Corner To Corner - Chapter 5, Farm Country

OK, that’s more like it. Today was the kind of day that road trips are supposed to be. The weather was perfect, for the most part we stayed off the freeway, we met come cool people, ate at non-chain places, and saw a lot of the country we’d not seen before. This is what this trip is supposed to be about.

We slept later than usual, but needed the rest, and finally got out on the road at 830am. I’d plotted a course that was 90% rural roads, but first we had to get out of Columbus. This city sprawls – we noticed it, and Tony complained about it yesterday as we rode the belt freeway around the city to get to the north end where we stayed. I agreed that it felt like we were driving around the world. We had to take the same loop out to get to US-33 which heads Northwest out of Columbus and into Indiana. It was warm, we rode in just t-shirts today and didn’t need our jackets. In fact, I don’t think it got above 80 all day so we were comfortable the entire day.

Like I said, US-33 heads Northwest out of Columbus, but alas it mimics a damn freeway for about 30 miles before it becomes a nice two-lane highway. I’m going to again quote some wisdom from the Disney/Pixar movie Cars, where Sally is expounding on the difference between a freeway and a two-lane. She says “back then the roads didn’t cut through the land, they moved with the land.” Freeways are designed to keep you moving, where traditional roads are designed to connect places and people. There is nothing ON a freeway, you have to get OFF to find it. On a two-lane it’s right in front of you. I’ll ask you which would you rather travel on – a road like the one at the top of this post, or this one? Both are the same road, US-33 in NW Ohio.

About 50 miles out, in the town of Bellefontaine, we pulled off to stop by a Harley dealer to get some new fingerless riding gloves. However as we neared the town we noticed a ton of motorcycles heading our way – all Honda Goldwings. Then we passed a sign saying “Honda Homecoming” and then a huge Honda factory. It all started to make sense now – this is like the 105th Harley-Davidson Anniversary party later this year, and the pilgrimages HD riders take back to Milwaukee, only for Gold Wing riders.

As we exited we saw a sign for a motorcycle rally as well, so we decided to take a little detour to check it out. We were the only two Harley guys – everyone else was on a Honda product, and 90% of them were Goldwings.

Goldwings are the Winnebagos of the biker world. They are large machines, covered with faring so there is no engine visible, and they have reverse gears and complicated dashboards. They also attract the same demographic – retired old white people. Large old white people. Many of whom convert their bikes into trikes! Some pulling little trailers. They don’t even look like bikers – and I’ll state for the record that a Goldwing is in my book, simply a two wheeled car. Motorcycles should have visible V-twin engines at least, and they should make NOISE. Goldwings are very very quiet. Where a Harley roars to life with a copyrighted sound of “potato potato potato potato", a Goldwing sounds like – well nothing. Hell, a Prius in electric mode makes more noise than a Goldwing. All the time people wait for me to start my bike or ask me to. No one ever asks anyone to fire up a Goldwing!

We wandered around the vendor area, and found the fingerless gloves we just paid $25 for at the HD dealer on sale for $6 at a vendor booth. Tony needed some night glasses as well, so we wandered into MisFits Eyewear, which is a traveling booth run by Mick and Sassafrass Zellar from the upper peninsula of Michigan. While Sassafrass unpacked, and I petted their dog, Mick expounded on the superiority of his product over the PanOptics I wear. He also complained about having to wear bifocals, and I said it comes with age. He is 62, his wife much younger. He asked how old I was, and I told him to guess – he said 50. I left the tent. He asked Tony his age, and said Tony was 35. Three years younger. Damn Asians. I came back in the tent and we joked around some more and Mick said the best things happen after 50 -- its when he married the much younger Sassafrass. Tony bought a pair of his goggles and we ambled back out into the sea of Goldwing riders. There wasn’t much to interest us so we got back on the bikes and headed out on the road towards Indiana, curving off US 33 on to US 224 West.

This is farm country – corn and soybeans as far as the eye can see. It is really very nice, with small towns, lots of farm implement dealers, freshly spread fertilizer in the air (mmm, smells good), and shirtless Midwestern farm boys riding tractors. We started to get hungry, and as we pulled into Markle, Indiana, underneath the smiley face painted town water tower, we found a little restaurant that had a sign saying “Indiana’s best steak burgers.” I sensed a story! So we pulled up underneath the happy water tower and went in to find out if indeed it was the home of Indiana's best steak burgers – only to find it closed at 130pm (my watch had 132pm) . She did say however that there was a McDonalds two miles up the road. Perish the though.

So we continued up US 224 into Huntington, Indiana. This is the home of Dan Quayle apparently, and the town is still proud of him. I kept looking for a roadside hamburger stand with a big swirly vanilla cone on top or something, and we found a nice outside car-hop kind of place where you order from a thing that looks like a drive-in movie speaker, so we pulled in there. They specialized in Coney Dogs, and if you bought the “basket” you got a free root beer. Well I was in the mood for a root beer float, so asked if they would make me one, and the girl on the other end of the speaker box said “no”, you have to buy a root beer float. So I said OK, I’ll do that, and she asked “do you still want the free root beer too?” At this point I became Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. You remember the famous scene where Jack wants to order wheat toast and has to get a chicken salad sandwich on toast, hold the chicken salad to do it? I decided to tell her “Forget about the float, just bring me the free root beer and a small vanilla cone, hold the cone and just put the ice cream in the free root beer”. She said, that would be a root beer float then and she’d have to charge me for that. We are NOT in the South anymore. No wonder Dan Quayle came from here – he was the inspiration for “Are you smarter than a fifth grader” game show you know. I supposed she made the fries out of “potatoe” too. So I told her to just bring me the free root beer AND the small vanilla cone, so she did, and I dumped it in the root beer myself and it foamed up and made a mess, but I had my float and Tony did the same. The dogs were good by the way too.

We turned off of US 224 and onto IN-9 which goes straight north into Michigan. Through more farm country on a warm afternoon – bare arms in the wind, and tunes on the I-pod – coupled with a full stomach, one tends to get a bit drowsy. Not good on a motorcycle, so we stopped for some Red Bull, and chatted with a local biker for a while. Seems everyone we talk to is amazed that we’d ride from Key West all the way back to Seattle. The Red Bull snapped us wide awake as we motored across the state line into Michigan and into the town of Sturgis. No, not the Sturgis of the famous bike week – that’s in South Dakota. However, we can now honestly say we’ve been to Sturgis. They have a Harley dealer too, and so we bought shirts to prove it. Only the second ones on this trip, we are doing pretty good!
It was still great riding weather – sunny and in the 70s, and it was a pretty part of the country, so we decided to try and get to Holland, Michigan on the shore of Lake Michigan for the night. We wound through the countryside on US-12 (which we could ride straight home if we wanted to), and then north on MI-40 to Holland. Its amazing to me to note the change in the countryside from the swamps of Florida, to the heat and red clay of Georgia, to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Carolinas, to the Coal Country of Kentucky and the rust belt along the Ohio River, to the farms of Indiana and the forest of Southern Michigan. It’s hard to believe that five days ago we were in Key West. We’ve come 1883 miles since then. Looking at a map it’s quite a distance – and still a long way to go.

Tomorrow we’ll continue up the coast of Lake Michigan, and up across the bridge onto the Upper Peninsula.