MACH.14: Day 2 - Old, Bold Thoughts

Day 2: Old, Bold Thinking

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

I am surveying my beautiful red motorcycle lying on its side, resting on its crash bars.  There’s a standard, well-published way to set it upright; I’ve seen a 90-pound woman do it, and so have I.  But this time, as I back into the seat and grab the passenger rail and handlebar, it won’t budge.  I finally give a mighty heave, and… suddenly come awake with a start, instantly on full alert.

After a tense evening of tornado warnings and people huddling in stairwells for shelter, all subjects here emerged unscathed, but strong storms pounded the area all night.  I’m unnerved by my dream of a fallen Crusader, and the need to see if the bike is Ok is so overwhelming that at 6:12 AM I slip on a t-shirt and pair of raggedy gym shorts and pad out to the hotel entrance in my bare feet.  All is well, covers still on the bike and trailer, and everything looks perfect.

Kitty is already in the gym doing her workout, so I turn on the Weather Channel as well as some local news to see how things look.  It doesn’t look good.  The monster storm that stretches from Michigan to the Gulf Coast and east to Virginia is trapped between pressure systems, and is setting up to do the same thing today that it did yesterday, spawning vicious cells and damaging weather.  In our local area there are downed power lines, flooding, and downed trees.  Much of Alabama has been declared a disaster area.

I borrow and modify a phrase from the fighter pilot jargon:  “There are old riders and there are bold riders, but there are no old, bold riders.”  Wandering around in moderately remote and unknown areas in these conditions seems unwise to this no-longer-bold rider (I ever I was a bold rider).  We talk it over and decide to see if the hotel has any rooms for tonight.  They do.  Two.  I book one.  We have to move to a different room and as we’re transferring our luggage we talk about what to do today.

When our son Kevin was 13, he and I took a fondly-remembered two-up motorcycle trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway, around the Smoky Mountains, and somehow ended up in Cleveland, Tennessee, which acted as our launch point for a day of whitewater rafting on the Ocoee river.  “For old times’ sake,” I tell Kitty, “if the weather is good enough, I’d like to ride that same road along the Ocoee.”

Most of the day locally is forecasted to be pleasant, with strong storms and possible tornadoes firing up again this evening, but it looks ok now.  No storms or cells are in sight within a hundred miles on the weather radar. So after a leisurely breakfast, we set off for our  pleasant little 110-mile round trip, winding along the very scenic Ocoee River just as Kevin and I did all those years ago..

Harnessing the power of its rivers, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has built a sprawling empire of hydroelectric power plants throughout Tennessee and even into Kentucky and Alabama.  Their methodology has been controversial:  On one hand, it garners praise because, in the length of a river, the same water energy can be harvested many times as the river flows downstream.  On the other hand, it has been open to much criticism because what they do kills a river.  Hydroelectric power production on the East Coast is very different from the mountains in the western United States.  In the East, they build a dam and then carry the water runoff in sluice boxes for miles down the river under there’s enough water pressure gradient, and then divert the water in huge pipes down a steep bank and into the hydroelectric power plant.  This can be repeated over and over again, based on the length and drop of the river.  But when the water is dammed up, the river downstream is almost completely dry for miles much of the year, thereby making it devoid of normal life forms found in rivers.

But this is whitewater rafting country!  In fact, the 1996 Olympic white-water rafting competition was held here.  When the gates of a dam are open, the dry boulder-strewn riverbed becomes a raging torrent of rapids!  Expeditions are a major source of income for the area.

At the former Olympic site, the gates are closed and the river bed is dry, filled with boulders. It's hard to imagine a wild river hosting an Olympic event: We stop to take a few pictures and I snap one of Kitty looking for something in the bike’s trunk.  I think it looks like an alien is inspecting our motorcycle.

We continue the mesh jacket experiment.  We’ve discovered one characteristic that is a deficit, at least for me:  Often while traveling, Kitty for no apparent reason suddenly decides to impart a wonderfully relaxing back rub to my person.  These jackets have crash protection in the form of a “tortoise shell”pad across the back, shoulder pads, and elbow pads.  “There’s not much area left over for a back rub!” says Kitty.

On the return trip, 15 miles from Cleveland and the hotel, we stop for a late lunch at the Ocoee Dam Deli and Diner (http://www.ocoeedamdeli.com).  “Why can’t we have a place like this at home!” Kitty exclaims as we walk in.  It was recommended by the chief engineer back at the hotel, and if our experience is an indication, it is worth coming back to any time we’re in the Cleveland area.  This is a very funky, very off-the-beaten path kind of place.  In some ways it reminds me of another favorite, The Shed barbecue joint in Missisissippi.  Kitty orders a mushroom and cheese hamburger, while I indulge in a black-and-bleu version that includes some decadent crumbly bleu cheese.  With all due respects to my all-time favorite, the Kobe beef burger back home, at the Blue Duck restaurant in DC, this could be the best hamburger I’ve ever eaten.  Perfectly prepared, tangy blue cheese, tomatoes, a little lettuce, and some sauce I can’t quite identify, perfectly delectable.

