Key West or Bust, Day 3

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

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

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

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.

Together Is the Best Place to Be, Day 18: Home Again

Nova Scotia 2007
Day 18: Tuesday July 3
Copyright(c) 2007, Jim Beachy

We’ve slept in and poked around as long as we can, but even so we’re sitting in the breakfast lounge of the Comfort Inn by 8:30, and news is on the television. It occurs to me that we haven’t watched a minute of television on our trip except the occasional Canadian Weather Network when we could get it. This morning, there are reports of arson, murder, and mayhem, and I’m feeling a lot like Paul Simon: “I can gather all the news I need in the weather report” (The Only Living Boy in New York). Life seemed simpler on the Cabot Trail.

This morning, there’s a hint of warmth in the air, contrasted to the previous several weeks when each morning bore the hint of a deep chill. By 9:30 AM, I’m doing one last T-CLOCK (Tires, Controls, Lights, Oil, Chassis, and Kickstand) inspection, which I do every morning. We get on the bike and Kitty softly offers one last “And there we go.” And just like that, we are back on I-78 headed westward at the sedate speed limit of 55 mph for that section of under-construction highway. Pennsylvania police presence is everywhere in full force today so everyone is running the speed limit.


Even with the temperature of 68 F, once out on the Interstate I close all the vents on my Wing to take off the chill. As we ride 75 miles or so to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to catch I-81 southward toward home, we are both in a reflective mood and say little. A few thoughts bubble up as I think back over our adventure.


A few thoughts about apparel. We always ride in leather jackets and gloves unless the weather is just too hot, and this trip was perfect, with temperatures ranging from low 50’s F to very low 70’s F, typically in the 60’s F during the Canadian part of the trip. Perfect jacket weather. We have jacket liners and other “layering” clothing that we can put on or take off as the temperature dictates. At no time did we struggle to stay warm or struggle to stay cool. We both have waterproof Cruiserworks boots (http://www.cruiserworks.com/) that we wear on and off the bike (except for sneakers that we wear for our power walks), and those performed perfectly, even in the downpour out of Baddeck. We have one-piece Motoport Samoa® rain suits (http://www.motoport.com) that have served us well over the years. They have a slippery silky interior that feels good and facilitates getting into or out of them. Were I buying rain suits today I might consider two-piece suits, but these suits have kept us absolutely dry in the worst rain conditions. The SealSkinz rain gloves (http://www.sealskinz.com), constructed rather like a rubber wet suit with little “gripper dots” on the palm and finger surfaces, offer the best dexterity and control-surface feeling of any rain glove solution I’ve tried. They worked extremely well except that for extended riding in temperatures below 60 F they’re a bit chilly as the outer layer collects water which then evaporates, even though they are bone-dry on the inside (http://www.danalco.com/). Our Escapade trailer has a garment bag attached to the lid, and every year we debate whether to put “dress up clothes” in it. This year, I included an extra pair of jeans and a shirt; Kitty added a nice shirt and a spiffy denim jacket. When Kitty is fully reconstituted after a day under her helmet, dressed in her nice jeans and shirt with that spiffy denim jacket and her motorcycle boots, let me tell you, this is one stylin’ woman! And if we can’t go somewhere with her looking like that, we ain’t goin’! That’s as dressed-up as it gets on our trips.

