tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-161162952024-03-13T06:14:52.680-07:00The Mildly Amusing Adventures of Tony and GaryCreated so that our family and friends can come along with us on our travels.Tony Gilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02635234578903200899noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-63564185095930049232008-08-05T21:44:00.000-07:002008-08-05T23:22:17.046-07:00Corner To Corner -- Final Thoughs<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXkaulHOuNeDsGCfK15qnzSv9J5boPz786Jc4rFXVUT7tANK0bdyGd0MdZw7BKsKPLCqDygcWgzsrsGZkzhtipWipyFDtx5_eDVgEbJr5AHVQ0KIzycN2EIwVIkP3ddnyA8gHG/s1600-h/DSCN5220.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXkaulHOuNeDsGCfK15qnzSv9J5boPz786Jc4rFXVUT7tANK0bdyGd0MdZw7BKsKPLCqDygcWgzsrsGZkzhtipWipyFDtx5_eDVgEbJr5AHVQ0KIzycN2EIwVIkP3ddnyA8gHG/s200/DSCN5220.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231262215441868066" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh09H1cQBSzeAbVyTIwNl2Y_UjvUyP2atiBFKqKbX1ere9DbzRnOsXYTdbAsd4D6oK12vgaiTsyKV7TrIaIqsDU6w-mrQPs341O3lk05hJ0Kdene1jmbCA8FyYpcvji9_38fa0x/s1600-h/RSCN4625.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh09H1cQBSzeAbVyTIwNl2Y_UjvUyP2atiBFKqKbX1ere9DbzRnOsXYTdbAsd4D6oK12vgaiTsyKV7TrIaIqsDU6w-mrQPs341O3lk05hJ0Kdene1jmbCA8FyYpcvji9_38fa0x/s200/RSCN4625.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231262055643036210" border="0" /></a><br /><br />It seemed strange to sleep in our own bed last night, and to get up and not go downstairs, eat a “continental breakfast” at the hotel breakfast bar, and load up the bikes and head out. The ride back from Cape Flattery and Neah Bay was uneventful, except for the frustration of road construction, and my internal sadness that the ride was over and we were not going someplace new in the morning.<br /><br />I must confess I have a wandering soul I suppose. I always have, and I attribute some of that to my parents who were thoughtful enough as I was growing up to take us someplace in the car or the camper nearly every week. This is one of the greatest gifts they gave me – to not be afraid to see what’s up around the next bend and to love travel. And I suppose as well that it could be considered a curse.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0FLdTWIjmEJ0UE6xwLG5Ogk8WvIRvJyO7mL_OXTUkZq16HAlITyFqAIb9zizbuyEJId5iFLCP1cqNy93IEMRqjsmz816vkFmRRt-op9OA1xV572xVXmGav3SmGFFDTWrWW9zF/s1600-h/DSCN5221.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0FLdTWIjmEJ0UE6xwLG5Ogk8WvIRvJyO7mL_OXTUkZq16HAlITyFqAIb9zizbuyEJId5iFLCP1cqNy93IEMRqjsmz816vkFmRRt-op9OA1xV572xVXmGav3SmGFFDTWrWW9zF/s320/DSCN5221.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231262718347454610" border="0" /></a>As we were heading towards home down US-101 we got to a junction where US-101 continues south, ultimately to the Mexican Border south of San Diego, and we had to turn on WA-104 over the Hood Canal Bridge and towards Seattle. I told Tony, “hey, lets just turn south and ride down the coast to San Diego”. The look he gave me would have stalled my bike had he looked at the engine. I’m fortunate that I have the means and the job that allows me to do that – not everyone does. So we continued across the bridge, down WA-3 and Bremerton and across the Southworth ferry and headed to Alki Beach for dinner before riding home. A ferry ride is perhaps the perfect way to cap this trip – taking the boat into Seattle is always something I look forward to.<br /><br />There is a song by singer-songwriter Randall Williams called “The Man With The Wandering Soul” which is about a sailor and his love for the sea and how it affects his family. I suppose you could change it to someone like me who loves the road…<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“You were not his first love, he was seduced by the sea air on his skin, as a young man he promised his heart to Aurora Borealis and the stars.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">May you never be the widow of the man, with the wandering soul.”<br /><br /></span>I have that wandering soul, and after a day of catching up on a mountain of mail, and phone calls and things around the house, and making an appointment for work on the bike tomorrow at the HD Dealer, I’m itching to get back on the road.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7JbDl_TdLKA6XZd0IAkTWsEGXeYc2y7aGpMjmXepcbL45jSr97ABHJnq-tpHDIo8rbbWxrgnlZZwjkwoy-1kBIMRf9cYJc3ltGUeMOc-XTKfyCgpfiGXjzBGPsPSjs_3NBz0I/s1600-h/DSCN5133.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7JbDl_TdLKA6XZd0IAkTWsEGXeYc2y7aGpMjmXepcbL45jSr97ABHJnq-tpHDIo8rbbWxrgnlZZwjkwoy-1kBIMRf9cYJc3ltGUeMOc-XTKfyCgpfiGXjzBGPsPSjs_3NBz0I/s320/DSCN5133.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231265248514007426" border="0" /></a>So for now this will be the last post for a while. I do want to thank you for reading, and I hope you have enjoyed it. We’ve heard from a lot of you with very kind and nice comments, and I’m flattered -- especially those of you who said it was what you looked forward to reading each morning. As a budding writer, it makes me think there might be possibilities for this. We have lots of notes and lots more stories that we didn’t put in the last 15 chapters – I would have spent all my time writing and not riding! I’ve toyed with the idea of a book – like “Blue Highways” or “Travels With Charley”, but I’m not sure. However, I would appreciate any feedback you have, good and bad… you can e-mail me at <a href="http://www.blogger.com/grgardner@comcast.net">grgardner@comcast.net</a><br /><br />And I would be remiss if I didn’t thank a few people who encouraged me to do this and who helped put it together.<br /><br />Number one of course is Tony – who took all the great pictures and who’s notes and recollections as I wrote this were invaluable. It’s as much his story as mine. This ride was his idea, and he's the one who encouraged me to go on it, even when we were having second thoughts up until the day we left.<br /><br />Tony’s sister Debbie who gave us the Harley Road Atlas for Christmas that had all the maps we used.<br /><br />Tony Screws and the crew at Downtown Harley Davidson who got the bikes in shape for a 5,000 mile ride.<br /><br />My parents for giving me the gift of wanderlust.<br /><br />And all of you who read, commented, and encouraged us along the way.<br /><br />As a final thought. I’ll leave you with another song lyric – this one from Alison Krauss a song on her “Lonely Runs Through It” CD called “Gravity.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I left home when I was seventeen</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">I just grew tired of falling down</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">And I'm sure I was told</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">the allure of the road</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">would be all I found</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">And all the answers that I started with</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">turned out questions in the end</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">So years roll on by</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">and just like the sky</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">the road never ends</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">And the people who love me still ask me -</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">When are you coming back to town</span>? <span style="font-style: italic;">And I answer quite frankly</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">when they stop building roads</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">and all God needs is gravity to hold me down.</span><br /><br />I use that last paragraph as the signature on my personal emails, and it’s the title of my “Livejournal” at <a href="http://grgardner.livejournal.com/">http://grgardner.livejoural.com</a> which is a more personal version of a lot of my rides in case you are interested.<br /><br />Gary Gardner<br />August 5, 2008<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWftcLyVAWlHosf83RlOPU_c6yKmE6td2wCyKTVOV83zbxlnYrAYCZRGTz-VQKtMzdU-RqaBKG1DHhspYEvEGRtGdFl_OIObwlloFcciZ1Kf_MqiqrAqTDqLH99OB1R9gaHDKo/s1600-h/Gary:MI:Lighthouse.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWftcLyVAWlHosf83RlOPU_c6yKmE6td2wCyKTVOV83zbxlnYrAYCZRGTz-VQKtMzdU-RqaBKG1DHhspYEvEGRtGdFl_OIObwlloFcciZ1Kf_MqiqrAqTDqLH99OB1R9gaHDKo/s320/Gary:MI:Lighthouse.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231264602044904018" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">And the people who love me they ask, when are you coming back to town. </span> <span style="font-style: italic;">And I answer, when they stop building roads and all God needs is gravity to hold me down.</span>Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-46930946450304557682008-08-04T22:34:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:08.418-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 15, The Other End Of The Road<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihU2kjYKK0NFkYVBfM80b-tPdAFFSGdtyGTkTh9fV6NhmLsztbC5IHQH2NoMH1GeDOHvX48hc6ax7HYDHobIop5pw2hzNJDG9BEC2F34I1VcEVetz2KRAoVIbZWQLzG3w_xmzB/s1600-h/DSCN5203.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihU2kjYKK0NFkYVBfM80b-tPdAFFSGdtyGTkTh9fV6NhmLsztbC5IHQH2NoMH1GeDOHvX48hc6ax7HYDHobIop5pw2hzNJDG9BEC2F34I1VcEVetz2KRAoVIbZWQLzG3w_xmzB/s400/DSCN5203.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230903285252834786" border="0" /></a>We went to dinner last night at the Quinault Beach Resort and Casino. What is it about casinos that attract the mullet crowd? We had heard that the restaurant there was quite good and wanted a nice place for our final night on the road. If we’d gone with our first impression though we would have left. We first tried their sushi bar, however it had “run out of rice”. A sushi bar that runs out of rice? So we went to the main restaurant where there apparently was no hostess on duty. I was having a gut feeling this was not going to be good, especially after getting things sorted out we had 15 minutes to wander the casino until the table was ready. This place had gotten good reviews and the hotel/spa was quite nice and I was hoping my first impressions were wrong. They were. We had a nice bubbly waitress, and fantastic food, and lingered there for a good 90 minutes reflecting on the trip so far.<br /><br />When it came time to pay the bill the waitress noticed my business American Express and asked what I did for a living. I explained and she told us she had a degree in “Political Communications”. She had gotten her degree and then went to LA for a few “fun years” but came back to the reservation with a two year old kid and this job paid the bills. She was as dismayed as I am about the state of political discourse in this country and said she wouldn’t take a job in her field now. I had to agree.