In the course of our lunch, we strike up a conversation with a couple of southern good ole’ boys about the huge wild boar’s head mounted on the wall.  And thus commences a fascinating conversation about wild boar hunting, Crimson Tide football, accents and dialects throughout the country, how the TVA affected life around these parts (the dams covered over several little settlements, which one supposes are still there to this day), race and ethnicity, and the Amish settlements not far from here.

After saying good-bye to our new friends and leaving the restaurant, I tell Kitty “This is just practice for our next trip to Nova Scotia.”  For that trip, whenever it happens, she has expressed an interest in going to some place, staying there for a few days, and doing some local exploring.  This has turned out to be a fantastic day, with a delightful little 110-mile ride, rekindling some fine old memories, riding out of weather harm’s way, and absorbing some local color.  What seemed a setback has become a little gem in its own right.  And isn’t that how we should strive to live our lives?  The old “make lemonade out of lemons” philosophy.

Crusader and the trailer are parked back underneath the canopy, and since we have  plenty of time and opportunity, Kitty is doing laundry and I’m writing this blog.

Tomorrow the weather should be less severe and we plan to catch up our itinerary completely by riding to the same destination via Interstate vs. meandering mountain routes.

MACH.14: Day 1 - Splotches of Red

Day 1: Splotches of Red

Monday, April 28, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

When I awake, Kitty has already departed the motel room for her morning workout.  I think when the first motorcyclist camped under the pines on the first night of his first trip, he did exactly what I do:  Pull back the curtain and take a look at what the weather is doing.  In this case, it’s cloudy but not raining.

I walk outside and uncover the bike and trailer, load up the day’s route and take a look at the XM Weather in motion. After some consideration and consulting the Weather Channel on TV, it appears that with a late start we might have a better chance of missing the big red splotches in the approaching weather front that has brought extreme devastation to Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas, and unrelenting, is now bearing down on the East Coast. So we take a lazy approach to breakfast and packing and finally are ready to roll a little before 10:00 AM.

The bike temperature reads 54 degrees F, so the experiment of the warm-weather mesh jackets continues.  What would happen if we each put on a heavy sweatshirt under the jackets and their thin nylon liner?  Could we ride in these temperatures with the mesh jackets?

I pull out the soft Gold Wing branded luggage where we’d packed our cool-weather items and realize that none of the sweatshirts I’d packed have made the trip!  It turns out Kitty had asked me about those shirts and I said we didn’t need them.  Only thing is, I thought she was talking about my set of t-shirts while she had in hand the stack of sweatshirts.  Guess I need to look a closer, pay a little more attention, when Kitty asks a question.. So, given a meager choice of merely two not-so-heavy sweatshirts, both mine, I give one to Kitty and I wear the other.  It’s a relatively light travel day of under 350 Interstate miles, so we will have plenty of time to stop and switch things around.

At the last minute, I take another look at the XM Weather that overlays the GPS route and see that within 50 miles we’ll be riding in rain.  So we do the Dance of the Rainsuit.  I almost always leave the bike key in my jeans until after I’ve put on the one-piece suit, but this morning I’m saved by the fact that the key is in the bike.  So rather smugly, I comment that for once I’m ready to go without halfway disrobing again.

We soon learn that at 54 degrees, the mesh jackets with a sweatshirt would have been inadequate to keep us warm.  But with the rain gear, it’s perfect.  And thus we learn that the likely temperature at which we could ride with these jackets is mid-50’s; the rain gear fits over the jackets.  Even so, the heated seats are a welcome addition on this chilly ride.

Just as predicted, in 50 miles or so we are riding in rain, moderate to heavy.  As we head southwest at a constant 70 mph, I keep an eagle eye on the red splotches on the weather radar.  In 95 miles, about 50 miles from the Tennessee border, we stop amidst heavy rain for fuel, and shortly after this the sky clears and we have some moderate sunny weather. The radar looks like we’ll have no more rain today, with the possible exception of the very end of the trip, and some red splotches that hover dangerously close to Knoxville.

By now the temperature is 82 F and I’m getting way too warm and sweating in the rainsuit.  So at the Tennsesse Welcome Center, we pull in to to the Undance of the Rainsuit and take a little picnic lunch.  Our Excel trailer features a vinyl-sheathed picnic cooler mounted on the tongue between the body of the trailer and the bike.  We pack various foods in it from time to time, and inside this cooler goes another little cooler.  Kitty learned years ago to pack several bottles of water in ice overnight in the hotel, and in the morning she pours out the melted water and repacks the bottled water in the smaller cooler.  We have ice-cold water all day, every day, even on the blistering hot days.  We seem to settle on some kind of protein bar supplemented by peanut-butter based offerings:  peanut butter on carrots, peanut butter on celery, peanut butter on apples, or in Kitty’s case, peanut butter off the spoon.  To Kitty there are three basic food groups:  Chocolate, peanut butter, and all the other stuff.

We leave the liners in the jackets because I’m still skeptical of Knoxville:  It looks very close as to whether we’ll be in rain there, and the liners will keep us dry, if too warm, in the event we hit more rain.  By the time we make Knoxville and take the I-640 Bypass, it’s 86 F and I’m sweating.  Eventually it becomes clear we will skate by the red splotches representing tornado and hail warnings, and at the next fuel stop (which we really don’t need yet) we take the liners out of the jackets and I remove my “arms.”