A few thoughts about equipment. We have new Shoei RF1000 helmets (http://www.shoei-helmets.com/) with J&M headsets (http://www.jmcorp.com/), which we find much quieter than our previous RF700 model helmets. The passenger helmet’s microphone, which in many helmets is prone to pick up objectionable wind noise, picks up virtually no wind noise in this helmet. Kitty in particular likes the new helmet because it’s more balanced with less weight in back, and she doesn’t feel it pulling her head backward after a long day in the saddle. The trade-off is a little more wind around the neck because of the way the helmet is shaped, despite a miniature spoiler at the neck base and near the top of the helmet. Regarding the bike itself, our Honda Gold Wing performed flawlessly. It did exactly what I asked and what I expected, all the time, every time. The low-beam headlight was presumably a casualty of the miles of rough road we traversed. Normally I carry a spare with me but I’d given it to a WOTI person, I think, probably at last year’s Alamo Run in San Antonio, and forgotten to replace it. I’ll definitely put that on the list for the next trip. The Escapade trailer (http://www.californiasidecar.com) is a joy. It doesn’t seem to care how it’s loaded or whether the load is well balanced, although I always try to be careful and maintain a proper tongue weight. On the road, there’s no evidence that it’s behind me except for the expected decrease in fuel mileage and the weight I can feel while traveling up or down steep hills. Sometimes I’m a little embarrassed when I realize that we can hardly carry all our stuff in one trip to the hotel room, but it certainly makes motorcycle traveling a lot easier. The trailer and bike are long, longer than a minivan, so this has to be kept in mind when looking for places to turn around or positioning in a parking lot. I inspect the bike and trailer every morning, and check the trailer wheels at almost every stop by putting my hands on the tires to feel warmth and inflation, and also check the heat of the wheel bearings simply by touching the hub of the wheel.


As we catch US 15 southward near Harrisburg, toward Maryland and home to Virginia, Kitty comments, “The fields look dry compared to the fields in Prince Edward Island.” Indeed the fields and lawns in that province were intense, lush green, green, green, everywhere, except for the red-earth potato fields.


A few thoughts about brotherhood. Or sisterhood. When two new mothers compare their experiences, there's a bond that can't really be shared except between those who've had similar experiences. When I walk up to another biker in a parking lot and we’re both far from home, there’s an immediate connection, a shared experience, a knowledge that we’ve both braved the elements, navigated all the turns, and felt the same exhilaration a motorcycle offers. Often we have shared some of the same rides: Cape Smokey on the Cabot Trail; the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado; the Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park; Coastal Route 1 in California; Nevada’s Loneliest Highway in America; the winds of the Laguna Mountains out of San Diego. It’s a brotherhood. I think that same brotherhood must exist among lobster-fishermen. I failed to ask any of the ones we talked to about theft, but Peter Shearer says they look out for each other, even to the extent of fishing each other’s pots when there’s a disability, keeping the catches separate and turning over the proceeds to the proper owner. It’s a brotherhood. In a measure, it’s not unlike the brotherhood of a shared faith. I became acutely aware of this phenomenon in the year 2000 while Driving Miss Kitty, when we rode US Rt. 50 from coast to coast. Out there in Nevada, on the Loneliest Highway, a gas station in a tiny town might stay open 24 x 7 even though they may get only one customer per week in off-hours, just because someone might need their services. I sensed the same thing in Nova Scotia’s remote villages where, as in Nevada, a survivalist instinct pervades the culture. It’s what made Dave siphon out all his gasoline for us and then refuse to take a dime in payment. It’s the Maritime Way. It’s something to cherish, something that still exists in the rural communities of Pennsylvania where I grew up, something I long for and wish our east-coast culture could recapture.


We enter Maryland on US 15 and roll through the gentle valleys and farmlands. I ask Kitty if she wants to ride a more roundabout route home. “No,” she says, “Now that we’re going home, I just want to go home.” So we keep what we’ve got and continue on US 15 toward Frederick, Maryland.

A few thoughts about metric conversions. I got several helpful e-mails with metric conversion tricks. Well, I know how to convert the measurements, but I wanted to “understand” the metric values without converting, so that I could “feel” 12 degrees centigrade, or inherently understand “40 km”, or know without checking when I’m running “80 kph”. I got some of it, in particular the speed thing, but it would take a good bit of immersion to make the transition. I never got close to “understanding” liters-to-gallons even though I know the conversion factor. I just know that it was a shock to see $22.95 on the pump to fill up my Wing with Regular grade of gasoline, which in Canada translated to as much as $4.46 per US gallon.


A few thoughts about our traveling preferences. Sitting in a restaurant in Riverview, New Brunswick, Peter Shearer articulated well what has been our credo without actually knowing it: “Ride to the end of the road to see the last lighthouse.” This describes us so very well. Most would probably look for more interesting tourist things to do, but Kitty and I are content just to find that last lighthouse on the road less traveled. This has led us to a lot of pretty rough roads both in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and to do this you have to be prepared to ride whatever speed the road surface will bear. Not all those roads were as scenic as we would have hoped, but the rewards were special nevertheless.


