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.
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.”
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.
We’ll let you know about tomorrow as it finds us.
GPS Track for Day 1
No comments:
Post a Comment