A word of explanation:  Kitty and I both have a pair of LD Comfort riding shorts (http://www.ldcomfort.com).  My good friend Mario Winkleman, a Gold Wing rider and a wonderful poet in his own right, some years ago developed a special riding material and garments for Iron Butt rides.  In the early days of marketing his product, we would frequently meet in San Antonio for an annual event called the Alamo Run, where a hundred (give or take) Gold Wing riders would show up for a barbecue hosted by the man we called “Pappy.”  That’s another story.  I recall asking Mario about the LD Comfort riding shorts and right there on the street, he pulled down his pants to show me the shorts, and said “Here, feel the material!”  Not being quite up to that challenge, I declined.  But I never bought a pair until last summer.  I ordered them online and in the space where it asks how I heard of the product, I simply said “My old friend Mario” and told this story.  Back came the product I ordered with a note from Mario and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t order.

Among the extra items were LD Comfort “arms,” which are just sleeves made of the LD Comfort material.  I’d put those on at the rest stop because the liners are sweaty and the “arms” feel pretty good.

We arrive at Cleveland amid flood and tornado warnings and dire predictions of large hail later tonight.  I’m not sure what to do with the bike and trailer.  I’m fresh out of instructions on how to handle hail, 50 mph straight-line winds, and tornados.  Raquel, the desk clerk, tells me to park the rig under the portico and I believe we are as well prepared as possible.

We are now spending a tense evening glued to the TV as it appears a tornado is developing southwest of Chattanooga and heading toward Cleveland.  Warnings have been issued to seek shelter.

I think it is time to sign off!  I will post pics and GPS tracks to this blog later.

MACH.14: Day 0 - Bonus Time

Day 0: Bonus Time

Sunday, April 27, 2014
Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

Today is a bonus riding day: We'd planned to depart Monday, but the first day sketched out to an almost-500 mile Interstate day, so we've opted to ride a couple hundred miles on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, knocking a serious hole in tomorrow's ride.

The church we attend features four services every weekend, and they stream one of the morning services live.  So instead of attending in person this morning, we sit in my little home office and watch the service on the Internet.  After a light lunch, we finish last-minute packing, perform the dance of the car-truck-motorcycle repositioning in driveway and garage , take a quick photo of Kitty standing by the bike, and climb aboard.

“And there we go!” says Kitty in my headset as she has for years when we start out, although recently she has taken to saying “Click-click” to represent the small click we hear in the headset when she plugs in.  And so we roll out, headed for I-66 west and I-81 south, just before 2:00 PM.  There’s really no destination goal for today, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking Roanoke, VA, about 200 miles from home.

The temperature is a pleasant but cool 64 degrees.  We’ve talked about how to dress for our new-jacket experiment; for now, we’re wearing the mesh jackets, a liner in each, and under that a t-shirt plus a long-sleeved shirt.  I have a medium-weight sweatshirt, Kitty is wearing a thinner long-sleeved t-shirt that I think will be a little cool for her.  The passenger always gets more turbulence as the still air pocket collapses around the shoulders, and it’s always a little chillier back there in cool weather.  An hour later, I feel perfect without using any of the fairing’s heat vents or heated seat, and Kitty is a little chilly but has turned on her seat heater, which she says makes a big difference.  I think we’ve learned that with a t-shirt plus sweatshirt, we can ride comfortably in these jackets with temps in the mid-60’s.  That is probably the lower limit for an extended ride.

Spring has come very slowly to Virginia this year.  None of the trees are in full leaf, but the enthusiastic patches of reddish-purple redbud trees offer a beautiful contrast to the pale green of the early springtime growth.  While the Shenandoah Valley holds promise of full spring and summer on its rolling hills, as we look eastward toward the mountains where runs Skyline Drive, no sign of green is to be seen.

By the time we’ve ridden a hundred miles or so to Harrisonburg, VA, my windshield is completely and distractingly splattered with remains of many bugs.  As I inspect the carnage and clean the windshield at a fuel stop (we’d left home with just half a tank of fuel), it appears most of the insects were yellow jackets or wasps - maybe relatives of the one that stung me yesterday?  Perhaps I’m getting my pound of flesh after all!  And speaking of which, the huge hard lump on the back of my neck is actually below where the helmet rests, so it’s fine.  However, the wind and the tails of my do-rag tickling my neck in that spot make for a maddening desire to spend the whole day clawing and scratching at my neck.

And thus to Roanoke, 213 miles for this short bonus day.  After checking in to a motel, I clean the front of the motorcycle - I don’t remember when I’ve ever had to work so hard to clean bugs!  So they get the last laugh after all!

I’ve spent some time reevaluating our trip for tomorrow and moved our stopping point 60 miles or so farther south to Cleveland, TN, near Chattanooga, where we plan to leave the Interstate for good for the rest of the outbound trip.  Before covering the bike and trailer, I’d programmed the new route into the bike’s GPS system.  Rain and storms are making their way eastward, so I’m not sure when we’ll hit those - it would be preferable, it we must ride in storms, to do it on the Interstate tomorrow rather than on Appalachian Mountain roads the next day.

