Back by popular demand.....

OK. That may be a bit of stretch. 3 people asked me if I was going "to blog" this trip. I wasn't feeling very 'bloggy' but how could I deny my faithful following?! By way of background... Mark Colwell, friend and senior chief instructor of the NB Safety Council's Motorcycle training, announced months ago that he was doing this ride to North Carolina to visit his very good friend, Nancy, in Chapel Hill. Upon said announcement, I responded "Wow! I'll got with you!". This is normal procedure among bikers. We invite ourselves on rides. Mark's reply was "well and good" or something to that effect. A note about riding with other people and, more specifically, long distance riding with a partner or partners. It's pretty important that people riding together share a similar riding ability and philosophy of LD riding. I couldn't hold a candle to Mark in riding ability. He's been riding much longer and, therefore, has much more experience. For all intents and purposes for this ride,we're compatible in most respects. Except for, maybe... Mark likes to ride the speed limit. I like to ride fast ;-) (although I definitely don't want my insurance rates to rise because of a speeding ticket!). When we hit The Dragon with its 300 curves in 11 miles or whatever it is, true colours may shine then. As far as distance riding goes, Mark knows I can go the distance since I did CFR. Many weeks after I invited myself along on "Marks' Ride", I thought it appropriate to give him an 'out', ie, put the question to him "are you OK with me tagging along?" We had done one of our Wednesday night rides (John sails on Wednesday evenings so it's a good time for me to go out for a ride and Mark is often available) and we were doing our 'Tim Hortons coffee thing'. Since this was, if I recall correctly, fairly fresh on the heels of CFR (I don't THINK it was before CFR), I anticipated it might have been a bit of a hard sell to John. When I got back from CFR, I was pretty well hooked on long-distance riding. When, I asked John how many rides I could do per year, he told me "as many as you can pay for yourself". So...if you hear of me buying camping gear for the bike, don't be surprised. Fast forward, I cleared it with John one Saturday morning on the way to Market. Mark cleared it with his SO, Jenn. And here we are. In Winchester, in the Shanendoah Valley region of Virginia, as I write 2 days' worth of posts to catch up. In fact, until about an hour ago, I was undecided about doing a blog. We stopped early tonight (only 658 km today and we stopped before dark) and because we had a big lunch in Hazelton, Pennsylvania about mid-afternoon, we decided against going out for dinner. Rather, we scrambled across the highway to the convenience store/gas bar, which, like any civilized convenience store/gas bar, sells cold beer and wine. Mark loaded up with snacks. I got a bag of pretzels ('cuz they're less fattening than potato chips!) and a 6-pack of Stella Artois. OK - I'm on my 3rd Stella now so here we go .....

Day ONE: Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey....what a day. To summarize: 970 km ridden over 4 state boundaries (Maine, NH, Massachusetts and Connecticut), waterproof gear that got me wet, a great visit with a CFR buddy, my ignition key is bent to the point I can't use it so I'm using my spare key now, we paid 5 tolls - a second time on the Mass Pike since we anjoyed our first ride on it so much, NOT!, my hands were blistered from the wet gloves - and I had 2 tipovers.

Mark and I left his place - around the corner from me - at 0745h yesterday in the pouring rain. Within 5 km, my left Harley Davidson Gore-tex glove (remember those from CFR?!) was wet. Not only that, my left sleeve at the elbow was wet! And that has never happened with my BMW suit. By the time the rain stopped after 50 odd kilometers, my right hand was wet, too. We stopped in Woodstock at the EMT station to say 'good-bye' to Jenn who was on duty. I had already considered asking the Border crossing guy for a pair of those Barney-style purple gloves or the blue ones - the nonsterile, synthetic gloves we use in the hospital for when we touch people (tongue-in-cheek); I was going to put them over my leather gloves. I KNOW the border guards must have them for when THEY touch people! But then we stopped at the EMT place = even better. Jenn rigged me up with several pair so I was able to continue on with dry hands - and a wet sleeve. I should add that I had an 'incident' here that, as it turned out, was a bad omen of things to come. When I pulled up beside Mark, I stopped TOO close to his bike so that when he put his bike on the sidestand my bike was touching his (he pointed out the little, wee scuff I put in his sidecase) and was pushing my bike over to left. He was off his bike and hanging onto both bikes as, by this time, I was pushing his bike to the right. At least I think that's how the scenario went. Long story short, I almost lost my bike several times until I got it moved forward, out of the way. Remember this for later....

