The Road To Alice's Restaurant -- Day 1, getting to Philly

530am came early today. Our flight from Seattle to Newark left at 830am, but in this day of TSA scrutiny of little old white ladies driving Lexus' to the airport, and the weighing and examination of toothpaste and shampoo lest some gay passenger decide to "do" hair on the flight, we had to be at the airport at 630am. Madelon was kind enough to drive us to the airport on a glorious Seattle morning at that ungodly hour, so we hoofed it up to their house with our small pile of motorcycle luggage. Here we are, half asleep still.

After getting through security, we still had 90 minutes to kill, so we had coffee and a donut and read the paper. It was a nice 4 hour flight to Newark, in 1st class on Alaska Air. Why Newark you ask? Aren't we renting the bikes in Philly? Well, yes -- BUT, it's much cheaper to fly into Newark where one can catch an Amtrak train right at the airport for the 45 minute trip to Philly. Besides, we wanted to at least partially live the "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" movie -- or in this case Planes, Trains, and Motorcycles.

A couple of Tony's friends who sing with him in the BEARatones were on the same flight - off on a Broadway Show Queen tour of six shows in four days. They took a limo into Manhattan while Tony and I walked to the train station. Because our flight was almost an hour early, we were able to catch an earlier train to Philly and were in our hotel by 6pm. It's a charming older boutique hotel in downtown Philly, and we walked to a nice Irish Pub for a very good Shepherds Pie dinner. Because it's the 4th of July there isn't much to choose from and the city is pretty well shut down. We've never been to Philly, and I'd like to visit a bit longer. Tony wants to go to Independence Hall where I'm afraid he'd break out into songs from the musical 1776 (he's already been singing "sit down John, sit down John, for Gods sake John sit down!" for most of the evening.) Perhaps we'll have a chance to visit when we turn the bikes in on the 15th.

Tomorrow we'll be off to Barbs Harley Davidson, which is actually across the Delaware River in Camden NJ to pick up the bikes. The forecast calls for a 50% chance of thundershowers (thanks a lot Mom!), and we were caught in one walking home from dinner. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

Tonight I'm going to study the route that Meg Crouse of the Camden County HOG Chapter was kind enough to map out for us -- going up along the Delaware River before crossing over into Pennsylvania and heading to Mansfield where Tony's cousin is getting married on Saturday. We brought along a pad of yellow sticky notes which I intend to do a "Rt 40 to Rt 6 to Rt 9" kind of simple directions that I can stick to the windshield. Having never been here, we turned to the local Harley Owners Group (HOG) chapter for advice and both here and in Massachusetts the local chapters have been quite helpful. It's one of the benefits of being part of the Harley fraternity I guess -- a host of people to tell you about the best way to get from A to B on two wheels.

From the City of Brotherly Love and the Latham Hotel..
Gary and Tony