We’ll take it as it comes.

No Plans to Mile Zero, Day 5

Short Ride to Together

Tue, Apr 17, 2012

Copyright(c) 2012, Jim Beachy

Once more I sleep in, as  I have only 380 miles for today’s ride.  I check the Weather Channel and see that a large weather front is approaching, now lying west of the Appalachians and advancing northeast.  I check Weatherbug on my BlackBerry and see that the forecast for home calls for rain by nightfall.  This trip has been completely rain-free and devoid of any stormy weather.  This is indeed a rarity:  Weather systems seem to seek out my trips just for old times’ sake, especially during the unsettled weather patterns of April.  But it appears my good fortune may continue.  At least if I don’t laze around too long this morning.

It is already hot and the sun is well into its daily arc as I work my way onto the northbound lanes of I-77 toward home.  Eventually my GPS icon slides over the line into Virginia and I begin the long climb across the Appalachian ridge.  The highway climbs from an elevation of about 1,000 feet to a high of 2,800 feet where it crosses beneath a bridge over which runs my old friend the Blue Ridge Parkway.  This is one of my favorite vistas, but is best viewed running southward.  The dizzying drop over the side of the mountain offsets the plain below, where you can see Mount Airy, the fictional town of Mayberry where the Andy Griffith Show was filmed.  Pilot Mountain, some 25 miles distant on US 52 in North Carolina, dominates the backdrop.

The old adage “You go where you look” is almost inviolable, especially on a bike where the center line of the vehicle coincides with the rider’s eyes and head.  During this trip, I’ve frequently amused myself as I often do by playing a little game, trying to ride the bike between the reflective markers as I move been Interstate lanes.  It’s hard to do because my natural instinct is to look at the very marker I’m trying to avoid.  And sure enough, my tendency is to ride right over the thing rather than between the markers.  The trick is to avoid looking at the marker (or the pothole or the object in the road) that you’re trying to miss, and look instead where you want to ride.  The psychological need to watch what you’re trying to avoid is almost overpowering.  I hope this little game helps keep me in practice for the moment when I really do need to avoid something in my path.  The same happens when turning your head:  Almost invariably, the bike will wonder in the same direction you turn your head.  Still, I risk a one-second head swivel over my right shoulder to see the scenic view as it lies behind me on this trip northward.

Along with the 1,800-foot climb over the Blue Ridge Mountains, I’ve been riding closer and closer to the weather front and the leading edge of dark clouds obscuring the sun.  The temperature has dropped by 20 degrees to 65 F.  Mile by mile I’ve been closing first my jacket flaps and then the fairing vents.  By the time I catch I-81 in Virginia not far from Wytheville and head northeast, the front has steadily moved closer and the temperature drops even more to 61 degrees.  By this time I’ve closed the fairing’s cooling vents and opened the heat vents along the bottom of the engine cowl, and switched the lower fairing vents to “heat” mode.  The warmth flowing over me is a welcome change.  Even so, there’s no apparent threat of rain as the cloud cover becomes ever thicker on my trek northward.

At Mile Marker 300 I hit I-66 and ride the last 60 miles home.  Now traveling east, I almost immediately run out from under the cloud cover and the temperature rises 10 degrees.  Home, where Kitty is waiting as I roll into the driveway.  Several years ago in Nova Scotia we’d discovered and stayed in a delightful bed-and-breakfast-restaurant-hardware-store establishment with a sign in the tiny dining room that became the name of that trip and has since become our mantra:  "Together is the best place to be."

It is good to be home.  Together.  I am fortunate that Kitty understands and occasionally even encourages Solo Guy, who emerges from time to time to drink in the Long Road, enjoy the Big Silence, and to collect a variety of insects on the fairing from very far-off and often unplanned places.

Normally I clean the bike at the end of every ride.  But today, in my transition to Regular Guy, Solo Guy asserts one last claim:  I leave the bugs on the bike until tomorrow.

GPS Statistics:

Overall speed 63.6 mph; Moving speed 69.0 mph
Overall time 5:58; Moving time 5:30
Distance 380 miles to home

GPS Track, Day 5

GPS Track, Entire Trip

No Plans to Mile Zero, Day 4

Change of Venue

Mon, Apr 16, 2012

The alarm sounds at 6:30 AM and I think “Why?”  What, Solo Guy has an important appointment this evening?  Someone waiting?  Someone who might care where or what time he stops riding?  Some designated place to be?

No, not one of these qualify.  I turn off the alarm fall into a deep sleep until after 8:00 AM.  Having ridden nearly 1,800 miles and having spent more than 27 hours in the saddle during the last three days, I feel a delicious laziness and move slowly through my breakfast and packing routine.  I even take time to find a pen and do the crossword puzzle in the USA Today magazine that was hanging on my doorknob.  I leave the newspaper for a couple at the table next to me.

“Any good news?” the man asks.

“Well, it’s tax day and IRS can’t answer its phones because of budget cuts,” I say, pointing to the front-page lead story.

I am wearing my second-favorite shirt today.  It’s a bright orange color with bold black lettering that proclaims “I have CDO / It’s like OCD except the letters are in order, as they should be.”  Another gift from Kitty.  She knows me so well.  In this, Solo Guy and I are not so different at all.