The foliage, by the way, was spectacular. Although it seems we're a little early to be at peak colour in NB, I can't imagine how it could be any better. And that was in the dull, grey, rainy light. Same in Maine. Riding through Maine, I just couldn't get comfortable. My arm was damp and, therefore, kind of cold. My lower back was hurting since I needed the first long day to get those muscles whipped into submission. The temperature hadn't risen much so I was just barely comfortable and, although the rain had let up, the drizzle continued on and off until well past Bangor.

Charlie McPhail, aka "Charlie Hoss" on the FJR Forum that I follow, lives in Turner just south of Augusta. I first met Charlie at CFR Cape Breton last September and we have stayed in touch. We had arranged to get together on this trip to have lunch and/or ride a little together. As agreed, I called Charlie from Augusta and we planned to meet at Central Maine Powersports in Lewiston. When Mark and I arrived, there was Charlie in the parking lot flagging us down. We - or at least I - roared in and came to a quick stop in front of Charlie - excited to see him - grabbed a handful of front brake (in combo with rear brake) and on just a WEE bit of a grade and my front tire at an angle..... down goes the Feej on her left side. My first leftsided drop. But her second drop in 2 days since John had backed into the driveway on Saturday, hit my bike and knocked it over on its right side. Charlie lifted it up, with not much help from me. And then I introduced myself to Arlene - after I gave Charlie a big hug "hello". Or perhaps I gave him the big hug before he picked up my bike. At any rate, it was great to see Charlie again and to meet Arlene. Off we went to Tim Hortons for lunch and the service was even worse than the service at the By-pass Tims where Janet, George, John and I go on Sundays for our weekly bicycle-ride-coffee break.

Mark's friend, Nancy, is from Fredericton but has lived in North Carolina for many years now. She has made the trip back and forth a number of times and gave Mark directions for the route that she uses. Mark gave me the route but I didn't input it into my GPS since it didn't make sense to me and I couldn't find my map that had New England on it so I couldn't compare the directions to a map. Plus, I didn't really trust my GPS anyway. Mark said he had a map for all the states we were going to hit - and I had put out my map for Southeastern US - so I thought we'd be ok. As it turned out, he thought I'd input the route into my GPS, I forgot SOMEhow to pack my single map and he didn't bring ANY of HIS maps.

By the time we hit Massachusetts, the sun had come out and the temperature had risen sufficiently that we could shed a layer of clothing. Onward we motored, following the prescribed route until we hit the Mass Pike. We got our ticket to enter the Pike. Mark was in the lead and stopped on the median asking "west" or "east" ? Our directions said "turn east on 90" and THIS was the part that hadn't made sense to me. I knew, knew, KNEW we should have gone west toward Springfield but we followed the 'east' instruction. I was in the lead now and the further we went, the more concerned I became. I pulled over, we talked about it and decided we'd go off at the next exit and make our way back. Turn on the bike, put it in gear, twist the throttle to move - stall. Again. And again. And again. What the hell?! It appeared to have been a vapour lock since the bike finally worked and it hasn't happened again. I think that by this time I was using my spare key as my original key was so bent I could no longer use IT. So, by now I had a failed key, a tipover and now my bike was stalling. Long story short, we got turned around and back on track -with the help of my ZUMO gps (remember the trouble I'd had with the ZUMO on the CFR trip?) and a tow-truck driver from whom we got additional directions.