A few thoughts about GPS. I have a Garmin StreetPilot 2720 that’s wired into our headsets. It comes pre-loaded with detailed Navteq® maps and millions of waypoints for the USA, Canada, and Puerto Rico, along with a base map of Mexico. I use it to find fuel, lodging, and places to eat. In Canada, I found I had to resort to some little-used ancient techniques like looking in guidebooks, because the nearest GPS waypoints listed were often hundreds of kilometers away or even in the US. The road information, however, was generally top-notch in Canada as well as the US. Given our travel preferences, the GPS is an invaluable traveling companion that I would not want to do without. Time and again, I was able to choose the road that led to “the last lighthouse” because I could see it on the GPS and could figure out how to get back out. When used as a routing tool, I have to confess I frequently don’t inspect the route; I just go where Jill or Emily tells me. The voice guidance system is phenomenal, as it announces enough information to know which lane I should be in and when to expect the next turn. It has tons of nifty statistics and mileage logs, and every couple days I download the tracks to my laptop so we can see exactly where we’ve been. Kitty always seems to find the vertical track profile particularly fascinating.


A few thoughts about guidebooks. Since the out-of-way places you may visit in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island may not have waypoints such as lodging or attractions in a GPS map, I found myself reverting to guidebooks quite a bit. I recommend two highly useful guidebooks, both available free at http://www.novascotia.com/ride/ or just http://www.novascotia.com, along with numerous other useful resources. One is the doers’ & dreamers’ guide, which lists virtually every lodging accommodation in Nova Scotia and has very nice lists of events and their dates throughout the province, as well as suggested touring routes complete with place-by-place information as you travel the routes. This is the one book I would not travel to Nova Scotia without. The other is Motorcycle Tour Guide Nova Scotia, which is specific in listing biker-friendly places and events as well as dealers. If you want to plan your trip on the Internet, an excellent resource is http://www.destination-ns.com. Prince Edward Island has some similar books and resources. Check out http://www.motorcyclepei.com for some tours, downloadable resources, and to order your motorcycling guide. The PEI tourism website is http://www.gov.pe.ca/visitorsguide. We picked up these books and brochures, including a motorcycle-specific brochure, at the first PEI Information Center we came to. And when all else fails, type virtually anything remotely resembling what you want into Google and you’ll get more links than you can follow!


We enter Virginia when we cross the bridge over the Potomac River at Point of Rocks, Maryland, and head toward Leesburg, Virginia. I tell Kitty I will honor the two-lane nature of this trip and finish out the ride on US 15, not on the four-lane road past Dulles Airport that the GPS has suggested.
A few thoughts about technology and Internet access. Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have both made a great effort to make Internet technology available to the public. Throughout both provinces, there are public Internet access points, typically at libraries and visitor centers. When we entered Prince Edward Island, I got a printed list of all these access points and loaded them as waypoints into my GPS so I could locate the nearest Internet access point wherever we were in the province. Some of the stations have WiFi, others just have computers available for public use. I posted quite a number of my blogs using those terminals, as the technology has not spread to many of the lodging establishments. However, the extent of deployment to even those places surprised me.


We catch US 50 at Gilbert’s Corner, and in 9 miles make the last right turn toward home on Pleasant Valley Drive. Soon, American Jill Version 1.80 makes one last announcement: “Turn left on Blueridge View Drive, then arrive at home on right.” It startles me. I haven’t actually thought about arriving at home. But sure enough, here we are, shortly after 1:15 PM, having ridden almost exactly 200 miles today. We’ve ridden 4,183 miles according to the GPS, exactly 4,200 by the odometer. The GPS is always more accurate.


We have left behind the red earth and steep-roofed, immaculate houses of Prince Edward Island; the bald eagles, spectacular riding, and surf-beaten cliffs of the Cabot Trail; the bright blue, red, yellow, and pink Nova Scotia homes with their wash lines on pulleys, elevated for the deep-snow winters; the picturesque working harbors and fleets of lobster boats; the succulent hot steaming lobsters of Cook’s Lobster House. Now we have our memories, along with these feeble stories and several hundred digital photographs that I’ll edit later. Yes, we have left that behind, but what we have gained is a pebble, smaller than a golf ball, carefully placed in the middle of our kitchen table. It’s a priceless little welcome-home present from our granddaughter Danica, who always brings in a pebble from our landscaped walkway when she visits.