Striking out northward on US 301 through north-central Florida, I ride through miles of horse and cattle country.  While there are some large cattle ranches, the open expanses are dominated by miles of horse ranches with meticulously maintained wooden fences and well-manicured lanes leading to the large houses and buildings set far off the highway.  301 is a four lane highway with some small towns but it’s a nice ride, once again reminiscent of Texas except that in Texas, the speed limit would be 70 or 75 instead of 65.

I’m roughly planning to ride two-lane roads through Georgia and eventually make my way to Virginia, route undetermined.  For no particular reason, Solo Guy, without anything to prove and ridden quite a few of those Georgia two-lane roads, decides to route a faster way home.  The GPS takes me toward Jacksonville and a 230-mile stretch of I-95, after which I catch I-26 west near Savannah, Georgia.  I know this will eventually lead me to I-77 and I-81 as it traverses the western border of Virginia.  It’s several hundred miles farther, about 1,000 miles from here, and while I almost always avoid Interstate travel unless required for speedy travel, for some reason it fits the moment.  I am Solo Guy.  Sometimes I break my own rules.

I contemplate riding all the way home non-stop.  The GPS tells me I’d be home around midnight.  For now, it doesn’t matter – I’ll ride until I feel like stopping.  It’s rather warm today, with the temperature hovering near 88F the entire day.

I hit I-77 near Columbia, South Carolina and, while still contemplating whether to ride home.  But after a late start and another 500 mile-plus day, I decide on the spur of the moment to stop at about 7:00 PM near Lake Norman just north of Charlotte, North Carolina.

The next-door restaurant I’d seen on the GPS is closed, so the desk clerk helps me with the only other restaurant within walking distance.  It’s a Greek-Italian restaurant called Acropolis, so I walk up the hill and across the intersection.  I find my way to the bar where I can order a rack of lamb (which is amazing - seasoned and grilled to perfection!) and strike up a conversation with the bartender, Andrey.  He’s Ukrainian, having grown up in Odessa on the Black Sea.  He’s lived in countries and climates all over the world, from Ukraine to Russia to Morocco to South Africa to Australia to the mid-East and now, North Carolina.

“Why here?” I ask.

“I like it here,” is his simple response to why he has chosen Cornelius, North Carolina as his home.  He offers no further explanation.  None is needed.  I can identify with that.  He sounds a lot like Solo Guy.

GPS Statistics:

Overall speed 57.7 mph; Moving speed 66.4 mph
Overall time 8:47; Moving time 7:38
Distance 507 miles

GPS Track, Day 4

No Plans to Mile Zero, Day 3

Of Luggage, Panthers, and Relatives

Sun, Apr 15, 2012

Copyright (c) 2012, Jim Beachy

My BlackBerry has a “bedside” mode that turns off messaging notifications while displaying a digital nighttime clock.  At night, I set it into the charging cradle and use it as my bedside clock while traveling as well as at home.  The alarm I’ve been using starts out with a soothing rhythmic keyboard pad, out of which slowly emerges a more strident alarm that eventually morphs into a raucous BRAPPP!! BRAPPP!! BRAPPP!! that would strike terror into the heart of the most stalwart sleeper.

Said alarm has been sounding every morning at 6:00 AM but after my late-night walk on Duval Street last night, I’d decided to turn off the alarm and sleep in this morning.  So what’s this BRAPPP!! BRAPPP!! BRAPPP!! at 6:00 AM?  Apparently I’ve forgotten to turn it off!  I scramble out of bed and across the room to shut the thing off.  I fall back into a light and fitful half-sleep, dreaming of having left my luggage somewhere but only discovering it several days and thousands of miles later with no idea where I’d last seen it.

 Eventually, frustrated with trying to remember where I’d left my luggage, I get up and find my entire luggage intact, present, and accounted for.  I pack up - very carefully!  Today I’m wearing my favorite T-shirt:  “Temporarily out of service.”  Kitty gave it to me some years ago and it’s getting a little worn and faded with use but it’s still my favorite.

I walk to the next-door restaurant for breakfast and learn that it doesn’t open for an hour today, when a breakfast buffet is served.  Meanwhile, I’d wanted to get a few photos of the bike at several locations, an activity much more suited to Key West Sunday-morning sleepiness than Saturday-night Duval Street craziness.  So I decide to skip breakfast and get some shots before striking out for the day.  I’ll catch breakfast later.  I ride to the actual US Route 1 Mile Marker 0, shoot a few pictures, and then it’s off to the marker for the Southernmost Point in the US.  There’s very little traffic and I have no problem parking the bike in the street to get a few shots, except the Southernmost Point is already overrun with people posing for pictures, so I can’t get a shot where the lettering is actually visible behind the bike.

At a little before 10:00 AM I’m departing Key West without a real plan for the day.  I know I need to be home three days from now but a plan for the intervening ride hasn’t been formed.  Yesterday’s flag-tattering wind has departed to other climes and the morning is calm and pleasant for a T-shirt and jacket ride.  While the beautiful green and turquoise Gulf waters pass leisurely by on either side, I contemplate some riding options.  My niece and husband, whose son’s birthday party was the original impetus for getting the time off for this trip, live in Tampa.  My old friend Grumpy, who’s not grumpy at all, and his wife Happy, live in the lake country of central Florida.  Either or both of these might be candidates for a brief stop.