Fast forward, we continued on through Connecticut to Farmington as we wanted to get past Hartford so we wouldn't be facing Monday morning traffic. It was dark and late by the time we found a hotel - again with ZUMO's help. The kid on the counter had NO authority to do any better on the $95 quoted rate. Which was too bad for him since I'd laid quite a beating on him. It was late, it had been a long day (970 km) and we were tired. I wanted an internet connection and when he said "yes, we have it - it's $4.95" I blew and said "that's it, I'm outta here - we're going somewhere else" (WHERE, I had no idea!). At that point, poor little "Prince" manned up and agreed to comp me the internet ;-). Mark and I dithered over dinner but decided finally to grab a pizza and agreed that we'd go directly from the lobby since if we stopped to unpack the bikes, we wouldn't want to go out. Mark got the directions to the pizza joint from Prince = "turn left", so away we go. We turned left and went through the intersection which, as it turned out, took us arouand a tight little turn (which was kind of fun considering we'd ridden hundreds of kms on the STRAIGHT interstate) and back onto the interstate! (As it turned out, we should have made 2 left turns but we found that out much too late) Mark zoomed by me - like he'd sat bare-a**ed on a hot barbecue and, instead of turning back into Farmington entrance, shot by IT and up the interstate to the next exit which took us into the next town. We pulled over to the side of the road (I'm laughing as I write this but .... not so much laughing last night at sometime around, I dunno, 13+ hours on the road?) and Mark hauled out the pizza joint flyer for the address. We found it in the Zumo and off we went. At the next intersection, I was in the lead and stopped at the red light. I .... started to lose the Feej; caught her but away she went,... freaking....down.... AGAIN! I forgot to point out the damage from the first drop. Thankfully, it was very minimal. The mirror folded up and got badly scuffed but not broken and there was a little scuff on the side case. When she fell the second time, it was dark so I couldn't see and I didn't look this morning. It doesn't matter so what the hell. Mark picked up the bike - with very little help from me. He got back on his bike, the light changed, he pulled around me and took off. I couldn't get my bike started. I checked everything... I had lights, the sidestand was up, but the engine wouldn't turn over. After a minute or so of this, I finally realized the kill switch had been killed. Mark had turned it off - per tipover / pickup protocal. I got the bike going and caught up to Mark who was pulled off hoping like hell I hadn't dropped it again. ZUMO got us to the pizza joint and by the time I got there, I had VERY little appetite left. We got a small pizza, wolfed down a few pieces and did a some circles getting back to the hotel. Neither of us slept really well and breakfast this morning consisted of bagels and coffee. Blah. Mark doesn't drink coffee and there wasn't even any juice. So, we geared up and rode about 50 km to Southbury. a very beautiful little town, where we had breakfast at a Friendlys and met the most delightful ladies.....

Day TWO: Sunny, 13 degrees when we started out, 658i km over 4 more state boundaries (NY, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia) and no tipovers! We went into Friendlys this morning and were seated in a booth behind 2 distinguished looking women who, as it turned out were 80 and 81 and barely looked to be out of their 60s. Before I sat down, as I was getting out of my gear, I asked them what town we were in and in the same breath, commented on how beautiful it was. We talked about being on the MCs from Canada and within minutes had a great conversation going. Very early in the conversation I said "crap" about something and Alberta flinched. At the word 'crap'! A little later she mentioned that her husband had died 5 months ago but "that was ok" (!?) - he had turned into a real jerk apparently in his final years when he'd become, in Alberta's words "high maintenance....non-compliant diabetic". Now Alberta, who had flinched at the word 'crap' asked me if I knew a bad word that starts with 'p' that men are called? I assured her that I know lots of bad words ;-) and that 'yes' I knew of such a 'p word' but surely she didn't want me to say it aloud?! No, she didn't (I'm laughing again). Alberta was absolutely delightful and within minutes of our starting to chat, she had reached over the booth to pull my face to her so she could kiss me. She actually did this a few times. Alberta, at age 81, is my feature photo today :-)

Our route today was very easy. Highway 84 West all the way through Connecticut through NY to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where we picked up 81 South. 84 is a beautiful highway. Too bad about the traffic and smell of exhaust. I'll post a few pictures tomorrow as it's too late to mess with those now. It's 0200h now and we want an early start tomorrow. Mark "let me sleep" this morning - which was generous of him since, apparently, he didn't sleep last night. He DID, however, keep an attentive eye on the bikes from his hotel window. And he watched a lot of tv. As it turned out, we left the hotel parking lot at 0900h on the dot.

We hit a bad stretch of construction in Pennsylvania. It was only a few miles but it took about 40 minutes to traverse. Thankfully, it was 17 degrees and not 27 degrees as we were in full ATGATT ("all the gear all the time") so neither we nor our bikes over heated. Very beautiful with foliage in colour but I'm not sure at what stage. Virginia and W Virginia roads are fabulous but absolutely plugged with transport trucks . They're tiring as they create huge turbulence and toss me around. The Feej makes quick work of them (ie, easy to pass) but there are so darned MANY of them, the cumulative effect is .... tiring.

Tomorrow's plan is to deviate from Nancy's route a little bit so we can ride Skyline Drive which hooks up the Blue Ridge Parkway - all through mountains of the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia. The Blue Ridge Parkway will take us into North Carolina. Giddy up!