year we are heading farther north than we have ever been, to the tip of the Gaspe Peninsula, which at its extreme is about 150 miles north of the northernmost tip of Maine as well as Nova Scotia. Two weeks ago the high temperature there was 48F but this week it’s near 70F. I’ve wired the bike with a special connecting harness contributed by my friend Ray Smith, with whom I did a farewell ride several weeks ago; on that ride, I also picked up his Gerbing electric clothing to see if Kitty could wear it. It’s too tight for me, a little big for her, but passable, so we are ready for some cold weather if it happens!

Last weekend as I was getting the bike ready for departure, I carefully inspected the tires. I am fastidious with my tires (well, not just my tires, but particularly my tires) because on a motorcycle, they are, you might say, the only contact you have with the rest of the planet. This makes them an extremely important commodity. When I’m on a remote mountain road with Kitty somewhere in Canada or Carolina or Colorado, or on the Interstate crossing the Mississippi near Memphis in a blinding microburst while surrounded by two dozen big trucks, there are several thoughts that I pray will never cross my mind. Very high on that list is this one: “I kinda wish I would have changed those tires before we left!”

I changed the tires. Well, Mike at the Honda shop changed the tires. I’ve used up many sets of Dunlop Elite II tires over the years but Dunlop no longer produces them, so I’d tried a set of Dunlop Elite III. I never warmed up to them from the first mile to the last. They were noisy, loose on tar snakes and expansion joints, with limited longevity, and to me they always felt vague in a hard corner. Ray had mounted a set of Michelin Pilot GT tires on his Wing and liked them, so I decided I’d try a set. In the few miles I’ve ridden, I think I’m impressed. They seem quiet, road-savvy, and very accurate. I haven’t really tested them because as every biker knows, the cosmoline they put on rifles and rubber tires to protect them in storage is deathly slick on the road and you just don’t test your new tires for the first fifty or a hundred miles. I’m sure I’ll get a chance or two to test them in the next couple weeks.

I fly two flags on my Gold Wing: a US flag on the right antenna pole and a WOTI flag on the left. My Canadian friends tell me it is proper to proudly fly my US flag while traveling in Canada, eh? But both my flags were looking pretty bedraggled after accompanying us to Nova Scotia and then to Key West on separate trips. So last Monday I’d called The Flag People (http://www.theflagpeople.com) with a rush order. The new flags arrived Friday and I installed them on each pole. I can now fly a crisp new US flag as I travel through Canada! I looked for a minute at the old flag I’d just removed. It was in bad shape, dirty from hundreds of miles in the rain and frayed from many thousands of miles of wind-whipped travel. I have a collection of faded, dirty, and tattered US flags just like it; I carefully marked this one “Nova Scotia 2007”, “Key West or Bust 2008”, and “Once More with Feeling June 2009”, and gently laid it to rest with the others in the collection. On a winter’s day, I will pull them out and fondly remember.

On Friday, we discovered that mysteriously we had only one key to our Escapade trailer. Such a small thing but what an impact it would have if we lost it! We are not sure what happened to the spare key that normally travels in Kitty’s possession. So Saturday, Kitty set off to Artie’s Lock and Key, the only place in northern Virginia where I entertained any hope of finding this very specialized key. They did have that blank and soon I got her text message “4 trailr keys my zippered pocket!” The rest of the day I spent detailing the bike and trailer, wondering about where I picked up each of the splattered bugs that I carefully polished from the front of the bike.

In my stories, I hope people of different interests find something of interest, but I make no apologies for the technical biker content because this is first and foremost a biker’s tale. I think our motorcycle and trailer are as ready as I can make them. To my knowledge, every light, accessory, and function on the rig is doing what it should. Our routes and waypoints are loaded to my Garmin StreetPilot 2720 GPS unit. Our waterproof Cruiserworks riding boots are shined; even our black Shoei RF1000 helmets are newly waxed. My Wing’s name is Black Satin. Black Satin is a supremely competent long-range machine made for two-up touring, made for this trip.