Solo Guy doesn’t actually need a plan to enjoy the day, so he rides from Key West without a plan except heading generally homeward, which is, generally speaking, northward. 

Solo Guy eats when he is hungry; so on Vaca Key, I stop for a fast-food breakfast break.  When I return to the bike, I’m startled to see a moderate puddle of water directly under the front of the engine.  What?!!  I test it with the tip of my forefinger, rub finger and thumb together, give it a sniff, and then a little taste.  It’s just water.  No antifreeze, no oil, just water.  It’s apparently someone’s idea of a little practical joke:  The water appeared to have been carefully poured to avoid splashing and to look like something that would have drained from the engine.  Oh, clever prankster, how you fill my heart with joy!

On my ride to and from Key West, I’ve observed many interpretations of motorcycle riding.  Some ride in flip-flops, shorts, and tank tops without helmets.  Some pay the price:  The guy who checked me into the Eden House observed my jacket, jeans, and boots, and gave a wry smile and a definite limp as he showed me his surgically-repaired foot, the casualty of a low-speed motorcycle accident while wearing flip-flops.  Some ride in full leather suits, colorful and protected regardless of the temperature, and full-face helmets.  Others, like myself, have minimum standards such as a helmet (mine has always been a full-face model), jeans, and boots, with varying degrees of acceptance for upper-body protection.  I normally wear a leather jacket if it’s not too hot, at least a long-sleeved shirt; but I never feel as content as when in my black leather jacket.

In one of the towns on the Keys, I come to an easy stop at a red light and study an advertisement for a radiology clinic.  “Broken foot?” the blue sign asks in giant white letters.  “Come in now – Walk-ins Welcome!”  Think about it.

Sometimes Solo Guy listens to music of whatever type he can find, or that suits his fancy of the moment.  On this trip, save for one radio weather report and the occasional CB conversation with a trucker, Solo Guy has enjoyed many hours of solitude and silence in the still-air cocoon of the Gold Wing’s fairing.  Silence – hours and hours of it - helps to sort out the voices in his head and clarifies the ones that really matter.  Only on the Wing and the Long Road would Solo Guy be content with such prolonged periods of silence.  Silence is golden.  But today he wants some music in his headset.

I find a gem of a radio station, 102.7 FM, call sign “Pirate Radio,” that accompanies me for the entire ride through the Keys and beyond.  It’s a kind of “acoustic Indie” station, playing off-track deep acoustic cuts that I’ve never heard before, and never knew existed.  There are acoustic cuts of classic tunes from the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Stealer’s Wheel, even from contemporary artists like Kelly Clarkson.  The funky, laid-back acoustic rhythms fit my mood as I begin to envision what the rest of my remaining three days should look like.

At my noon-time fuel stop in Key Largo, I spontaneously decide to ride the Tamiami Trail (State Route 41) westward along the northern edge of the Everglades, hard along the ruler-straight Tamiami Canal, and through the Great National Cypress Preserve.  It will be my fourth trip along this road and will put me along the Gulf Coast of Florida and in position to see my niece or Grumpy.  Mostly, though, I have to admit that the primary reason for this choice is to see my favorite road sign:  “Panther Crossing.”  Solo Guy revels in small pleasures.

In Homestead I catch Rt. 997 and ride northward through Florida’s plant nursery.  The slow-speed highway is lined with coconut palms, large fields of brightly colored flowers, palm trees for export to more northern climates, and date palms filled with large, luscious black clusters that to my untrained eye appear nearly ready for harvest.  It almost makes up for the slow, one-lane traffic.

The Miami suburbs are about 15 miles away and loom dangerously close on the GPS screen as I turn west at the junction and am pleasantly surprised to find that the Tamiami Trail through the Everglades and the Cypress Preserve has been radically upgraded since my last trip here.  Then, it was bumpy and the speed limit as I recall was 50; now, except for construction during the eastern-most 10 miles or so, it is wide, smooth, plumbline-straight, and with a speed limit of 60.  I enjoy the miles of swamplands and sawgrass that eventually give way to cypress trees draped with Spanish moss.  At any moment I expect to see an alligator (“Cuidado - cocodrillo!” the Spanish-speaking attendant at Eden House had warned this morning) sliding out of the canal – I know they’re in there, I’ve seen them, but see none today and I don’t stop at the visitor’s center.

The “Panther Crossing” signs are still there to amuse me, and after riding for nearly four hours and 201 miles, a good bit of it at 45 m.p.h. or less, I’m ready for a break at my fuel stop near Punta Gorda.  It’s been the hottest day so far, with a temperature of about 85F.

I decide I’ll stop to see my niece in Tampa, and I call my friend Grumpy, to whom I’d sent a warning email, to tell him I won’t be able to stop there this trip – my arrival would be much too late for a self-professed “8:30 bedtime” retiree!  “It’s hard being retired,” he says.  “You never get a day off.”