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGDBf9zfcpFG93DeJ6GqYQCCjMkntfRkyP4tYHAVnjL10XJGeua2ToljOLCnGSY5WblqmmOd4c6SJ3un7VfiPYu1aDG0MRWv8J8lCR-r7_o1-woJ7BRQ89ZU9hdmT1uSV8IGU5/s1600-h/DSCN5188.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGDBf9zfcpFG93DeJ6GqYQCCjMkntfRkyP4tYHAVnjL10XJGeua2ToljOLCnGSY5WblqmmOd4c6SJ3un7VfiPYu1aDG0MRWv8J8lCR-r7_o1-woJ7BRQ89ZU9hdmT1uSV8IGU5/s200/DSCN5188.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230904757023023090" border="0" /></a>It was quite foggy and darn right cold when we pulled out of Ocean Shores this morning on the final leg up the Olympic Peninsula to the town of Neah Bay and the far Northwest Corner of the lower 48 at Cape Flattery. We left with every stitch of clothing we could have on to stay warm. In my case, a long sleeve t-shirt, our “commemorative” Corner To Corner t-shirts (still available at <a href="http://cafepress.com/tonyandgary">http://cafepress.com/tonyandgary</a>), a zip-up hoodie sweatshirt, and medium lightweight leather jacket – and even pulled out the big leather gloves for good measure. It was that cold, and rather ironic since two weeks ago we were looking for a baptismal font in Georgia to cool off in, and after a few miles in this we were looking for a hot-tub! While riding through the rain forest I turned to Tony and asked him if he was sure it was August.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf_nkXXIHo3t0quavdr6vAZC622vqeGEyoXyC1kMftmS6ZfBT_FZ0zFmQMv3THx4wWsPJ0J2tNM4-edzPGjw31w1cwXiZi6uUTWap6N2GAe_LdBWYpBu936yxCsaiP24x8uNrK/s1600-h/DSCN5208.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf_nkXXIHo3t0quavdr6vAZC622vqeGEyoXyC1kMftmS6ZfBT_FZ0zFmQMv3THx4wWsPJ0J2tNM4-edzPGjw31w1cwXiZi6uUTWap6N2GAe_LdBWYpBu936yxCsaiP24x8uNrK/s320/DSCN5208.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230903582208516834" border="0" /></a>Neither of us had ridden up this section of US-101 before, as it skirts the Pacific shore and goes through the Olympic National Park rain forest. Although it was foggy, what we could see was magnificent, and we’d like to come back again. As the day wore on the sun burned the fog off, although it stayed cool, and we continued up the 165 miles to the far northwest corner of the US. We rode through the small logging town of Forks, and shortly after found the turn off to Cape Flattery. It seemed so strange to think that the journey was about to end as we motored down WA-112 into Neah Bay and around to the point.<br /><br />We literally drove as far as we could in the parking lot for the short walk to the end of the<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbXw10VctQApxlhgKENpc0jSV61bJccWx4jvaO_6LUbcdYM3K4_iRWIvTcBhJmhjE_ClbwAk65kwUL43c_DFf1vKKhtbcsINnA3qkLyJf4NfaGH6fsaR6AI5CITRXqh5H0O-t/s1600-h/DSCN5214.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbXw10VctQApxlhgKENpc0jSV61bJccWx4jvaO_6LUbcdYM3K4_iRWIvTcBhJmhjE_ClbwAk65kwUL43c_DFf1vKKhtbcsINnA3qkLyJf4NfaGH6fsaR6AI5CITRXqh5H0O-t/s320/DSCN5214.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230903892925369922" border="0" /></a> earth. To tell the truth, I was actually kind of sad, and choked up. After all these days, and all these miles -- after crossing the entire United States of America, seeing things we'd never seen, places we'd never been, and meeting some great people, here we were – at the other end of the road. It was all coming to and end and I didn't want it to. As we pulled up with grins on our faces, the people getting out of the car next to us asked if we were having a good day. “A great day!” I replied, and they asked where we came from, and I answered “Key West”. The young lady who asked did a double take and said “Florida?” and we said indeed. We became instant celebrities in the parking lot – especially after we took off our jackets and they saw our commemorative t-shirts (still available at <a href="http://cafepress.com/tonyandgary">http://cafepress.com/tonyandgary</a> – did I say that already?)<br /><br />When we got to the point – which is a cliff overlooking the Pacific, there were a number of people there, and as we waited for a quiet moment to take a picture, people read our shirts and asked about them, so once again we said we’d just spent 15 days riding back from Key West. We had more than a few pictures of us taken, and then posed for one ourselves. So here we are, 15 days and 4,973 miles from the end of the road at Key West.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6hk_02rVFdwOYwG5UHpApO1THswugB_9QDUtOVc_i5VjXpp5blwgmokwN_c0MVgXTnMoZJux6wlLLy72QAMMbElhno0fM-xHGMbdHK-vZoZL6EsGp2P7NA4Ux32v_K4gMtnO/s1600-h/DSCN5220.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6hk_02rVFdwOYwG5UHpApO1THswugB_9QDUtOVc_i5VjXpp5blwgmokwN_c0MVgXTnMoZJux6wlLLy72QAMMbElhno0fM-xHGMbdHK-vZoZL6EsGp2P7NA4Ux32v_K4gMtnO/s400/DSCN5220.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230904382293006050" border="0" /></a>So, while the road ended at Cape Flattery, and at Key West, it really never ends as all you have to do is turn around and head out – and then just like the sky, the road never ends.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-2318069717557710082008-08-04T22:24:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:08.681-08:00Corner to Corner: Tony's PerspectiveOur travel blog is usually written by Gary while I take most of the pictures. However, today I thought I would contribute my thoughts as the trip has come to an end and what my thoughts are and have been... Tony<br /><br />This morning I stand looking out into the fog that has crept onto the beach of Ocean Shores, Washington and I think...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgnH92h6BiA0MVyPxhev-wbKh7vds5lhYXyvbA3DpSNyOYtPpHPLbqpLwtxfrm8XzCubkd7LD0rTTelNEfS2jqfT2ubGRkZi75GeMmrvu3uhXvrQpZXzU1rVkaNm2Igrs-TvbZdA/s1600-h/C2C_08042008_35.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgnH92h6BiA0MVyPxhev-wbKh7vds5lhYXyvbA3DpSNyOYtPpHPLbqpLwtxfrm8XzCubkd7LD0rTTelNEfS2jqfT2ubGRkZi75GeMmrvu3uhXvrQpZXzU1rVkaNm2Igrs-TvbZdA/s320/C2C_08042008_35.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230900960738245762" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Something has changed within me<br />Something is not the same<br />I'm through with playing by<br />The rules of someone else's game<br />Too late for second-guessing<br />Too late to go back to sleep<br />It's time to trust my instincts<br />Close my eyes<br />And leap...<br /><br />It's time to try defying gravity<br />I think I'll try defying gravity<br />And you can't pull me down</span><br /><br />Today is the last day of the Corner to Corner ride that I have been on since July 19th, when we left Miami (following the week I was there for GALA Festival 8) and rode our Harley's to Key West. Since then we have been making the trek across the country and meeting some fascinating people along the way...<br /><br />Four years ago, riding a motorcycle was only a dream. Even after I got my license and bought my first motorcycle (Suzuki Boulevard 800), my thoughts were only to ride around West Seattle and possibly Seattle once I felt comfortable enough. Then I had this idea to ride our motorcycles to Whistler for our annual Summer trip there and after only two and a half months of riding, Gary and I loaded up his Harley 1200 Sportster and my Suzuki and made the 300 mile trip to Whistler and then took 500 miles to get home across the backside of British Columbia. This 800 mile trip was the longest ride either of us had ever done and we realized that we really liked long distance riding.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I'm through accepting limits<br />Cuz someone says they're so<br />Some things I cannot change<br />But till I try I'll never know<br />Too long I've been afraid of<br />Losing love I guess I've lost<br />Well if that's love<br />It comes at much too high a cost<br /><br />I'd sooner buy defying gravity<br />Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity<br />And you can't pull me down!</span><br /><br />Since then, we have ridden across Scotland on rented Harley's, all across the Northwest while the Seattle Men's Chorus and Seattle Women's Chorus were on tour buses and last year all through New England after attending the wedding of my cousin in Mansfield, PA. As I stand looking out to the Western Sky, I feel like I have truly accomplished something incredible by riding the backroads of America from Key West to Neah Bay.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />So if you care to find me<br />Look to the Western sky!<br />As someone told me lately<br />Everyone deserves the chance to fly<br />And if I'm flying solo<br />At least I'm flying free<br />To those who ground me<br />Take a message back from me!<br /><br />Tell them how I am defying gravity<br />I'm flying high, defying gravity<br />And soon I'll match them in renown<br />And nobody in all of Oz<br />No Wizard that there is or was<br />Is ever gonna bring me down!!</span><br /><br />What happens next? I don't know but I am excited to ride into the unknown.Tony Gilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02635234578903200899noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-42804940764580571162008-08-03T19:13:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:09.670-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 14, Dusty towns left far behind, mountains drawing ever nearer...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwmeKD-4yE1SLFhk7vJyEal6Ik1Q_GsdzUvf8iDJjhQCTjuCNM8YcjMjUK1nFZgJXbcBDvN0v7NcQSUKiXVzTh_ge5faPF8IolgZWyS_Y6KcsRM60nUrR19if8z6OxeA7A7Xz_/s1600-h/DSCN5156.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwmeKD-4yE1SLFhk7vJyEal6Ik1Q_GsdzUvf8iDJjhQCTjuCNM8YcjMjUK1nFZgJXbcBDvN0v7NcQSUKiXVzTh_ge5faPF8IolgZWyS_Y6KcsRM60nUrR19if8z6OxeA7A7Xz_/s400/DSCN5156.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230480746524204018" border="0" /></a>The title for this chapter comes from a song by Canadian Folksinger Garnett Rogers about a night drive across Canada. It is quite fitting for our ride today, as well as for what we have planned tomorrow since the next line is “Dreaming of the Western Ocean”.<br /><br />We left Pasco, Washington (one of the Tri-Cities - the other two being Richland and Kennewick), or as I say “Try” cities since it “tries” to be a city) and headed West on US-12. At this point US-12 merges with I-84 for 70 miles or so to Yakima, but you know how we feel about Interstates, so we got off in the small town of Prosser and took WA-22 which is the old US-12, through the orchards of the Yakima Valley. This road runs parallel to the freeway, but it isn’t the freeway which is kind of the point. It reminded me of something Tony says while skiing and we have our choice of a blue run or a green run that get us to the same place, and he says “why take a blue run when there is a perfectly fine green run over here.” Same thing with this trip – why take the Interstate when there is a perfectly fine two lane.