We pack the last of the trip bags and I load the trailer, being mindful to keep a good load balance and proper tongue weight. It’s about 5:00 PM and we could leave now but after toying with the idea we decide to hang out at home this evening and leave tomorrow as planned. I believe we are ready. But the thing is, tomorrow’s story is still unwritten because it hasn’t been lived.

We’ll see you as it unfolds.

Once More, With Feeling

2009-06-14T20:37:00.010-04:00

“Rollin 8:09:33 PM. One fuel stop. CU.” It’s Saturday evening, June 6, 2009. The automatic timestamp is a function on my BlackBerry, and the text message goes out to Ray as I ease the Wing out the driveway, up the street, and soon onto I-66 West, just as so many of my trips have started. But this is not just another trip. I fiercely cherish the time I can carve out to ride, generally the farther the better, but this ride is bittersweet.

I’d planned to depart very early tomorrow morning, but Kitty and I have returned early from an out-of-town family reunion and I rather spontaneously decide to make a run for it this evening. I’m going to meet Ray Smith, my friend and riding buddy of tens of thousands of miles, who’s already in a hotel somewhere in Virginia. All I have is a GPS waypoint. But I’ll find him. We always find each other. He lives in North Carolina, I live in Virginia. We’ve found each other at places all over the North American continent. He found Kitty and me during our Driving Miss Kitty coast-to-coast tour in 2000, waiting for us at a rest stop on I-70 in Illinois simply by guessing where we might be based on my daily blog updates. He found me at an unannounced and unplanned hotel on New Year’s Eve 2002 while I was doing a quick one-night and half-day 1,200-mile run to get 100,000 miles on the odometer of my Wing before the year expired, then with his brother accompanied me 300 miles to within 5 miles of home just to watch my odometer reach 100,000 miles in a parking lot. And then he rode 300 miles home again in the cold December rain that started to fall. I was with him somewhere between home and Texas when the odometer on his bike turned over that same mileage. We’ve found each other by sending GPS waypoints, or by guess, or by preplanned meeting points, or by intuition.

Kitty and I met Ray and Deb in September 1999 when some of our WOTI (Wings on the Internet) group assembled for breakfast at Wings over the Smokies in Asheville, North Carolina. Since then we’ve ridden our two Gold Wings together for more miles than any other person in either of our collective acquaintances.

The intervening time has seen us ride 1,000 miles on a brutally hot early May day, from North Carolina to Bailey Island, Maine, to eat lobster at Cook’s Lobster House. He doesn’t like lobster. He and Deb and I took an early October ride to Skid West’s Choo Choo Barbeque in Louisiana and ran smack into the coldest weather the South had seen for decades at that time of year. We rode for a day with temperatures in the 30’s. We didn’t have electric clothing (it’s the South, right?) and I still remember Deb dressed up in layer after layer of clothing until she looked like a miniature Michelin Man in a mask. Ray and I have put many 1,000-mile days under our Wings’ tires, just for the sheer joy of the ride. That has been our common ground: the love of the Long Road, just cockpit time and camaraderie.

We once rode to the WOTI Alamo Run in San Antonio and on to San Diego. Then, in a successfully-certified Iron Butt run called “50CC” (50 hours Coast-to-Coast), we rode our Wings across the country to the opposite coast at Jacksonville, Florida, in a little over 48 hours. How well I recall streaking at Max Cruise across the golden sands of Arizona talking on CB for hours to a woman trucker named “Brown-Eyes” in a big Covenant semi, finally stopping in New Mexico for fuel where she stopped just to shake the hands of the two Gold Wing bikers. To this day, we both have Pacific and Atlantic seawater collected in that 48-hour period, the permanent signature of our mad dash across the golden sands of Arizona.

He is known as “Snake” among WOTI folks because once, after a Texas WOTI get-together, he left Evelyn Cline’s place in a cold rain and soon noticed a green snake poking its inquisitive head out of one of his fairing vents, flicking its tongue against his knee! Apparently lured by the heat of the engine, the snake had crawled up into the fairing while the bike was parked and now, with the engine hot, was finding the environs a bit uncomfortable and was looking for other habitat. Ray absolutely hates snakes! And it was quite a few miles and quite a few shenanigans before he could pull off and administer the coupe-de-grace to the unfortunate reptile.