I have only an address for Beth in my contact list, but I locate the address in my GPS and let it generate a route.  It takes me over the famous Sky Bridge, a breathtakingly beautiful bridge whose highway appears to end in mid-air at the top of the bridge.  It seems that a 200-foot plunge into the bay is in the immediate future for Solo Guy!  American Jill leads me right to Beth’s house, and after spending an hour visiting with the family, I’m on my way northward by about 6:30 PM.

A hundred yards after I scan the street and pull out, I see a flash of blue from behind a parked van and realize someone is backing a dark blue Honda Accord out of their driveway at a high rate of speed!  I’m not traveling fast, probably 20 m.p.h., but because of the van neither of us is able to see the other until the last millisecond.  I push the left handlebar sharply forward to countersteer the big bike to the left, and the dark blue bumper flashes by my right-side saddlebag with what looks like inches to spare but is probably several feet as the driver sees me just in time and jams on the brakes.  I continue to ride slowly up the street and swivel my head for a brief look back.  The driver is immobile, frozen motionless, and as I turn the corner at the next intersection, the car has not moved an inch.  It was a near thing.  Another reminder for constant vigilance – not all dangers lurk among big intersections or 70-m.p.h. freeways.

Solo Guy decides to ride until darkness, hunger, and the need for fuel coincide.  This happens sometime around 9:00 PM near Ocala, Florida, and I find a hotel with restaurants nearby.  It’s been another day of a little over 500 miles, much of it at slow street speeds.

I clean and cover the Wing, and after walking to a restaurant and finding a nice rack of ribs, I’m ready for a good night’s sleep.  I set the alarm for 6:30 AM.

GPS Statistics:

Overall speed 44.3 mph; Moving speed 56.8 mph
Overall time 11:26; Moving time 8:54
Distance 506 miles

GPS Track, Day 3

No Plans to Mile Zero, Day 2

The Last Mile Marker

Sat, Apr 14, 2012

Copyright (c) 2012, Jim Beachy

By 8:00 AM I’ve eaten breakfast and am rolling toward Key West on I-95.  Unlike yesterday’s 39-degree temperature, my Kriss Amp-U-Tron shows 68 degrees as I pass south of Daytona Beach.  It’s a great riding morning, with the day’s warmth creeping around the edges of a cool night under brilliant blue skies.  Only the strong crosswind coming off the ocean to the east, on my left, renders the day less than perfect.  On each of my antennas I have a small flag – a US flag on the right and a Wings On the Internet (WOTI) flag on the left.  The wind whips them into a frenzy, wrapping them both around the antennas so tightly they don’t even resemble flags.  I noticed last night that the US flag is getting rather worn and tattered; soon it will be time to retire it and place it carefully with my collection of other flags with the remembered stories of where we’ve been together.  I buy my flags from The Flag People in Ocala, Florida.

Several hours and a fuel stop later, the onshore east wind (how does it happen that the wind off the sea is from the east when the weather moves west to east?) has driven a rain front over the Atlantic coast of Florida.  Enough rain drops splatter on the big Tulsa windshield so they begin to describe graceful curved exit lines as they are blown off the surface.  It always reminds me of a palm’s elegant fronds, or maybe a peacock’s tail in full display, these lines on the windshield drawn by moving water droplets on an aerodynamic surface.  It’s a little mystical.  Solo Guy finds many small things to occupy his attention.

In some ways, Florida reminds me of Texas – there’s a favorable people-per-square-mile ratio that leads to wide open spaces.  It also leads to long, straight Interstates, one of which I am traveling today.   To many it could become boring - but Solo Guy absorbs the moment, becomes part of the landscape.  He takes what the environment offers.  His needs are simple; his wants, few.  A few white ibises with their long orange beaks grace the swamplands on my right, and a nesting bald eagle perches high atop his aerie, each of us perhaps marveling at the other.

Nearing Miami, American Jill instructs me to take an exit that appears to simply loop around to the right and rejoin I-95.  “Curious!  Must be a mapping anomaly,” I think, and ignore the routing instructions.  About three minutes later I realize Jill was smarter than I – I’d missed the exit to Florida’s Turnpike, which parallels I-95 so closely for several miles that it appears to be the same road on the GPS.  Undeterred, I take the next exit and make my way several miles west to recapture Florida’s Turnpike.  This road runs north-and-south, west of the city, and through expanses of marshes and palmettos – a far preferable ride to I-95 through Miami.  As I dig my toll fee out of my pocket at the last toll booth, the attendant explains that I’ll soon hit the Sawgrass Parkway, where no cash is accepted:  It’s either SunPass or “Toll by Plate.”  In Toll by Plate, a camera takes a picture of your license plate when you enter, another picture when you exit, and the friendly state of Florida will mail your toll to you.  For an extra fee, of course, compared to SunPass.  But it’s a painless way to travel a toll road.

At the town of Homestead I ride past the Homestead-Miami Speedway and catch US Route 1 for the final segment to Key West.  The wind is still whipping my flags as I ride south across the narrow gateway to Key Largo, past the “Crocodile Crossing” sign (yes, there are crocodiles as well as alligators here), and around the right turn where the road turns west toward the Keys.