<br /><br />This morning, as well as last night, the bikes started conversations. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIriOSEm5ijuo35ojtmaxLU7G-zFIeDTcF3Iz6zIHaPJKellDcLYwOMhwHH9OaybdcI61CIquJ_TwZZOuSNYVUtS5aCU1X-_ncaZRiKEfh7eNJMi0AtMJbl4YYCAIwlVzPnTtN/s1600-h/lights.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIriOSEm5ijuo35ojtmaxLU7G-zFIeDTcF3Iz6zIHaPJKellDcLYwOMhwHH9OaybdcI61CIquJ_TwZZOuSNYVUtS5aCU1X-_ncaZRiKEfh7eNJMi0AtMJbl4YYCAIwlVzPnTtN/s200/lights.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230485978099118082" border="0" /></a>Last night we rode over to a Sonic Drive in for a late bite, and of course rode with the new LED’s glowing. A couple eating at the drive in came up and commented on the bikes, and asked about the trip. Then this morning a large contingent of Mexican wedding attendees were checking out of the hotel and two of the bridesmades wanted to pose with the bikes. It’s amazing how motorcycles start conversations and bring strangers up to you to ask questions.<br /><br />The road this morning was familiar – at least to me, I’ve ridden it several times already this year, but it was new to Tony. As we curved around out of Prosser, I could see Mt. Rainier rising up in the distance. I knew then we were close to home. Even though the Mountain is several hundred miles away, it dominates our view at home, as well as out here on the opposite side of the state. About this time on my i-Pod came Johnny Cash’s version of “I’ve Been Everywhere”, which is a fun tune listing hundreds of cities and is quite the trick to sing. It was rather appropriate as we rode towards Mt. Rainer and neared the end of this journey.<br /><br />In Yakima we turned West again on US-12 and headed up over White Pass and down into Western Washington. Mt. Rainier was close enough to touch it looked like, and it was a tad chilly on the pass and down the West slope. We stopped for lunch in Morton, and then<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ab3ZbeA0MVC-3aM75gjiMBGKNH1kuO2w7t37p1Sk7a-HBjdaQKx-mALkfdAEG3OYVk3MRt37eThbyBp4vKcJMhUVkvllR5ywBjguZUB8FRCEedXhaaD1p42hoK1hkNg53A1Y/s1600-h/DSCN5163.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ab3ZbeA0MVC-3aM75gjiMBGKNH1kuO2w7t37p1Sk7a-HBjdaQKx-mALkfdAEG3OYVk3MRt37eThbyBp4vKcJMhUVkvllR5ywBjguZUB8FRCEedXhaaD1p42hoK1hkNg53A1Y/s200/DSCN5163.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230481270271204818" border="0" /></a> continued on down 12 until it met up with I-5. Both the Yakima Valley and this part of Southwest Washington are the “Red” parts of a very “Blue” state. What few Republicans in the legislature are from here. There are billboards for the Republican candidate for Governor, Dino Rossi, that are too offensive for words, and every time I see one I tend to give it the one-fingered salute. They say “Don’t let Seattle steal the election again, Re-Elect Dino Rossi”. Now I’m not often proud, and in fact often wish I could de-annex myself from Seattle, but to say we “stole” the election or that Dino was elected to begin with is highly offensive. I was about to do it again here, and Tony was ready with the camera when an oncoming car pulled up and rather than risk them thinking I was addressing them, I skipped it.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD_CJk-5U3a7BXzP-5_ytmYv2XsiBxaIQ5ExUlka4496KQhgxN4XLHGxgRsY4PvH2qB3A94Jqh0KLm2J7rKrAYWujh_k8OY6KEamN4o2AdK87yQSTb4EbdO2QYiAVHSYKH4b06/s1600-h/DSCN5172.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD_CJk-5U3a7BXzP-5_ytmYv2XsiBxaIQ5ExUlka4496KQhgxN4XLHGxgRsY4PvH2qB3A94Jqh0KLm2J7rKrAYWujh_k8OY6KEamN4o2AdK87yQSTb4EbdO2QYiAVHSYKH4b06/s320/DSCN5172.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230481766932750466" border="0" /></a><br />When US-12 split off from I-5 just north of Centralia, we exited off and continued Northwest into Aberdeen, Washington. As we neared Gray’s Harbor it cooled off considerably and we had to get our jackets on. We rolled into downtown Aberdeen, which in it’s heyday apparently was quite the bustling town, but now feels like the worlds largest ghost town, with blocks of four and five storey buildings that are vacant and abandoned. This was a timber town, and years ago as the timber ran out, so did the town unfortunately, and now it’s just someplace to pass through on the way to the coast. It also is the literal end of US-12, which starts in Detroit, MI. We’ve run on a number of stretches of this road on this trip, in Michigan, as well as Minnesota, and have been on US-12 for the last two days since we left Billings, MT. It’s somewhat ironic and quite sad that this highway has it’s end points in two cities that are dead or dying.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhok8kpXLMkaUENO51sH4SXGhmNxAiPM9144bRoHiP1InLAqdEy8Ux_Op9VFgry_b0FF_kJskp4SjXJJ2Nptc0XhpMuVeZNeA3LuQkwjuCrDVrZEsVy5yeDmldcKvc4DqF_G1x/s1600-h/DSCN5174a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhok8kpXLMkaUENO51sH4SXGhmNxAiPM9144bRoHiP1InLAqdEy8Ux_Op9VFgry_b0FF_kJskp4SjXJJ2Nptc0XhpMuVeZNeA3LuQkwjuCrDVrZEsVy5yeDmldcKvc4DqF_G1x/s200/DSCN5174a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230483574354184946" border="0" /></a>Leaving Aberdeen we turned onto WA-109 for the ride out to the town of Ocean Shores and the Pacific Coast. This road is signed as a Tsunami Evacuation Route – just in case we spot a big tidal wave coming in from Japan.<br /><br />Right at the coast we ran into some fog as is typical here, and then turned onto the beach itself and rode up to the tide line. We turned the bikes off and realized we’d reached the Pacific Coast – we had ridden coast to coast, a distance of 4,808 miles over the course of 14 days. And while we’ve reached the coast, we aren’t done. This would be like reaching the South Summit of Everest and not going for the peak. Ocean Shores would be the equivalent of what Miami is to Key West on the Florida Coast – at the shore, but not as far away as you can get. Out here that would be Neah Bay, up in the far Northwest Corner of the Olympic Peninsula, and still over 100 miles away. We’ll head up US-101 to that corner of the country tomorrow and have completed our journey.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp-bDeJwKC1m2i3UoUcXGAAPEAvAiJLsPOBBEK_14zdb8a682kEg4hLxmBW4ss03xPzgAUNJAs00qqPXRVDc4tpYrHwAht-4U7OQDkW8BU7ftk6rICYA6QryL6d6C-VwmfTDNj/s1600-h/DSCN5180.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp-bDeJwKC1m2i3UoUcXGAAPEAvAiJLsPOBBEK_14zdb8a682kEg4hLxmBW4ss03xPzgAUNJAs00qqPXRVDc4tpYrHwAht-4U7OQDkW8BU7ftk6rICYA6QryL6d6C-VwmfTDNj/s320/DSCN5180.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230484020866685250" border="0" /></a>Meanwhile, we’ll sit and look out over the ocean from a nice hotel room with a fireplace, relax, and know that tomorrow we will truly reach the end of the road on US-101 and the other corner of the US from Key West on US-1.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-71213855817222064282008-08-02T19:34:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:10.737-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 13, Closer To Home<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzF77p7GUiEdH6C-heNmo5hb9HHnanjdktod7Wy9uxFnP6fmqm9JA95yFSx8newhylpKgj_r_ZJTb4plQdXKNtrzkQeL30Sn5WfCEzQDHNKwlD7T-pxzvpARhT9uTOUKZuBm88/s1600-h/DSCN5108.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzF77p7GUiEdH6C-heNmo5hb9HHnanjdktod7Wy9uxFnP6fmqm9JA95yFSx8newhylpKgj_r_ZJTb4plQdXKNtrzkQeL30Sn5WfCEzQDHNKwlD7T-pxzvpARhT9uTOUKZuBm88/s400/DSCN5108.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230115684458339330" border="0" /></a>One thing about bikers, you can almost always approach them and chat. We can spot each other a mile a away. In the small breakfast areas of hotels it’s very easy to spot the other bikers – most of the time we all have Harley shirts on for one thing. This morning at the Holiday Inn Express in Missoula we sat next to a table of guys from Michigan. We’d chatted briefly in the parking lot when we checked in yesterday, and met up with them at breakfast today. There is that commonality of interests that instantly binds you to each other, and we talked of places we’d been, and our ride in Michigan and it turns out they were from the same area. This morning they were headed south towards Yellowstone on a road Tony and I had taken a couple of years ago, so we gave them some suggestions, and we all swapped stories before heading out. It’s this way in every hotel we’ve been at – especially as we’ve headed West and run into the Sturgis bound traffic. Our hotel was also filled with a crowd of Hells Angels – actual Hells Angels. I’ve rarely felt intimidated, but these guys kept me on my guard.<br /><br />We headed West on US-12 this morning out of Missoula and up the Bitterroot valley. It was somewhat overcast, and I wore a long sleeve t-shirt, but we kept adding layers as we headed into the mountains and by the time we crested Lolo Pass we had shirt, sweat shirt, and leather jackets on. It was still a bit “wintery” up there. The road over Lolo Pass from Missoula to Lewiston, Idaho is a long and very lonely one. There are signs warning you to gas up before heading out, and it’s nearly 112 miles between stations. The Dyna has a 4.5 gallon tank, and I can get about 160 miles on it before I start getting nervous. Tony’s Geezer Glide has a 6.5 gallon tank and he can drive nearly 280 miles.<br /><br />As soon as US-12 turned up the canyon to the pass I noticed a smell I hadn’t smelled in a couple of weeks. I can’t really describe it, but anyone who has grown up in the mountains of the West knows it. It’s that fresh, crisp, clean smell you get along a brook or stream in a canyon. It’s not <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirWyIYMgBjRUU93r90ec8NyP2uikv9OgPvPi7gj-VSqO9DCwl2xNyojMSr61Olq3V_k4zn3DDfqvCUpNN8FaTHdZTF-vTc2mqJhLmoXv7L4OWL2Kp028MCDMcoHNdyvF6Mwu4D/s1600-h/DSCN5110.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirWyIYMgBjRUU93r90ec8NyP2uikv9OgPvPi7gj-VSqO9DCwl2xNyojMSr61Olq3V_k4zn3DDfqvCUpNN8FaTHdZTF-vTc2mqJhLmoXv7L4OWL2Kp028MCDMcoHNdyvF6Mwu4D/s200/DSCN5110.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230115981446407042" border="0" /></a>“piney” at all or “woodsy”, but it’s a scent that instantly takes me back to the mountains where I grew up. I didn’t smell it all in the mountains of the East – I think the air is too “heavy” there. You need dryer air, maybe some “altitude” as well, and of course less people. However, that scent told me that I was getting closer to home. And when we crossed the pass and into Idaho, we dropped into the Pacific Time Zone, and reset our watches one last time. Now we really are getting close.