Now I’m a dozen miles into the darkening western sky on I-66, no golden sands here in Virginia, and a routine mirror check suddenly shows the pale orb of a full moon, seemingly hovering directly above the Interstate behind me. A happy feeling suffuses my somewhat melancholy musings, and the moon like a benign smiling giant urges me onward to my mission. I turn south on I-81 and the moon on my left continues to smile in a star-studded and cloudless Virginia night sky.

My mission is to find Ray. We always find each other. About 165 miles and nearly 3 hours later, I do, arriving at his hotel just before 11:00 PM.

“I’m here.” I send the text message to his cell phone and cover my still-warm Wing. Before I finish, he walks out, we shake hands, and it’s just like old times.

But it’s not like old times. Because this is the last time.

Last week we’d talked and he said “Jim, I'm going to sell my bike. It’ll happen soon. I want to do one more ride with you.” Ray has medical issues that we’ve both known would eventually limit or end his riding career. He and Deb have reluctantly decided it’s time, although he’s been riding a lot lately, most recently with our friend Gibby to Cape Canaveral to see the space shuttle lift off. And that is the reason for this ride, and the reason for my melancholy musings. So we will do this once more, with feeling.

Sunday morning, and we awake to fog lying on the hills around Lexington, Virginia. We realize there is no point in hurrying, for our day’s ride will be mostly on the fabled Blue Ridge Parkway, which is sure to be completely socked in with fog. So we have a leisurely breakfast in the Greek restaurant that opens at 7:00 AM, although the hotel clerk recommends we don’t push it, as they are known to be a few minutes late on many mornings. He’s right.

We strike out at around 8:00 AM and ride toward the Parkway, but at Buena Vista we see the mountains still completely shrouded in fog and decide to run 80 miles or so south on I-81 to give the fog a chance to clear. By 10:00 AM we take Route 8 to Floyd, Virginia, were we get on the Parkway without incident. It’s a beautiful early June day and the lifting fog adds an aura of mystery and intrigue.

As we roll southward on the Parkway, I am in the lead and check my mirrors often for Ray’s Wing’s distinctive front-end signature with the double headlights and the driving lights spread low and wide on the fairing. I’ve seen this in my mirror for thousands of miles.

The rhododendron along the Parkway are slow to bloom this year, and we see only some early volunteers foretelling the spectacular rhododendron blooming season that will be evident in several weeks. The temperature is a perfect 68 degrees F.

“I enjoy this part of the ride almost more than the southern end,” Ray says on CB. Indeed, it’s a relaxing, non-technical ride as the Parkway winds southward along the spine of the Blue Ridge.

After several detours including one through the town of Boone, North Carolina, we pass Grandfather Mountain, whose higher elevations are hidden by dark clouds. We ride slowly across the Lynn Cove Viaduct, and finally get off the Parkway for good a few miles before the long-term road closure, a result of a rockslide that closed the Parkway between here and Asheville. It’s hot when we get to the flatlands off the mountain, and we find a place in Morganton, North Carolina.

Walking to the Sagebrush Steakhouse across the street, it’s hard to fathom that this will be the last dinner we’ll have on one of these trips, and we hoist a glass or two to the good times we’ve had and to whatever the future may hold.

The next morning, Monday, we make plans to meet Deb for lunch at a restaurant near her workplace, so we ride the 250 miles on the Interstate, mostly in silence. Ray is leading, and I look often at the familiar pearl green trunk and saddlebags that I’ve followed for so many thousands of miles, most of them with Ray’s mascot, Twinken, a charming little creature of indeterminate taxonomy, peering over the back of the light bar.

We meet Deb for lunch and talk about the decision to retire the bike.

“It was a hard decision,” Deb says, “but harder for Ray.”

“She said I could get a truck,” says Ray.