Kitty is the best travel companion I could ask for. I am so blessed to have a partner who loves the same things I do, who enjoys traveling by motorcycle, seeing new places, experiencing new cultures and geography. She is just the best! And in return, I try to script our trips to avoid all snakes. In this, at least, I have been successful. I probably get a “C” grade on the other two Rules: No Cities, No Traffic. When we left Dad’s a couple weeks ago, I asked if she wanted music. “I’m not ready for that yet,” was her response. She never countermanded that, and we’ve done this entire trip without turning on the radio or other programs even once, except for about 10 minutes when we turned on an AM station with information about Acadia National Park.


So we’ve had another great adventure, have seen some new sights and made some new friends, but best of all we rediscovered the treasure that found voice in the dining room of the tiny Shipwright Inn in Summerville, Nova Scotia, a place so far off the beaten path that people 100 km away have never heard of the village: “Together is the best place to be.” We did this together, and it’s been a fantastic ride. And now we’re home, and we’re still together.


Wherever you are, together is the best place to be.

Together Is the Best Place to Be, Day 17: The Ride Home

Nova Scotia 2007
Day 17: Monday July 2
Copyright(c) 2007, Jim Beachy

We have stayed at the Super 8 or the Viking Inn in Brunswick, Maine many times on our trips to Cook’s Lobster House. I don’t think we’ve ever left the area under sunshine: Always, it’s been foggy, cloudy, or outright raining. Until today. Not a single cloud in the entire horizon, 57 perfectly formed degrees (F), another gorgeous morning for our ride home.


Homeward bound. We love the time away, love the time together, and I’m always sad when I turn the bike around for the last time to head home, but “homeward bound” has kind of a nice ring to it, don’t you think?


I’ve got a GPS route mapped to get us home while bypassing most of the cities, but still it promises to be a high-intensity, Interstate kind of day. As we catch I-295 on our way to I-95 south, I call up some GPS information and tell Kitty jokingly, “It’s only 666 miles home. Wanna go for it today?” There’s a long pause suddenly I know she’s taken me seriously.


I often quote my friend IndyWinger (is he IndyBoater now?): “The only problem with a 500-mile ride is what to do with the rest of the afternoon.” Like him and some of my other friends, I would ride 400 miles for breakfast, 600 miles for lunch, and 1,000 miles for dinner. But that’s not the mode we’re in when Kitty and I travel together. We’ve done quite a few 500- or 600-mile days on Interstates, but a 666-mile day would be a highwater mark for Kitty.


“The way I feel now, I think we can go for it,” she finally replies. Had I had this in mind, we would have tried to hit the road earlier than 8:51 AM, which is when my GPS says we rolled out onto the highway from the motel. I play with the GPS routes at our first fuel stop to see if I can find a route that shaves off some miles but still respects Kitty’s Kardinal Rules. I find what I think is a good compromise that reduces our riding time by an hour, and so I save that route and we begin navigating our way homeward.


Since Kitty lost all that weight, I’m astonished at her riding endurance. She now rides for 2 1/2 hours between stops, not quite tank-to-tank but far enough that we often don’t need a rest break between fuel stops.


We follow Jill’s flawlessly fluent instructions through a Interstate route system that only a GPS could love but roughly stays with I-95 variations around cities, until we reach the same variations of I-90, which we follow always south and west. Eventually, after riding through several states’ “Turnpike” (translation: there’s a toll, plus additional tolls for the trailer axle), we catch I-84 west near Worcester, Massachusetts, which is mostly our route for several hundred miles.
We pass by Hartford and Danbury in Connecticut, which once again come dangerously close to violating the “No Cities” as well as the “No Traffic” rules.


Me: ”If you could choose between that bumpy Lighthouse Trail in Nova Scotia or this road, which would it be?”


Kitty: “That bumpy road on the Lighthouse Trail.” Well, there’s a perspective.