<br /><br />Dropping down the other side into Idaho we followed the Clearwater River all the way until it joined the Snake River in Lewiston. We watched this river grow from a trickle to a fairly good sized body of water – and all the way, the water was crystal clear. It was so clear you could see the rocks on the bottom.<br /><br />About half way down we stopped for gas and a break in the small town of Orofino. Across from the gas station the local girls dance team was having a bake sale, and all the girls, and a few of the moms were eyeing the bikes, so we rode over to say hi and grab a snack. They had a couple of card tables of home-made goodies, and we found a nice ziplock bag of white chocolate chip cookies. I asked how much, and they said, “as much as you want to pay, it’s a donation”. So I said how about $10, is that enough? It was, and they were all smiles, as were we because the cookies were quite good. We munched on them all afternoon on the road. Mom asked about where we were going and we recounted the story of Key West back to Seattle, and they all got bug eyed. One of the girls asked for a ride, but we had luggage all strapped on so we unfortunately had to decline. We hopped on and fired them up and they all smiled and waved as we pulled out. Nothing like a small town bake sale.<br /><br />We rode down into Lewiston, Idaho on the Snake River and our stomachs said it was time for lunch. We cruised Main Street looking for something interesting, and we saw a sign in a small<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjJmsVgi559LYs8tygLxdaNgHaKRlZr5ojrEekWj2ZLCm1VoOzjy6-5GjOlN-OBnt_op0q459JBymQhAh1dponQcfuwwPTW9NgyjKf7tMsiLF3W9RHupSV_6r0VcG-YeicahCg/s1600-h/DSCN5126.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjJmsVgi559LYs8tygLxdaNgHaKRlZr5ojrEekWj2ZLCm1VoOzjy6-5GjOlN-OBnt_op0q459JBymQhAh1dponQcfuwwPTW9NgyjKf7tMsiLF3W9RHupSV_6r0VcG-YeicahCg/s200/DSCN5126.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230116676739989458" border="0" /></a> brownstone downtown across from the railroad tracks that said “Effie Burger”. We did a nicely illegal U-turn and pulled up and went into this small tavern where every booth was filled and so we sat at the old-fashioned lunch counter. The first thing I noticed was the price. I’m not usually price conscious, but the menu said “Effie Burger - $17.” I turned to Tony and said “what the hell?” but by this time he’d spotted a picture on the wall. This thing was huge – it had to be a dinner plate sized thing. Fortunately they also offered “half Effie Burgers”. We each ordered a half burger, and I was hoping I was ordering from Effie, but it turned out it was Connie. She owned the place, I could see her name on the license. She apparently walked right off the set of the old Dick Van Dyke show, about as tall as a fire-plug and complete with Rosemarie hairdo and Laura Petrie capri pants. I overheard her age – approximately anyway, she said she didn’t need to sign up for Medicare for a few years. The burgers were fantastic, and she was happy we said so. We again had to tell her, and most of the people at the lunch counter about the trip, and how we were on the tail end of it. It’s amazing the number of people we run into who get that wistful look in their eye, and who have rarely been more than 200 miles from where they are sitting. We are indeed fortunate to be able to travel as we have.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVqQ8aoMZXWbi_b74hXj_lGPWnM9aLoMsSgBDN9KYagjtac_XMy8VdHba3TYcRaH6-9m3XkP3LfYt3iya5WX07Yt0PY_XFXCDoqa5z1oY8pqT0mDgUVubkLpHqQSjxUCectX2x/s1600-h/DSCN5128.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVqQ8aoMZXWbi_b74hXj_lGPWnM9aLoMsSgBDN9KYagjtac_XMy8VdHba3TYcRaH6-9m3XkP3LfYt3iya5WX07Yt0PY_XFXCDoqa5z1oY8pqT0mDgUVubkLpHqQSjxUCectX2x/s200/DSCN5128.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230118802782389058" border="0" /></a><br />It had warmed up to 85 so we changed out of our jackets and into sleeveless shirts and pulled out and back onto US-12 West, and crossed the Snake River into Washington. Home. Our license plates on the bikes were no longer out of place. And gas was still over $4 a gallon. We were most definitely home! It was interesting to note that places like Key West had cheaper gas than Washington where we have refineries and no transportation costs. Go figure.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2YpzHSzp5s59hPYILJz996ML6KuEfCQuoq87ckgE3O2xB4raHauJk4sXrK9DjR_3nFU8wUxqs1p1t0CV6lkkJQFM7MfkUJi-iuLE7m9Se2hn_weTUnjhy5Kl2TNW2wUIanYuN/s1600-h/ZZWei2005.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2YpzHSzp5s59hPYILJz996ML6KuEfCQuoq87ckgE3O2xB4raHauJk4sXrK9DjR_3nFU8wUxqs1p1t0CV6lkkJQFM7MfkUJi-iuLE7m9Se2hn_weTUnjhy5Kl2TNW2wUIanYuN/s200/ZZWei2005.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230118213263265554" border="0" /></a>Roaring down US-12 towards Walla Walla and Pasco we passed through what is known as the Pallouse. It’s a huge wheat growing area of Washington, and perhaps the nicest scenery of the day. Rolling hills of dry farmed wheat and small groves of trees, red barns and small grain elevators. The first crop had been harvested and the stubble was still not plowed under, and the next crop was ripening nicely, so as far as you could see were golden fields of grain. One of my favorite artists is a guy named Z.Z. Wei, and he paints the most magnificent paintings of the Palllouse. Compare his painting to the actual and you'll see.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3IihCrsi-5IKIBwz6V9xO1NGyqjrJsDW72VCzir9-gFc1JR9cmtWky0kSa4LEaubf1X0VybhhZhFtw_KH-OkHvpb2QX3Jo0RahEHat25keKVgGwxsCcAsOqOgIISl5TLHHIAg/s1600-h/DSCN5130.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3IihCrsi-5IKIBwz6V9xO1NGyqjrJsDW72VCzir9-gFc1JR9cmtWky0kSa4LEaubf1X0VybhhZhFtw_KH-OkHvpb2QX3Jo0RahEHat25keKVgGwxsCcAsOqOgIISl5TLHHIAg/s320/DSCN5130.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230117740001526610" border="0" /></a>We zipped through Walla Walla and into Pasco for the night – traveling some 369 miles today. It was a nice relaxing day as a road trip should be. Tomorrow we’ll continue further west on US-12 until it ends and actually hit the coast of Washington at Gray’s Harbor, and then Monday morning motor out to Neah Bay – the far northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula, and then home to Seattle. We’ve lost track of the days of the week, and when retelling our trip to folks, we have to say, “when we were in Indiana – what, 8 days ago?” and things like that. I have to confess as well that as we pulled into Lewiston, Idaho, we passed a junction for US-95 South – which goes south through Idaho, and into Nevada and Arizona, and a road I took back in May on a solo bike trip, I got to thinking, Hmmm, maybe we don’t need to go home after all.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4J8YRWxVq7_uQCY16iC3fNaDhncWEiOcp-widS09MGbJlq838PIRvfNEmxmD0sdqhbzr4zwr_sJUjoV9VBlHvCFPRUYAsq2bgE-LQxPQl6DNABqmWEuFK8uRNjha1hfgfFSEO/s1600-h/DSCN5132.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4J8YRWxVq7_uQCY16iC3fNaDhncWEiOcp-widS09MGbJlq838PIRvfNEmxmD0sdqhbzr4zwr_sJUjoV9VBlHvCFPRUYAsq2bgE-LQxPQl6DNABqmWEuFK8uRNjha1hfgfFSEO/s320/DSCN5132.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230122433803605058" border="0" /></a>Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-43346140346642426172008-08-02T07:46:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:11.839-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 12, My God Montana is a Big State<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1fDhoDJcgYgtH9N6s_akQCzx8BGp9nGfi_DfUGJV2AELFw3JzkHina7FhSWRUYBNidUJ1LssE01bSpJLPQvGU3QBPi04aBAzvQWc9FuvEvhS-ggUCIxAnTx6QntoA5NzqyP5Z/s1600-h/DSCN5074.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1fDhoDJcgYgtH9N6s_akQCzx8BGp9nGfi_DfUGJV2AELFw3JzkHina7FhSWRUYBNidUJ1LssE01bSpJLPQvGU3QBPi04aBAzvQWc9FuvEvhS-ggUCIxAnTx6QntoA5NzqyP5Z/s400/DSCN5074.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229932327887557618" border="0" /></a>Mile marker numbers start at 0 on the west and south ends of states, and get larger as you go north or east. When one is traveling across a state, east to west like we are, you can see how far you have to go just by reading the mile markers. Montana is a freakingly large state. When we got onto 1-90 yesterday at Crow Agency, MT, southeast of Billings, the mile markers on I-90 were in the 500s. And although we didn’t travel much of the Interstate on Friday, we are still in the 100s in Missoula. This state just never ends.<br /><br />It was cool when we left Billings – I had on a long-sleeve t-shirt for the first time this trip. However, once again the sun was shining and not a cloud in the sky. We headed north on MT-3 to where it picked up US-12 West. As is usual in these sparsely populated areas there was little or no traffic. I was able to put my feet up on the travel pegs, stretch out and enjoy the sun shining on me. Going up hills on straight runs at 65 mph or around gradual curves with my feet out and arms up, it almost feels like flying as you bank into a gradual curve, or climb up into the sky. A lot of riders like tight quick curves, and they too are fun, but these long gradual curves where you can lean into them, stretched out like an eagle flying are what I really love. In fact a couple of times I got so lost in it I actually lost sight of Tony (and his buddy Sturge) behind me.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLCF6poZQncB74hZ_TJNANTxt2D-4hl0o81mP4Xi-wapsiS07_Rl2Y9BCdivyEv2MQuUrNHr84PyVexsq2B3hLYOuup_QTpT73eTGqkSLlCiA0dOnc1g0FFzdyu1mO_duBky3C/s1600-h/DSCN5085.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLCF6poZQncB74hZ_TJNANTxt2D-4hl0o81mP4Xi-wapsiS07_Rl2Y9BCdivyEv2MQuUrNHr84PyVexsq2B3hLYOuup_QTpT73eTGqkSLlCiA0dOnc1g0FFzdyu1mO_duBky3C/s200/DSCN5085.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229932668200027906" border="0" /></a>In Montana, the American Legion puts up a marker wherever someone has died along the road. They are small white crosses, and judging from the number we saw, both on US-12 and on other roads when we were here two years ago, Montana appears to have a disproportionately high number of highway fatalities. It’s actually kind of creepy to see these markers all up and down the road.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsDY9S97zu9pOO7x6nZBj6imaM4U-qu0F3VC1vVqHiPzIMPh1rr92x4v_p8JCedNDd_SfKVJJDV-8ajmouGCWRP5FYs3DYjtQzWplAncKzFYh1UJydzLmcOF1-FYyQsZGXueFY/s1600-h/DSCN5096.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsDY9S97zu9pOO7x6nZBj6imaM4U-qu0F3VC1vVqHiPzIMPh1rr92x4v_p8JCedNDd_SfKVJJDV-8ajmouGCWRP5FYs3DYjtQzWplAncKzFYh1UJydzLmcOF1-FYyQsZGXueFY/s200/DSCN5096.