“I’ve ridden my Wing past a thousand places all over the continent where I would have liked to go but the bike couldn’t,” I say. “So here’s our new plan: Kitty and I will take the bike, you’ll take your truck, and we’ll tour the country. When we get to one of those places, I’ll park the Wing and we’ll take your 4x4 to explore the rest of the country!”

Deb has to go back to work so we walk together out to the parking lot. “Every mile has been a good one, Ray.” We shake hands and our eyes lock for just a second and then mercifully, he walks away.

“I’ll have two lawns mowed by the time you get home,” he quips. I ease out of the parking lot, give a little toot on the horn, and my last view is Ray waving, standing by his faithful Wing, the companion of nearly 140,000 miles.

I point my Wing toward home and ease onto the Interstate. The radio is off but the CB is on. Some of you have read my stories about Solo Guy, who travels alone and is often confused with Lonely Guy, but is never lonely. Today for the first time, I stare Lonely Guy full in the face and realize he is me.

Several times I am startled to hear Ray’s CB voice in my headset, then realize it’s only a ghost, and my mirror holds only an empty spot where a Wing’s signature headlight configuration would be.

It is brutally hot, over 91 degrees F, and I ride the 250 miles home without stopping save for a 7-minute fuel stop. And then I’m home, 500 miles for the day’s ride.

Our friendship will continue, and we’ll see each other again to be sure. But on those summer days when I point my Wing toward the Long Road, I will miss you, my friend. When the time comes for me retire my riding boots, I hope that I will have the courage to do it, and I hope I will have the dignity and grace to do it as you have done. Most assuredly, that day will someday come. But even then, I will always wish we could have had one more run across the golden sands of Arizona.

Key West or Bust, Day 15

2008-05-25T15:06:00.015-04:00

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

2008-05-24T22:56:00.008-04:00

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

2008-05-23T21:53:00.008-04:00

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

2008-05-22T23:39:00.006-04:00

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

2008-05-21T23:08:00.003-04:00

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

2008-05-20T22:13:00.011-04:00

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

2008-05-19T22:22:00.006-04:00

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

2008-05-18T21:33:00.004-04:00

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

2008-05-17T22:51:00.019-04:00

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

2008-05-16T22:25:00.014-04:00

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

2008-05-15T22:03:00.019-04:00

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

2008-05-14T22:49:00.005-04:00

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

2008-05-13T21:28:00.014-04:00

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.

Key West or Bust, Day 2

2008-05-12T20:58:00.009-04:00

Of Monks, Tarheels, and Bumper Stickers
Monday May 12, 2008

I never wear my wrist watch on a trip. Because I'm on vacation and for the most part, time is extraordinarily low on the hierarchy of Things Important. But sometimes, even on vacation, timing does matter and the watch has an alarm that we occasionally use to help us wake up in the morning. .Last night I’d carefully set my wrist watch alarm and the motel alarm for 6:45 AM. Apparently I need better alarm technology. None of the alarms sound, and we awake at 7:05 and have to hurry through the morning so as to arrive at the California Sidecar factory at 8:00 when they open. Thankfully, although we’re under heavy cloud cover, it isn’t raining as I thought it would be, so loading out is easier than expected and we almost make it. It’s only a 4-mile ride.

At the California Sidecar factory, I talk to Scott about three things I want him to look at: A loose snap for the front cover of the trailer, a factory-recall shock absorber check, and something I’d just noticed hooking up my trailer for this trip, that when touching the brakes the LED spoiler brake light dims instead of becoming brighter.

While we wait, I clean the bike in the parking lot and Kitty hangs out in the little cafeteria reading a book she brought along. It’s a quick clean-up job because I’m at all not sure we won’t run into more rain today by the looks of things, but I feel better with a shiny, water-droplet-less bike. I’ll clean the trailer later.