Me: “If you had to choose between that dirt road to Meat Cove or this road, which would it be?”


Kitty: “This road.” There’s another perspective. Guess she really doesn’t want to be on a steep dirt road.


Me: “If you had to choose between seeing a snake or being on this road, which would it be?”


Kitty: “If he were very, very far away, then I could see a snake rather than be on this road.” Obviously she is not a fan of Interstate travel!


This is a high-intensity Interstate travel day. With the way I’d sketched out the trip and to give us the time we wanted in poke-around and slow-down places, to find the end of the road and the last lighthouse, the compromise was several days of this kind of travel. It’s tiring and certainly not the preferred routes for Kitty and me. On these roads, all the careful planning, all the professional approach to riding, all the defensive driving skills that can be employed — all that can be undone in an instant by a 16-year-old kid whose belief in his own invulnerability exceeds his reflexes by a millisecond. Constant vigilance is in order. Nevertheless, we are homeward bound, and that with a vengeance.


Following the compromise route I’d ginned up on the GPS earlier in the day, we catch I-87 near Newburg, New York and rocket southward to I-287 into New Jersey until we catch I-78 westward into Pennsylvania. We stop for fuel sometime after 5:00 PM and discuss whether we can make the last 220 miles home. We’ve ridden about 440 miles. “I don’t know,” Kitty says. “I felt so good this morning, but maybe we should have stopped more often so we can go farther. But I’m not sure I’m up for doing the whole trip. And you’ve got one headlight out as well.” Without realizing it, she has echoed the credo of the Iron Butt rider: Stop oftener so you can go farther. She’s probably right.
But after our fuel stop, I feel completely rejuvenated. “I feel like I just started out,” I say. She says nothing, which I know means she doesn’t feel the same way. So after another 30 miles or so, I say, “Ok, last chance. I’m going to stop at the next exit for the night unless you want to keep going. There is no reason to push, no reason we need to be home, no reason to wear yourself out. Remember, it’s a vacation!” Reluctantly she concedes that she’s done for the day.


We stop near Allentown, Pennsylvania, having ridden 470 miles. We’re about 200 miles from home. I can tell she is a little bummed, and that she would have liked to complete the trip today. Maine in the morning, Virginia by nightfall. But stopping when we do is the right thing to do. Every day I pray for wisdom and for help in making wise choices. This was the wise choice and that’s why I’m happy to end our day in another hotel room. Happy and together, because “Together is the best place to be.”

Together Is the Best Place to Be, Day 16: Cook's Two!

Nova Scotia 2007
Day 16: Sunday July 1
Copyright(c) 2007, Jim Beachy

Happy Canada Day, Canada!


Since we’re several hours ahead of schedule on the homeward leg of our journey and it was nearly midnight when we finished with the bike last night, we sleep in, finally rolling out from Moncton, New Brunswick just before 10:00 AM. It is another crisp and brilliant morning. “Isn’t it better to start with a clean bike?” I ask as we roll out.

Last night at dinner, Peter Shearer suggested I make the crossing into the USA at Rt. 1 rather than at I-95. I was pretty skeptical because the last time I did that, Rt. 9 in Maine was a long, nasty stretch. But he said it’s been nicely paved and has had some truck lanes added. Yesterday as we were rolling through the North Cape of Prince Edward Island, Kitty said wistfully, “I wish we could take roads like this all the way home.” I remark that we could, that there are indeed roads like this all the way home, except we’d need a lot more time. So I decide to give Kitty one last partial day on two-lane roads and take Peter’s suggested route.

I reroute the GPS and we take the Trans-Canada Highway westward, soon picking up Rt. 1 toward the border crossing at St. Stephens/Calais some 275 km (170 miles) away. It’s a nice mostly four-lane road running through mostly wooded territory but occasionally finding its way through valleys lined with farms and cattle.