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229932978947051650" border="0" /></a>At one point US-12 merges with US-89 – and I had a chance to have the same moment Tony had back in Michigan when we were on US-41 and US-2. US-89 is the main street in my home town of Salt Lake City, and it also is the main street where I spent a number of years, Tempe, Arizona. US-12 heads back to Seattle. It’s one of those crossroads in life that appear on the horizon, quite literally in our case on this trip, and I think it makes for a great visual.<br /><br />You have a lot of time to think and contemplate while riding a motorcycle, and my mind tends to be all over the map, from work and relationship problems, to song lyrics, to philosophy, to curiosity, to contemplating how life has changed over the years. Take for example bales of hay.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjueX6mtyjwa6iVgxkKruu7cBGBoAo2qlGeAvGhmJdxUyOuSHAlHAojkD0VuomJ4KWimJQZ-xKii7tUt0IpMJwyw3VW_WB3KDJN7qfrRJqlBypAik2ghr5jEXv_axo249rDAzLS/s1600-h/DSCN5086.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjueX6mtyjwa6iVgxkKruu7cBGBoAo2qlGeAvGhmJdxUyOuSHAlHAojkD0VuomJ4KWimJQZ-xKii7tUt0IpMJwyw3VW_WB3KDJN7qfrRJqlBypAik2ghr5jEXv_axo249rDAzLS/s200/DSCN5086.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229933376214928226" border="0" /></a> Huh? Bales of hay? When I was a kid we’d go visit my uncle Ted on his dairy farm in Southeast Idaho. I was – and still am – fascinated by farm machinery, and how much like Rube Goldberg contraptions they tend to be. Its one of the reasons we stopped at the Farm museum back in Minnesota. Anyway, one of the cool machines Uncle Ted had was a hay bailer. It scooped up the hay, compressed it into blocks, bound it up, and spit them out the back like a Pez candy dispenser. Rows of perfect little green blocks that ripened in the sun into yellow hay bales, which then got stacked into building sized piles. This was the ONLY field we saw this trip with normal hay bales.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbOm2dqc8ITnFusXRK182AMyInQ9FHY25V1_ga5l0v55PiH52Vd2VYxe8htXZCoxSwugC09PaDKZtH5-QX8XFwZWOgQgxnqDthPz96ygDn7raV6z4ejXOh9vWNb_TOo2JI8WqN/s1600-h/DSCN5076.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbOm2dqc8ITnFusXRK182AMyInQ9FHY25V1_ga5l0v55PiH52Vd2VYxe8htXZCoxSwugC09PaDKZtH5-QX8XFwZWOgQgxnqDthPz96ygDn7raV6z4ejXOh9vWNb_TOo2JI8WqN/s200/DSCN5076.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229933715611411954" border="0" /></a>Apparently now days however, bales are made into huge minivan sized round balls. These things don’t stack into nice haystack sized things, and they are so massive you have to have a forklift to move them. All these hundreds of miles we’ve traveled in farm and ranch country in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Montana, only once have I seen the square hay bales – and everywhere else it’s been field after field of minivan sized round balls. The sad thing is that the farm boys won’t build up nice muscles tossing square ones around anymore. What a shame.<br /><br />We kept heading west on US-12, and of course passing what seemed like hundreds of bikers headed east to Sturgis, which gets rolling officially today. At one point we were riding through a hay field and ran into a cloud of grasshoppers. These little monsters HURT at 60 mph, and they make a big mess on the bike and on me – it felt like I was getting shot by a bunch of bb’s, and by the time we got to Missoula they were stuck in every crevice of my bike and we had to go spray it off at a car wash. Tony, in the Geezer Glide, with all it’s faring did better – all that plastic blocked then from hitting him, but his bike was plastered as well.<br /><br />We started to get hungry as we were pulling into Helena, and Tony and Sturge pulled along side to ask where we should eat. I did my hand signal of making a swirly motion on top of my head which is Gary’s universal sign for “small drive in with a vanilla soft serve cone on top”. Tony just rolled his eyes, but I had another thing planned as a surprise. Tony’s buddies in Minneapolis have been raving about a regional chain called Taco Johns, and I had seen a billboard for one outside of Helena. Tony lit up when I signaled and pulled into the Taco Johns and couldn’t wait to get in. To me it was the same as any chain taco joint – just OK, but he was a happy guy.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPtUjRdcwnGQXSqK93FjNbaturbvlcc4bUMUmKBqvaAxnBELf02KV78gdjX5agsu1txyE-l7gmJgQeCvcYXCuLpou9C8rvA-Np8eJBm48lGxoNL0JsxNF97s4NQE1evu-pUKYp/s1600-h/DSCN5106.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPtUjRdcwnGQXSqK93FjNbaturbvlcc4bUMUmKBqvaAxnBELf02KV78gdjX5agsu1txyE-l7gmJgQeCvcYXCuLpou9C8rvA-Np8eJBm48lGxoNL0JsxNF97s4NQE1evu-pUKYp/s320/DSCN5106.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229934070695111090" border="0" /></a><br />Wile we were sitting there I was contemplating our route and what to do. We still had many hundreds of miles to get out of Montana, and we had wanted to complete the ride on Sunday. The more I looked at the map, the more I saw how far we had to go, and more importantly the distance between towns with hotels. We had a couple of options at this point, neither of which we really liked. We could stay on I-90 and blast to Idaho and maybe as far as Spokane, or we could take US-12 and try to get to Lewiston, ID. Both of those options would involve almost 600 mile days, and we were just barely at 250 miles at that point. We would be riding well into the evening. We had to make our mind up at Missoula where the roads diverged. While we were eating a fellow diner who over heard us talking told us we needed to stop by the “Testicle Festival” up the road. He said some “Hells Angels” were there, but we should have fun anyway. Eating castrated calf testicles with Hells Angels – hmmm, sounds like fun in my book. Neither of us thought twice when we passed the billboard at the exit for the festival.<br /><br />We rode West out of Helena and US-12 merged with I-90 again for 70 miles into Missoula. As we merged onto the freeway it was hot, and we faced into a strong head wind. In addition there were lots of trucks, and truck ruts on the road, and more than a few hundred bikers headed east. Getting buffeted by high winds, dodging 75 mph traffic on an Interstate, and realizing we’d be on this for some time was not a pleasant thought. I remembered as well what has become my “Prime Directive” if you will. We ride on the road to HAVE a good time, not to MAKE good time. Yes, we wanted to get Neah Bay on the other corner on Sunday. But in order to do that we’d have to sacrifice the enjoyment of the road trip itself – which is why we are on it. I realized then that we could call the kennel, have the dogs stay another day, and finish the ride on Monday. We could stop in Missoula for the night having done 356 miles. We’ll do another 300-400 on Saturday, taking US-12 which we haven’t done and ending up in Washington somewhere, then another 300-400 on Sunday, getting us to the Washington coast That way on Monday we finish it by riding up to Neah Bay, and then back to Seattle.<br /><br />So, that’s what we’ll do. We will be on the road an extra day, and that’s a good thing. Never forget the Prime Directive of a Road Trip. Travel on the road to have a good time – not to make good time.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-38265610375024222432008-07-31T21:34:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:13.900-08:00Corner To Corner - Chatper 11, The Wild Wild West<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh1_XDO6szeoc3JM65_Y1stqcwbx1xLIeWXpZgR3nJGsGhXn_Tpc2UhJGSEbBpyt7T2Eg0S5ql8SusA3nMJvuL8MmLKvVXp2lpiMdKwhiaDOIYov-TVlW5Hv1oJfY24To9RlID/s1600-h/DSCN5055.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh1_XDO6szeoc3JM65_Y1stqcwbx1xLIeWXpZgR3nJGsGhXn_Tpc2UhJGSEbBpyt7T2Eg0S5ql8SusA3nMJvuL8MmLKvVXp2lpiMdKwhiaDOIYov-TVlW5Hv1oJfY24To9RlID/s400/DSCN5055.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229407823433449938" border="0" /></a>Another warm and sunny day this morning as we loaded up outside the Holiday Inn in Sturgis. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWntDBkLXq58TKn30E20K6eaTNZ1e4M2R58fj0B9dnFMTlr5JG3g0P8Q7FQZrK0FUM_ZhudG-h2AgSPa8QrqglmUc5oAGio3WhT3KZ5Ff-vcVwjfZnq-MG4HFi1y1thT0FCh9Z/s1600-h/DSCN5042.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWntDBkLXq58TKn30E20K6eaTNZ1e4M2R58fj0B9dnFMTlr5JG3g0P8Q7FQZrK0FUM_ZhudG-h2AgSPa8QrqglmUc5oAGio3WhT3KZ5Ff-vcVwjfZnq-MG4HFi1y1thT0FCh9Z/s200/DSCN5042.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229405447685492562" border="0" /></a>We wore our “biker” ripped off sleeve button up shirts we bought yesterday for the ride out, after making one last loop through the Sturgis Main Street. Loading up the bikes every morning is a little ritual – hauling the suitcases downstairs, strapping them to the bike, putting my note-pad and pen to take notes with and my I-Pod in the tank bra, taping up my directions on the yellow sticky note, and spraying on sun-screen, strapping the helmet on, and so on. Tony and I do our glove touch and roll out.<br /><br />After our detour down Main Street one last time, we headed West<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6_84JtYCUifqYiXIkE4DUZG_a8hFkfyJhumh6q7WlhbHdpGTj-mzxlyFubtpl1L8qBT9pudObj4po4e8C0cgp3qrr6rEjt1cgjfSjZNQbWtwiRisyOSqZq9ovmBLSRwMHjJhW/s1600-h/HondaGoldwingTrike.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6_84JtYCUifqYiXIkE4DUZG_a8hFkfyJhumh6q7WlhbHdpGTj-mzxlyFubtpl1L8qBT9pudObj4po4e8C0cgp3qrr6rEjt1cgjfSjZNQbWtwiRisyOSqZq9ovmBLSRwMHjJhW/s200/HondaGoldwingTrike.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229408080969599234" border="0" /></a> on SD-34. More and more bikers came in, and we passed an endless stream of them on the road headed towards Sturgis. I realized we have to come back and spend some more time as. As it gets closer to the rally starting, more vendors are arriving and setting up. One we saw setting up this morning was doing trike conversions on Honda Goldwings. Tony said "hell, might as well add a fourth wheel and call it a Civic". Everyone we talk to says we should come early and leave early before the crowds, which sounds like a plan to me for next year.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh901DdkDxKUO-dTATyiMfMS1bGEOxcTfqQvFf4jwQrh14PAh6RlqidmcKoorRDiK0KCZM9y7w7ZspSNpW515zRL9X3dLzNewaG8ZJpUxSxA8kdbV2IlnNphKg2jiZhntsrWIIX/s1600-h/DSCN5047.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh901DdkDxKUO-dTATyiMfMS1bGEOxcTfqQvFf4jwQrh14PAh6RlqidmcKoorRDiK0KCZM9y7w7ZspSNpW515zRL9X3dLzNewaG8ZJpUxSxA8kdbV2IlnNphKg2jiZhntsrWIIX/s200/DSCN5047.