An hour and half later, Scott bursts into the cafeteria and announces, “All done! Good to go!” He explains that they tested the light and everything is working as it should. “Did you do your test with the bike running?” he asks. I have to think for a second and realize I checked the trailer lights with the ignition switch on but the bike not running. After we hook up the trailer with the bike running, I have Kitty step on the brake pedal while I observe from the rear. Yes! That Kisan Tailblazer is surely throwing out a whole bunch of blinking red lights that slowly grow to a solid glow over four seconds! The spoiler is working as it should. Wow! That is definitely what I want on the back of my bike and trailer when I apply the brakes!
And thus we head southward. We haven’t eaten breakfast and it’s now mid-morning, so in Lynchburg I route the GPS to a restaurant we recognize that serves both breakfast and lunch. Because choices are good. Jill flawlessly leads us to… an on-ramp! No restaurant in sight. A rare miss for Jill! But I love her anyway. I search for other options and we end up selecting a Cracker Barrel. After brunch, I clean the trailer while Kitty wanders about in the country store and emerges with a bag full of stuff. Because she can just “throw it in the trailer.” Motorcycling with a trailer is a definite boon to the vendors along the way!

It’s chilly. Who knew it would be 48 F in the middle of May in southern Virginia? Kitty decides to wear her balaclava to keep the wind off her neck, since the passenger always gets a lot more wind than the rider. Now this always makes me think Kitty looks like a monk and I’m always secretly relieved when she assumes her normal appearance as a biker with a helmet.

We run under heavy clouds that slowly become more broken even while spitting down a few fine drops of rain on the windshield. And just about when we turn south into North Carolina after US 29 bypasses Danville, we see blue sky for the first time this trip. It’s a wonderful, spirit-lifting thing and makes me think of a bumper sticker I once saw that read “If God isn’t a Tarheel, then why is the sky Tarheel-blue?” It is indeed a lovely thing to see some blue sky even if just in patches. Gotta love North Carolina!

By the time we make Charlottesville, North Carolina, where we had tentatively decided to stop, the sky is mostly clear, the temperature is 64F, and Kitty thinks she’d like to ride a little farther. She’s still not up to her normal strength and stamina, and remembering that only three days ago her fever was 102, I want to make sure we don’t push too hard the first couple days. But we ride on into South Carolina to the little town of Richburg and find a place to stay for the night. By now the clouds have fled and the sky is overspread in a splendid, unblemished azure hue. The temperature displayed on my fairing thermometer is a pleasant 73 F. So for the day, we've traveled 280 miles, leaving somewhere over 200 miles for tomorrow’s route to Savannah, Georgia. Looks like maybe we can sleep in and still get there early.

We walk to dinner at the Front Porch Restaurant, a southern little place featuring an inviting flower-festooned front porch complete with rocking chairs, and inside, a simple wooden floor and portraits of regular South Carolina people decorating the rough-hewn wooden shingle-board walls. Walking back to the motel from the restaurant, Kitty laughs (if her broken half-voice would qualify as a laugh) as she sees one last bumper sticker: “This is just a STUPID STICKER but you’re squinting to read it anyway.”

Key West or Bust, Day 1

2008-05-11T20:12:00.004-04:00

A Mother's Day
Sunday May 11, 2008.

Mother’s Day. A day for honoring those without whom we wouldn’t even exist. But for Kitty and me, also a day of new beginning.

Last Friday, Kitty had a fever of over 102. Yesterday, Saturday, I was out doing some final prepping on the bike when she appeared and said “I think I’ll mow the lawn.” And just like that, despite my astonished counsel to the contrary, she was out mowing the lawn. “If I can mow the lawn, I think I can sit on the motorcycle tomorrow,” she had said.

We’d decided to do the Mother’s Day thing when we get back, and thus it is that after church and a quick lunch, we’re on Final Departure Status. Extremely heavy weather is moving in later this afternoon, and we think if we get a good start we might reach our destination before the heaviest rain sets in. The sky is gloomy and fitful spits of rain splatter on the sidewalk and the driveway. Only once before in our travels have we done the Dance of the Rainsuit before departure. And I find I still have the touch: As usual, I do the whole dance and then realize I’ve left my keys inside my jeans pocket, causing me to unzip, unflap, dig out the keys, and do the whole thing over again. I smile as I think about how often I’ve done that and how it seems I’ll never learn.