When I think of the Bay of Fundy, I usually associate it with Nova Scotia. But there’s a whole other shore to the Bay — it would be the nature of a bay, after all, to have two shores. The west shore of the Bay falls against New Brunswick and even the northern reaches of Maine in the US. Nestled along the shore of the Bay in New Brunswick is the town of Saint John. As one might expect, there’s a bridge in Saint John. I see the bridge on the GPS map. But we aren’t prepared for the toll: 50 cents. Normally, not a problem. You drop two quarters in the hopper and you are on your way. But I have only bills in my wallet, and any change we might have is locked in the trunk in Kitty’s purse. Not to worry, there will be an attendant, right? Wrong. All the gates are unattended. I hesitate at one of the gates, trying to figure out what to do. Cars are lining up behind us, and now I can’t even back up to try to pull off to the side to figure out a plan. The toll gate is up, so I finally shrug and just ride through the gate. I watch my mirrors to see if we are pursued by the Bridge Police, but nothing happens. So there you have it: I’m an admitted Saint John Toll Gate Crasher. “I’ll be happy to mail them the 50 cents, US,” I tell Kitty. Just give me an address.

By about 12:45 PM we’re at the US crossing, except it’s now an hour earlier because we get our hour back when we cross into the Eastern time zone. St. Stephens in New Brunswick, Calais in Maine. We park at the duty-free shop and walk half a block to a money-exchange place that is open even on Sunday, even on Canada Day, to exchange all our Canadian cash into US equivalent.

As we sit on the bridge astride the Canada-US border awaiting our turn in US Customs, I decide to switch my GPS back to US mode. I press the “Speak” button to hear one last instruction from British Emily Version 1.40, and then call up American Jill Version 1.80. Once again the GPS reboots and the familiar Jill voice is back when I press “Speak.”

“I’ll miss Emily!” says Kitty. “I liked her accent. She’s a little too laid-back, though.” I laugh because I had thought that too. However, Emily’s calm voice guiding us through the downpour running out of Baddeck was very reassuring. Jill is more energetic, a little louder, a little higher-pitched, a little more incisive with her comments. Now that I think of it, that sounds very American, doesn’t it? Along with retrieving Jill from her week-and-a-half sleep, I reset the GPS to Statute units (miles) and Eastern time zone.

We clear US Customs with only a few questions and showing our driver’s license ID, and we’re through the checkpoint where we pick up Rt. 9 to Bangor, Maine. As Peter promised, the road surface is great and it’s a nice road even though it’s mostly hemmed in by trees.

I have tried very hard while in Canada to acclimatize myself to the metric system. I’ve gained some understanding of Celsius temperature, but the mileage and kilometer conversion just doesn’t come easily. I’ve tried to comprehend British Emily’s instructions and the distances on the signposts as well as speed limits, but try as I might, I still have to do a rough conversion in my head. But now, with the “normal” statute miles displayed on my GPS, I’m strangely disoriented and keep trying to convert to kilometers. Perhaps I did better than I thought.

In Bangor, we refuel before catching I-95. “I’m sorry, but I think we’ve seen the last of two-lane roads until we’re 40 miles from home,” I tell Kitty. I review the GPS and realize that, because we’re about a half-day ahead of schedule, we’ll pass near Cook’s Lobster House this afternoon instead of tomorrow morning. “Wanna do Cook’s again?” I ask Kitty. The light dances in her eyes and I know she’s hooked.
When we’re in Brunswick, we usually stay at the same motel, so I pull up the phone number from the GPS listing, call and make a reservation. So it is that, after dodging numerous local little showers that never quite make their way to where we are, we find ourselves after a short 395-mile day once again sitting in Cook’s Lobster House gazing at the quiet harbor framed by the famous Harpswell granite-block bridge. We are having yet another fresh hot boiled lobster feast including mussels, lobster stew, choices of vegetables, and all that stuff. I order a 2 1/2 pound lobster and find that my lobster-eating technology is sadly deficient. His right claw is bigger than my hand and, after exhausting all possible means at my disposal to crack it and sustaining several lacerations in the process, I have to call the laughing waitress to send it back to the kitchen where they apparently use a sledge hammer to crack the thing.

“If you had to see a snake in exchange for eating at Cook’s, would you do it?” I ask Kitty.
She thinks for a long moment. “If he were very far away, yes, I would!” she laughs. That, my friends, says all you need to know about Cook’s Lobster House. We have to keep eating lobster because someone has to keep checking to make sure it’s still the best food in the world.