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229410040176344674" border="0" /></a>We headed up into the Black Hills on SD-34 towards the town of Belle Fourche. This town has intrigued me for quite some time. One of my favorite movies is “The Cowboys” one of John Wayne’s last movies. If you recall the movie, there are no cowboys to take the cattle to market, so John Wayne hires out the school kids – all 12 years old or so. He gets killed along the way and the cattle stolen and the boys become men by rounding them up and killing the guys who stole the cattle and then driving them into Belle Fourche. So for that reason, plus it sounds somewhat “romantic” in an old-west kind of way, so I wanted to see it. It was a small, charming town, with a lot of old west flavor still, and a rail-head with a large cattle lot – and to this day it’s used just like it was 100 years ago when the movie was set.<br /><br />I got Tony a little biker bear that rides on his windshield as we left this morning -- its our 12th<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ3Nipcry_VOtQFRIbSFtZF1_HhOX4EsH0R1BgHILLrgQcRHwUWSzUtb5d2lGeteqhE5ir7nhAFKWEvCL0GOv5copr_duwFp3Wvtkz1xoGH0K4mxxX2eg9XeweuJUOgk2MCOtE/s1600-h/DSCN5052.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ3Nipcry_VOtQFRIbSFtZF1_HhOX4EsH0R1BgHILLrgQcRHwUWSzUtb5d2lGeteqhE5ir7nhAFKWEvCL0GOv5copr_duwFp3Wvtkz1xoGH0K4mxxX2eg9XeweuJUOgk2MCOtE/s200/DSCN5052.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229405879307876386" border="0" /></a> anniversary and this guy will keep him company on the long stretches as we head home. We turned west on US-212, which cut across the corner of Wyoming. As soon as we crossed the Wyoming line I felt I was getting closer to home – though not “home” as in Seattle. I grew up in Salt Lake City, and we spent a lot of time in Wyoming when I was younger – although it was the opposite corner the Southwest one. Still I was in Wyoming and that means we’ve come a long way from Florida and are getting closer to home.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNmE4JKz4jUG-E0QZz0xMTw6-BH3C9OFWEYtcU6skmH7HfLwgnOBCtqfp6mfQnLi-e8fkIUvu31YKA-bIz8YmXKFtkc5-LOlT4EKscR_jNiK80pSbM6ojvOjYOuNIxZU14FLaG/s1600-h/DSCN5050.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNmE4JKz4jUG-E0QZz0xMTw6-BH3C9OFWEYtcU6skmH7HfLwgnOBCtqfp6mfQnLi-e8fkIUvu31YKA-bIz8YmXKFtkc5-LOlT4EKscR_jNiK80pSbM6ojvOjYOuNIxZU14FLaG/s200/DSCN5050.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229408623335061682" border="0" /></a>One thing about the far west, the towns are a hell of a lot further apart. Even in sparsely populated South Dakota, we had small farm towns every 25 miles or so. In Wyoming and Montana, it’s more like 80! You go long long long stretches without passing a single car, or even a farm house. Somewhere in the middle of the Powder River Valley in the SE corner of Montana we stopped at the only town we’d come across, Broadus, MT, and the only gas station to fill up and get a drink.<br /><br />As we were filling up a group of riders headed towards Sturgis pulled in. By coincidence they were members of a Harley Owners Group Chapter that’s affiliated with the Marysville HD Dealer. Small world. We chatted for a bit, and as we were wearing our Sturgis shirts they asked how it was and this was their first trip. Since we have been we are no longer Sturgis virgins so we could fill them in (like we know anything, but I guess we looked like grizzled veteran bikers). They were all excited to go, until I asked them where they were staying and they answered “we don’t know we’ll figure it out when we get there.” I guess I had a look on my face as they said, “you don’t think that’s a problem do you?” Lets see, 10,000 bikers invading a town and you don’t have a hotel reservation. Yeah, I think so. We quickly gave them the number to the Holiday Inn Express we stayed as as they had mentioned they had some cancellations and told them to get on their cell phone now. As we pulled out we could see them huddled around one guy who was on the phone – lets hope they got something.<br /><br />A bit further West on US-212 we ran into every biker’s nightmare. Road construction. Miles of<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDovLVJkNKl32OfPG08NkIlh3Cs__D5b8u_p24LqIlc1b-mX6rHlYEe7sLUKp7WrVa6eUCbHf8U9cJ3lFT4ch5a5f6ZkbOWHLl6aTUZ6flSl7nRvxeukPlbfschVUEPRIv5xIi/s1600-h/DSCN5062.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDovLVJkNKl32OfPG08NkIlh3Cs__D5b8u_p24LqIlc1b-mX6rHlYEe7sLUKp7WrVa6eUCbHf8U9cJ3lFT4ch5a5f6ZkbOWHLl6aTUZ6flSl7nRvxeukPlbfschVUEPRIv5xIi/s200/DSCN5062.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229406777285966434" border="0" /></a> it. It appears they were widening and repaving the highway, and it involved us riding for about 9 miles on dirt and gravel – very slowly – and waiting for pilot cars in the heat. Fortunately the flagman walking the line said “why don’t you guys cut to the front of the line so when the pilot car gets here you don’t have to wait behind all these trucks.” Needless to say we jumped at the chance. I don’t know why they needed to widen the road though – we maybe passed 10 cars in 50 miles – there just ain’t a lot of traffic out here.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9SJGnbQ2dtLtY1Zg3tslkgpQleZqolloYTNkjdssIZdre0uE_wxsBL84FsjTpMvngAyko2uMEXKbDC_qwrASXY7NPBVLLMVmggUsdiL1ZbD3uw-X6GWyjd69Gpsn0pJqiX94/s1600-h/DSCN5061.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9SJGnbQ2dtLtY1Zg3tslkgpQleZqolloYTNkjdssIZdre0uE_wxsBL84FsjTpMvngAyko2uMEXKbDC_qwrASXY7NPBVLLMVmggUsdiL1ZbD3uw-X6GWyjd69Gpsn0pJqiX94/s320/DSCN5061.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229406320135270978" border="0" /></a>It had started to get a bit hot and dusty as we rode across the Crow Reservation, so we stopped at a small town with a great Indian name – Lame Deer. There were two restaurants – one a bar with a sign that said Welcome Bikers, and had about 6 bikes in front, and the other, a café that said “Shakes”. We opted for “Shakes”, and were sorely disappointed that their ice cream machine was broken. This was also a local gathering spot, and the food was good, so we didn’t mind.<br /><br />Unfortunately US-212 merges with the dreaded Interstate 90 at Crow Agency, Montana – where Custer’s Last Stand was fought. I felt like I’d been over-run as well having to get on the Interstate, but we had no choice. It also seemed like the rest of the biker world was headed to Sturgis while we were headed in the opposite direction. I’ve never seen so many bikes headed east on the freeway and on US-212. We didn’t pass a single bike headed West. In a way it makes me wish we were headed back that way. Fortunately it was only 60 miles to Billings, MT where we have camped out for the night.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8g2aHMusYAPEdG-HS9FckW4oy0GKcRCoKV3mxYFkNdt5CEl0DOczP9mEUH7clzlqqzO024srLSIFJJpRvKcNvqd7e19Yz_sC6hPSmnIWQsyCFAlurdWe6gJ0HannSbFF-kzjy/s1600-h/DSCN5051.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8g2aHMusYAPEdG-HS9FckW4oy0GKcRCoKV3mxYFkNdt5CEl0DOczP9mEUH7clzlqqzO024srLSIFJJpRvKcNvqd7e19Yz_sC6hPSmnIWQsyCFAlurdWe6gJ0HannSbFF-kzjy/s320/DSCN5051.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229409095146059586" border="0" /></a>Today was also about the last stretch of unknown road for us. Virtually all of the remaining route home is on roads we’ve ridden before. Indeed we are getting closer to home.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-19223875976236618362008-07-30T20:41:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:15.457-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 10, STURGIS!!!!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3n2EoQE3SVoq6ZGI0VJF2eI272MB62v0o0xQIhK6AoHGxAUZSeC0B26igmtbkQIEaIfQ0HCnp-taOQuALW_kNBOddBnCtnzmzoJwTq8AJQSGjwpKyFLDT93Tn-uhx2gYH0UMb/s1600-h/DSCN5001.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3n2EoQE3SVoq6ZGI0VJF2eI272MB62v0o0xQIhK6AoHGxAUZSeC0B26igmtbkQIEaIfQ0HCnp-taOQuALW_kNBOddBnCtnzmzoJwTq8AJQSGjwpKyFLDT93Tn-uhx2gYH0UMb/s400/DSCN5001.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229018873868845138" border="0" /></a>Oh boy did it feel good to sleep in – and an extra hour too since Sturgis is on the Mountain Time Zone. We really are headed west, and it’s noticeable as we cross time zones now. Sturgis is like Mecca for bikers. All we’ve ever heard since we started riding was “are you going to Sturgis” “Have you been to Sturgis”, “When are you going to Sturgis?” And even though the rally hasn’t technically started, we are here now, along with thousands of other bikers. Good Lord I’ve never seen so many bikers in one place, and this is apparently just a drop in the bucket of what’s to come.<br /><br />This small town is completely overrun by bikers in August every year, and the town turns into<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGufJg_UZOone1vEOLOGhRH1O10LI7oLaf0wQ_DD2LV5VNl4hn-VFyjom_vRu9kXJ-QsX5iWeCBsqhNCoq7Jn2XWh2pGTkvI5ANx2VWym6EQfikFwCjXb_zco6AsmE5FAf1zP8/s1600-h/DSCN4995.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGufJg_UZOone1vEOLOGhRH1O10LI7oLaf0wQ_DD2LV5VNl4hn-VFyjom_vRu9kXJ-QsX5iWeCBsqhNCoq7Jn2XWh2pGTkvI5ANx2VWym6EQfikFwCjXb_zco6AsmE5FAf1zP8/s200/DSCN4995.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229019386444105474" border="0" /></a> one huge motorcycle event. The vendors are already set up or in the process of setting up. I’ve never seen so many t-shirt vendors in my life. But along with the t-shirts, leathers, patches with cute, funny, and obscene sayings on them, and biker accessories galore, all the major accessory vendors and bike makers are here, along with the custom chopper crowd, and enough food vendors to make the Puyallup fair look small. The one thing they were lacking is Port-A-Potties. We were drinking quite a bit because of the heat and all that water and soda had to go somewhere. The vendors all told us they don’t put the Port-A-Potties out until later in the week when the crowds really get big, and so we had to keep ducking into bars to use the facilities.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjh4xOF524eDXKFGStehM_vUl_n46azH0E9LwIv4IJO1CQuAYBVNnBoHfBjk3GWiXWHnHB1-3CzAOnRlJHB7ECybFlC488OEU9kFzkwLdp2HN_-Z7rXsuR4nUt50QnkkKQE_rk/s1600-h/DSCN4999.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjh4xOF524eDXKFGStehM_vUl_n46azH0E9LwIv4IJO1CQuAYBVNnBoHfBjk3GWiXWHnHB1-3CzAOnRlJHB7ECybFlC488OEU9kFzkwLdp2HN_-Z7rXsuR4nUt50QnkkKQE_rk/s200/DSCN4999.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229019084122675330" border="0" /></a>Tony and I spent most of the morning wandering among the bike vendors and t-shirt shops. Yes we bought some, I’m not telling you how many, but suffice to say we have to ship some home. We bought some accessories for the bikes, and Tony splurged and got his Big Blue Bike all decked out with blue LED lights. Tom and<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT7SX-X8nvJlhmBhik1gGOsq5OoFgDCHbAKGceA3EvbAE_qAqIg-mZsxHDsJgA8ChPSFAUvtMWFNfxR5ZDyjMxlorYzTy5PVDw8g1UtA-ReWzjdzp4fOxlhf6EHejvwd-h8U9y/s1600-h/DSCN5041.