I’ve routed the GPS to a fuel stop here, for which I need to make a U-turn in the special U-turn intersection and head back to the west several hundred yards.  It’s a tight, technical turn on a banked surface; I prepare mentally for a throttle-and-brake ride through the corner, while at the same time studying a white Toyota ready to pull out of a side street to the left.  I’m trying to decide whether he will come straight into the intersection, in which case I can make the turn without stopping, or whether he will turn back into my lane of traffic and I will need to bring the bike to a full stop.  He pulls out of his intersection straight ahead, leaving my turn clear, and I start to make my tight turn when suddenly I realize this isn’t a red light - it’s a blinking yellow light and I haven’t checked for oncoming traffic!  I bring the big bike to a stop before entering the oncoming lanes, just as the flash of a westbound vehicle crosses my vision where I would have been had I not stopped.  It’s a very sobering moment.  I’ve narrowly missed hitting a huge buck that jumped across my fairing just a mile from home; in California I’ve stared into the eyes of a doe standing on a bank as my helmet passed not five feet from her face; in a remote stretch of land way down on the Louisiana-Texas border, Kitty and I were rear-ended by a drug-crazed kid in a stolen truck (it destroyed our trailer, which absorbed the impact and probably saved both our lives).  I’ve ridden close to half a million miles on motorcycles without an accident except that rear-end incident.  But to my knowledge I’ve never come this close to a miscue of my own making.  I cannot explain how or why this could happen except that I was overly focused on the rather technical turn I would need to make while trying to decide if I needed to stop or could power through the curve; and when the Toyota crossed the oncoming lanes of traffic, subconsciously I must have presumed those lanes were clear.  Whatever, it’s a heart-stopping lesson never to take myself, my experience, or my presumed skills too seriously.

The 106 miles from Key Largo to Key West are much slower riding than one would think – much of the speed limit is 45 m.p.h. and every time I’ve been here there’s been traffic to slow things down even more.  Only after passing through the first 30 miles or so of strip malls, boat shops, hotels, and condominiums are the first breathtaking vistas of the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico visible.  And those views are spectacular, where outlying islands appear to float on a mottled green sea.  Pelicans and cormorants abound on the older retired bridge spans or sitting on the guardrails of the Seven-Mile Bridge.  I am always fascinated with pelicans as they dive or skim the water for fish: I’ve never seen one come up empty.  The wind is now roughly at my back, so it’s smooth riding.  Once again clouds threaten; all day I’ve been riding highways with evidence of recent rain, but only a few drops have splattered on the windshield and the pavement has been dry.

 

And so to Key West, the last mile marker, Mile Marker 0, where Solo guy has made an exception to his hotel reservation rule.  Since this is a destination where I actually plan to stay for a night, yesterday I booked a room at Eden House, where Kitty and I have stayed before. (http://www.edenhouse.com)    It’s a small quaint inn in the quiet part of Old Town Key West, within easy walking distance of Mallory Square and Duval Street.  I park the bike in a space only a bike could love and smile in amusement as I walk in and see the clock in the office.  It’s something Kitty and I had noticed on our last trip here together.  The clock runs backward, and all the numerals are correspondingly positioned.  Key West time, I suppose.

 

It’s about 82F, and after cleaning and covering the bike I’m feeling a little grungy from the day’s 9 hour ride, so I take a quick shower and get into clean clothes.  I haven’t brought walking shorts and I ask the desk attendant if it’s legal to wear long pants in Key West.

I join hundreds of other people walking toward Mallory Square, where sunset is scheduled for 7:40 tonight.  Unfortunately there is significant cloud cover so there’s no visible sunset, which allows all the inherent Key West craziness to have full sway, undistracted by a beautiful sunset.  Some of the performers are the same as several years before when Kitty and I were here – the tightrope walker, the juggler, the motionless guy painted silver (this time there were two), the troupe doing amazingly long somersault leaps over bicycles and other objects.  Kitty and I were here together on the last trip to Key West, and I’m missing her as I think of the spectacular sunsets we witnessed here. 

Just off Mallory Square is the Cuban restaurant El Meson de Pepe, jam-packed and rocking with a top-notch Mariachi band.  The hostess finds the very last table and I order an excellent dinner – Combinacion de Mariscos - while I sit for an hour listening to the mariachi band.  The couple at the table next to me hears me joking with the waiter, who turns out to be the owner (“What, you’re Pepe!?” I said) and eventually we strike up a conversation.  They’re from Long Island but without the New York accent.  We talk about vacationing and winter homes in Florida and motorcycling and Solo Guy and how it works for Kitty to stay home while Solo Guy roams around the country.  Eventually we get around to this blog and I give them the blog address, telling them I haven’t blogged this trip yet but I will.  So if you are reading this, my new friends from Long Island, it was great chatting during our chance encounter!

I close out my evening with a slow 90-minute stroll among the revelry and the shops of Duval Street where Key West insanity is always in plentiful supply, the doors are open, the bands are good, and the music is very loud.

GPS Statistics:

Overall speed 55.7 mph; Moving speed 62.5 mph
Overall time 8:57; Moving time 7:58
Distance 499 miles

GPS Track, Day 2