“And there we go,” Kitty croaks in my headset, as she does every time we mount the bike and prepare to ride. Well, she always says that, she doesn’t always croak. I almost laugh but she just sounds so pitiful, having almost completely lost her voice in the past two days. And at 2:47 PM we gently roll out of the driveway into a light rain under heavy skies. Our destination is a modest 122 miles from home, to a tiny town south of Charlottesville within a few minutes of the California Sidecar factory where I have an appointment tomorrow morning to have a few things on my Escapade trailer checked over.

Within 20 miles the rain starts in earnest and it pelts the bike with huge star-shaped splats on the windshield, smacks onto our helmets, and pools on the road. Visibility is reasonable until about 20 miles out of Charlottesville, when the road spray and heavy rain seem to have depleted the tall Tulsa windshield of its magic rain-shedding properties. I generally ride alert but “loose” in rain, but today I find I’m tensing up and focusing all my attention on peering through the windshield instead of riding the ride. I tell Kitty we’ll stop at the next fuel station to fuel up, take a break, and re-apply the magic windshield cleaner that is so effective in keeping the windshield clear.

After this it’s like a new windshield and once again I can relax. Soon after making the turn onto US 250/29 at Charlottesville, the rain diminishes and we see a patch of blue sky in the distance. By the time we reach our tiny motel in the tiny town of Lovingston, Virginia, the clouds are gone. But having listened to the radio, we know that still to come overnight is another line of vicious thunderstorms for which tornado warnings have been posted in North Carolina and southeastern Virginia. They are heading our way.

We unpack the trailer, hang up our rain suits to dry, and I park the bike in a covered drive-through area suggested by the manager. For one of the very few times in our travels, I don’t touch the bike, don’t cover it, don’t wipe off a single water droplet. Because tomorrow we’ll do it all over again in the next line of storms.

Walking across US 29 to Vito’s Italian Restaurant, I ask Kitty how she’s doing. “I feel fine” she croaks. I hope she feels better than she sounds!

Key West or Bust, Day Zero

2008-05-10T13:51:00.010-04:00

In the Balance
Saturday May 10, 2008

In May, it's Alamo Run time. Gold Wing riders from the Wings on the Internet newsgroup (http://www.woti.org/) normally gather near San Antonio for a barbeque, kick some tires together, and renew friendships. But this year, it's been cancelled, so other plans are in order. Roads exist to be ridden, and ridden they shall be.

Kitty & I have chosen a meandering mostly-two-lane route to Key West for our 2008 springtime ride. We chose Florida because it's the only mainland state except North Dakota we haven't visited together on our Wing. Key West because... well, because it's as far as you can go before turning around. The bike is ready, trailer is ready. We're pretty much packed. It's a lot easier now with the trailer than in the old days where every single item had to be carefully scrutinized and vetted to see if it qualified for the trip. Nowadays, we "just throw it in the trailer."

My StreetPilot 2720 GPS is completely programmed with waypoints, pre-calculated trip segments, and half a thousand "custom points of interest" that I downloaded from http://www.poi-factory.com/, including all the lighthouses along the South Atlantic coast. I've set up proximity alerts for a number of those that will alert us when we ride to within the distance I've specified. I recently bought a new handheld GPS unit, a kinda-cute little yellow Garmin eTrex Venture HC, that we can use to track our hikes and power walks throughout the trip, and the planned bicycle or walking adventures in Key West. Hotel reservations have been made where necessary.

We're psyched. We're ready.

And Kitty is sick. Sicker than I've ever known her to be in over 37 years of being married. Last night, on antibiotics but with a fever of over 102 F, leaving as planned tomorrow was looking pretty bleak. She's optimistic today. She's better but it's still not looking good to me. It is what it is, and we'll deal with it. I'm resigned to doing the right thing, whatever that may turn out to be!

We shall see what tomorrow may hold.