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT7SX-X8nvJlhmBhik1gGOsq5OoFgDCHbAKGceA3EvbAE_qAqIg-mZsxHDsJgA8ChPSFAUvtMWFNfxR5ZDyjMxlorYzTy5PVDw8g1UtA-ReWzjdzp4fOxlhf6EHejvwd-h8U9y/s200/DSCN5041.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229070919856883906" border="0" /></a> Dwayne from American Custom Cycles in Houston did a fantastic job, and boy does it look cool! These guys came up from Texas and do the bike shows installing lights and air horns and such. They set up an outside garage next to their 5th Wheel trailer and go to work on bikes during the rally. It took about an hour to wire up Tony’s bikes with the lights, which are sure to be a head turner when we cruise Alki on summer evenings.<br /><br />It’s was quite hot wandering around Main Street in Sturgis, but getting on the bikes felt good after we started moving. Bikes and bikers as far as the eye can see. I kept getting hit on by girls too – who’d ask me if I was here with my wife or girlfriend, and I learned to reply, “now why would I bring my wife OR my girlfriend here – I couldn’t have any fun”.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXiwUhVADhClF2jxDt0gvA1NIu7RUeiGgUo8jjwMY_Tlc7Bx9BP14WAcqbWRXHp8TsFzQBUZkbA21wq8Ajhe0IeEUFmAw2j2spyfToeOD7jN6cf-clnZBPmI1wdVfD2VlOx-_s/s1600-h/DSCN5007.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXiwUhVADhClF2jxDt0gvA1NIu7RUeiGgUo8jjwMY_Tlc7Bx9BP14WAcqbWRXHp8TsFzQBUZkbA21wq8Ajhe0IeEUFmAw2j2spyfToeOD7jN6cf-clnZBPmI1wdVfD2VlOx-_s/s320/DSCN5007.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229019856779595938" border="0" /></a>We let it cool off a bit by relaxing around the hotel pool, and about 3pm decided to head out for a ride up to the Crazy Horse memorial and Mt. Rushmore. I have to say the Black Hills of South Dakota are really something. It was cool, the air smelled of pine, and the roads twisty. We went on a nice loop up through Deadwood and Hill City on US 14 and US 385. Deadwood and Hill City were nice old mining towns now turned gambling towns, and the bikers were everywhere, lining the streets and riding the highways. A car was indeed a rare sight.<br /><br />The Crazy Horse memorial was amazing, and the scale is hard to contemplate. It is no where near being done, and my bet is that it never will be. When you compare it to Mt. Rushmore the size becomes evident. The head of Crazy Horse alone is as big as the four heads of Mt. Rushmore.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwlv5LHVH-tNqt1MfyTO7H-Ww3LYiFYnqx1ZcRsj2oXkJmm14uZIK2tB0FnE1lcjMHaq8or_Pun3YYMLh4F-bWzHaDZVJ_zFYHzha0CMheYES6-jg0S0VzthnqjDbg7uvK07kz/s1600-h/DSCN5010.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwlv5LHVH-tNqt1MfyTO7H-Ww3LYiFYnqx1ZcRsj2oXkJmm14uZIK2tB0FnE1lcjMHaq8or_Pun3YYMLh4F-bWzHaDZVJ_zFYHzha0CMheYES6-jg0S0VzthnqjDbg7uvK07kz/s200/DSCN5010.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229020348571216098" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The loop was about 150 miles, and we rode it without helmets. My mother is going to have a conniption fit at that, but you know there was NO ONE riding with a helmet anywhere. We’d have been the only ones. (Yeah, I can hear it now, “and if everyone jumped off a cliff would you too?”) Nonetheless it was a bit un-nerving and not something we’ll do on a regular basis. But I have to confess it sure felt nice.<br /><br />Riding down Sturgis’ Main Street at dusk with Tony’s blue lights was cool, and the town is up and partying for some time. I imagine this place becomes quite the zoo in a few days when the rally really gets going. I’m almost wishing we could stay, despite how I hate crowds. We rode past the shop where Tony got his lights done and told them all the positive comments we were getting -- and it made me want them on mine. So at midnight, these guys put the Dyna up on the lift and outfitted it with some hot red LED lights. Tony has his blue, I have my red, and we'll be the hit of Alki on summer evenings!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaAM7xy_XM3oHZ5r-sx0E-m9zkHpxgJCYY8cHIZXAVkJiIORPFKfC-WAjwcxv0Hy2zz3vVOeU79ZWN1eOorZ9DyJ3BfxPYx97elJ7AZetGi_ccod3S3z5QLTQIcp_ugB9lqCSV/s1600-h/DSCN5040.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaAM7xy_XM3oHZ5r-sx0E-m9zkHpxgJCYY8cHIZXAVkJiIORPFKfC-WAjwcxv0Hy2zz3vVOeU79ZWN1eOorZ9DyJ3BfxPYx97elJ7AZetGi_ccod3S3z5QLTQIcp_ugB9lqCSV/s320/DSCN5040.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229071499770620594" border="0" /></a>Tomorrow we’ll head out, maybe find some time to swing by Devils Tower before we head northwest into Montana and Billings or beyond.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-87362110046035424692008-07-29T21:49:00.001-07:002008-12-13T04:41:16.627-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 9, Conversations With Dusty<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSBuQqBNunHRAnZZyVLh-qnmZ0wnxCABdorm00lnPlBOAnwqfP7cD7QmZB7RDYkQEV7L6Nh8xWwRWzk7iSp3-mFLncpPFcMr54ZtF9AbP37-9slifzhhlsYHpQZFy_v9Bh0APs/s1600-h/DSCN4955.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSBuQqBNunHRAnZZyVLh-qnmZ0wnxCABdorm00lnPlBOAnwqfP7cD7QmZB7RDYkQEV7L6Nh8xWwRWzk7iSp3-mFLncpPFcMr54ZtF9AbP37-9slifzhhlsYHpQZFy_v9Bh0APs/s400/DSCN4955.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228665195266173842" border="0" /></a>Does it count on the Corner To Corner Ride that I didn’t ride the motorcycle 129 miles today, yet the motorcycle and I are in Sturgis, South Dakota as is Tony who rode 345 miles, while I only rode 216 on the bike and for 129 miles the bike and I rode with Dusty in the tow truck? Do I still get credit?<br /><br />Harley Roadside Assist sent over a very talented young tow truck driver named Dusty, who was<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrzpHzwtB1bZtk-BEwU0RC_Y-gprU9dn3E-5zR-hKJraqHscz84qfdSFfLK3pNQRDrWxn8QpjxWQfnLDcKuP0HVjf33chATrOyN3flwifG46U3ASVlhx2VnK7tJhnpxZkVdiku/s1600-h/DSCN4952.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrzpHzwtB1bZtk-BEwU0RC_Y-gprU9dn3E-5zR-hKJraqHscz84qfdSFfLK3pNQRDrWxn8QpjxWQfnLDcKuP0HVjf33chATrOyN3flwifG46U3ASVlhx2VnK7tJhnpxZkVdiku/s200/DSCN4952.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228669227018442274" border="0" /></a> able to get the bike up on the flatbed with no problems. He and I set out in the truck for the 129 miles to Pierre, while Tony rode behind on the Geezer Glide. There was a fair amount of road construction over dirt roads which were rough in the tow truck, and I could hear Tony cussing at it from 100 yard behind. It took us two hours to get to Pierre in the tow truck, and Dusty asked about the ride, and was a bit wistful since he said he’s never been out of the Midwest. He’s 27, and this is his family business – along with his Dad and brother. He was born and raised in Huron, and bought his first house – a 2200 square foot place on a quarter of an acre for $60,000! Needless to say he was shocked at Seattle housing prices. Huron is the pheasant hunting capitol of South Dakota, and Dusty says they experience an invasion of hunters every fall. About that time a pheasant flew out of the ditch and about knocked Tony off the bike! And of course they have that huge pheasant statute in the entrance to town. We talked of farms and crops and how they tow big implements out of the field when they get stuck. Dusty had more than a few stores of wrecks, and trucks plowing into wandering cattle and such.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEida-aH_r9z3qpVBJ4bN3hVhW3Xx-hm2fs8dPBk2cmBrwDo0YC8PNkZJ4yjTEIJ5yiuhX4q7_5BDc76Ql2Ur3RYTmCK9_WUXZ9fR1sutXg6FjaPrWktFsLSEllF-dq1pLl77rqh/s1600-h/0729081006.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEida-aH_r9z3qpVBJ4bN3hVhW3Xx-hm2fs8dPBk2cmBrwDo0YC8PNkZJ4yjTEIJ5yiuhX4q7_5BDc76Ql2Ur3RYTmCK9_WUXZ9fR1sutXg6FjaPrWktFsLSEllF-dq1pLl77rqh/s320/0729081006.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228665534508390402" border="0" /></a>He asked me if he had a few days to drive and see some scenery where should he go? I said “Go West”. Head up to Montana – see some mountains. He’d been to Detroit to see an old High School buddy and hated it, but he seemed intrigued about Seattle and why I loved it so much.<br /><br />The two hours flew by, and we pulled up to the Harley Dealer in Pierre at noon. Dusty got the bike down and pushed into the dealer, where they tinkered with it and Tony and I went to the Longbranch Saloon for lunch (no Miss Kitty or Marshall Dillon). It was very hot in Pierre, almost 100, an we were feeling it when we walked back to the dealer. They hadn’t figured out what was wrong yet, so we sat, and we sat, and we sat, and we napped, and we sat some more. About 4pm they said that they had gotten it to act up once, but had not been able to get it to do it again – and they had tested and probed and run everything and couldn’t figure out what the problem was, and that it had started 15 times in a row with no problem. They charged me $60 and sent me on my way.<br /><br />Our goal was to be in Sturgis tonite and spend a day here before the big Black Hills Motorcycle Rally starts later this week. In order to get their quick, and be along a well traveled route incase the bike acted up again, we decided, much to my dismay, to take I-90. It’s 225 miles to Sturgis via the freeway, and at 4pm in the afternoon heat, just a ton of fun. The freeway cuts like a knife through the prairie – and through my heart. It was long, straight, hot, and full of trucks. It didn’t move with the land, pierced it like an arrow. I would have rather continued on US-14 and SD-34 the back way through the Black Hills and taken the back way, but we thought it was wise to stick to the well traveled road. As it was the bike behaved and we had no problems.<br /><br />South Dakota has a 75 mph speed limit on the freeway, and at that speed you get a lot of wind noise. I’ve been riding some with my I-pod, but with that much wind noise you have to have LOUD music on to overcome it. I had a playlist of what people my age consider rock and roll – things like the Eagles, Marshall Tucker Band, Styx etc. This playlist I had labeled “Fast Ski<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJfiXwxbACnLMMMxb3L25rR3eje7wDHC1BsGlIVOUxqhhAtne5JQQ8qp5WP1UHYFXcLACmnOhgWVw7qqf6IKtV4XqLZnyw3jq_optSsx6IWe8Z50w0M0W7pk4pb2xmIJZ8mbsw/s1600-h/DSCN4971.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJfiXwxbACnLMMMxb3L25rR3eje7wDHC1BsGlIVOUxqhhAtne5JQQ8qp5WP1UHYFXcLACmnOhgWVw7qqf6IKtV4XqLZnyw3jq_optSsx6IWe8Z50w0M0W7pk4pb2xmIJZ8mbsw/s200/DSCN4971.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228665902083368530" border="0" /></a> Songs”, for songs that I like to listen to while skiing fast. Apparently there are also a few show tunes and movie tunes on here – including songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. So picture it – I’m riding along, feet out on the travel pegs – arms level on the ape-hanger handle bars, arms very tan and muscles bulging from having to hang on at 75 mph, a glare on my face, doing a little seat dance, and foot tapping, and looking like a weathered grizzled old biker – singing along with the I-pod “I’m just a sweet transvestite, from transsexual, Transelvania…” No wonder the truckers were giving me odd looks.<br /><br />So, despite singing along to Rocky Horror and a few other oddities, the time passed very slowly on the ride up I-90. The country was interesting – grasslands as far as the eye could see, and I <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ3rZJQtxFhzn5tuiuC4Tgrql-oh0t2CksG_Ro4dHx0Dld23y8QkovK_fPs3FsYF154MX28qONSd3gJ3SHITV4z0ymerrhgWr8o1eNufVJnfU6vESvzmgfT7lUmaVoPY_9Syn_/s1600-h/DSCN4974.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ3rZJQtxFhzn5tuiuC4Tgrql-oh0t2CksG_Ro4dHx0Dld23y8QkovK_fPs3FsYF154MX28qONSd3gJ3SHITV4z0ymerrhgWr8o1eNufVJnfU6vESvzmgfT7lUmaVoPY_9Syn_/s200/DSCN4974.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228666116667618258" border="0" /></a>felt like I was riding through the set of “Dances With Wolves”. Apparently Lady Bird Johnson didn’t remember South Dakota when she had billboard taken down off the Interstates. This stretch is lined with them – all for upcoming tourist things. Places like Wall Drugs, Wonderland Cave, and Gator World. I imagine this is what the old Route 66 and other major roads looked like back in the day – and to be honest, I kind of liked it. It helped pass the time, and had we had some extra, we might have stopped in on a few of them just for the silliness factor.<br /><br />As we got closer to Rapid City and Sturgis, the countryside changed from the grasslands to some very pretty hills and I’m looking forward to riding through them tomorrow as we explore the area, and take in the experience that is Sturgis. We went into town for dinner, and already the vendors are setting up and there are a lot of bikers in town early. We’ll avoid the crowd and still have some fun. By Friday this street will be lined with 10,000 bikes!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8dTZET5lkvsa6c66aAM0G1wEszJfubLbRz7h4tHkZiS5cfLLzF7xljeeZfphxnrdG_6vxjx5vR-9YXJkj3hV2NlcMVBHa1lz-06ekatd164SwSTZ84LXpQf_Ex9tGS62j9aXS/s1600-h/DSCN4985.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8dTZET5lkvsa6c66aAM0G1wEszJfubLbRz7h4tHkZiS5cfLLzF7xljeeZfphxnrdG_6vxjx5vR-9YXJkj3hV2NlcMVBHa1lz-06ekatd164SwSTZ84LXpQf_Ex9tGS62j9aXS/s320/DSCN4985.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228667072203784850" border="0" /></a>I-90 is right outside the door, and we could take it straight back to Seattle and be home in a day – but I’ll be damned if we will.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-14128732205345408422008-07-29T06:48:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:16.897-08:00Corner To Corner - Broke Down!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgidCKWBrtaHgOxrWbAvPXltNQp-1u_5iPp_npUsA9HQRty093nMgAF36cs40hujlzU06gTPE7ImW1Fbsjgoc8eaU5BxYlvQXIoEulNmn7v9tyOyRL9-bdhQILc3klKZiT-Vc18/s1600-h/photo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgidCKWBrtaHgOxrWbAvPXltNQp-1u_5iPp_npUsA9HQRty093nMgAF36cs40hujlzU06gTPE7ImW1Fbsjgoc8eaU5BxYlvQXIoEulNmn7v9tyOyRL9-bdhQILc3klKZiT-Vc18/s400/photo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228434420069477778" border="0" /></a><br />There is a song by Texas songwriter named Brian Burns that has a line that goes:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"I don't know why the hell I drove this far, and I wish I could be back there where you are, but I'm broke down in Tulsa, on a cold and rainy morning, crying on the shoulder of an Oklahoma highway, hoping I can get home.."</span><br /><br />Well it isn't quite that bad, I'm in a hotel parking lot in Huron, SD. However the Dyna's electrical problems have resurfaced, and she won't start, and I don't get any indication of any sort of electrical system or indication of power at all. My ignition key has been sticky for the last few days, so I'm suspecting that's where the problem arises.<br /><br />We have Harley Road Side Assist, which will tow the bike to the nearest Harley-Davidson dealer. From Huron, South Dakota, there is one in Watertown, SD, which is 112 miles <span style="font-style: italic;">back</span> the wrong way, or one on Pierre, SD, which is 119 miles the <span style="font-style: italic;">right</span> way we are headed - West. In dealing with Roadside Assist, the nice lady, who stuck religiously to the script she was given, insisted that they tow it to Waterton, even though it's the wrong direction, because it is the closest dealer. I offered to pay the 7 miles difference. I suspect that HOG will get a strongly worded letter when I get home.<br /><br />Nonetheless, Road Side Assist is a great buy at $38 a year, for unlimited tows on the road to the nearest HD dealer.<br /><br />We'll keep you updated as things progress -- but right now we are back in the hotel room waiting for the tow truck to show up.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-2909537494947509922008-07-28T20:32:00.001-07:002008-12-13T04:41:18.366-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter - 8, Somewhere Out On the Prairie<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQMVXZmxH1fk4zszv9xH-fWGmMWk_JJTgFh-JD77ZFbDS1rCU1XBN0_wP9xzeB5FMv_27h1VwQrf3_xO9QnfUDyZcYwt_7IqhZMy4jZPnaLTn2OGszAO0ZoCUk4lHh3vAQwwC/s1600-h/DSCN4908.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQMVXZmxH1fk4zszv9xH-fWGmMWk_JJTgFh-JD77ZFbDS1rCU1XBN0_wP9xzeB5FMv_27h1VwQrf3_xO9QnfUDyZcYwt_7IqhZMy4jZPnaLTn2OGszAO0ZoCUk4lHh3vAQwwC/s400/DSCN4908.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228274212188392530" border="0" /></a>It was good to rest for a day in Minneapolis and not ride a few hundred miles. After six straight days of hard riding, we needed it. We left Minneapolis late as well to avoid the commuter traffic. There is nothing worse than being on a motorcycle, in a strange big city, trying to read confusing freeway ramp signs, getting lost in a tangle of ramps that looks like a can full of worms, and dodging rushing commuters who are on auto pilot. As it was the short trips around Minneapolis on Sunday meeting up with friends were trying – and we missed ramps twice and ended up going all over town. It was a very pleasant morning once again, and we left Minneapolis in t-shirts. Riding along in the warm sun – bare arms out, fists in the wind – there is nothing to compare to the feeling, and I could ride for hours like that. We’ve really lucked out with weather on this trip – other than the two rain squalls, we’ve had sun. However, earlier in the day as I was noting out the route west and seeing how damn far we still had to go, I actually found myself thinking “maybe we could ship them home and just fly…” I know, a crazy thought eh? But truth be told, another day’s rest would have felt nice.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2DPCGukuIzBvyI1S441uhz0S75xNICcS8yFKYXvxsTxS5VyGyxbv4NtjoQ0YI-79iydW0s-wt1PS5ZXq81sd8Mu3Eesuguja7O9nWysMw3hG27lfWmQYNIp7Ll2ap_VCCMMCT/s1600-h/DSCN4900.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2DPCGukuIzBvyI1S441uhz0S75xNICcS8yFKYXvxsTxS5VyGyxbv4NtjoQ0YI-79iydW0s-wt1PS5ZXq81sd8Mu3Eesuguja7O9nWysMw3hG27lfWmQYNIp7Ll2ap_VCCMMCT/s200/DSCN4900.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228279091714559250" border="0" /></a>We headed southwest on a tangle of freeways out of Minneapolis, aiming for US-212 West, and out onto the Minnesota Prairie. Riding along this nice two-lane out on the prairie is great. It’s not so flat and boring, (like Florida), and the towns are about 15 miles apart. You can see them start to rise before you – grain elevators and silos – then you ride through a nice small town main street with two story brick buildings, and past the grain elevator and the farm implement dealer and out onto the prairie again – watching the town disappear in your rear view mirror. You ride through a few miles of corn or soy beans, and the next town starts to rise up before you – towns like Hector, Bird Island, Oliva, and Danube. Out here they still have 4-H and FFA clubs and town parks sponsored by the Rotary Club. If it’s a county seat, there’s usually a fancy courthouse built at the turn of the century. It’s really what middle America is all about.<br /><br />Out here on the prairie we’ve lost the Baptists and their reader boards demanding that I ACCEPT HIM!!! And we’ve landed, as Garrison Keilor says, out amongst the Lutherans. Lutherans are not nearly as preachy as Baptists apparently and all the towns have a nice large Lutheran Church and the reader board only lists the Sunday service hours and when the next Church Supper is. Every town also has an implement dealer. I like the John Deere ones – with their green painted tractors. These beasts are huge! Especially the combines and corn harvesters. They dwarf most houses and no doubt cost as much.<br /><br />We turned south on MN-23 and found ourselves motoring through the small town of Hanley<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ffb_fnrDs1wNUxUxYZkshLjYy09DdrSCHm3J09GTharVgVJrSNS2J9kuumShhAXqEx2brA-gcr8Y0q42zqa84qiopJlkCo-sMcB6b7Wed_uDZ2KhB_lbLrWXlBthDp2r1E4R/s1600-h/DSCN4920.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ffb_fnrDs1wNUxUxYZkshLjYy09DdrSCHm3J09GTharVgVJrSNS2J9kuumShhAXqEx2brA-gcr8Y0q42zqa84qiopJlkCo-sMcB6b7Wed_uDZ2KhB_lbLrWXlBthDp2r1E4R/s200/DSCN4920.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228274790615421634" border="0" /></a> Falls. Just outside of town we passed an antique tractor with a sign saying “Farm Implement Museum” with an arrow pointing to the town, and since we needed a break, we pulled in. The museum is housed in the town’s old school building – a two story building put up by the WPA in the 1920s. This is a classic old school, where Ruth the caretaker told us the town had all 12 grades up until 1965. On the hall walls were the class pictures over the years – in 1960 the high school class had 7 graduates. In 1964 they had 14. Evidence of the baby-boom in action. The ceilings were 20 feet high, and the doors all oak. All the rooms were filled with old farm implements and equipment, antique cooking stuff, cool “feed” signs, and the like. They must have cleaned out every barn in the County for this collection, including a bunch of old tractors in a garage out back! And inside, on a shelf, was a small bottle labeled “Mt. St. Helens Ash”. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSgQ-bBXWGl93YUYgBa6Qfco6LBqd_Nl5Ul-YwTFOOsvqNNCAIHqUDyclJAG-XNK0Svi4Iu3PXbksB7vN8i69pu7ySJwe4zisURCCDDc25AjgMMHSOAil0Myeickl3NE60PVcN/s1600-h/DSCN4918.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSgQ-bBXWGl93YUYgBa6Qfco6LBqd_Nl5Ul-YwTFOOsvqNNCAIHqUDyclJAG-XNK0Svi4Iu3PXbksB7vN8i69pu7ySJwe4zisURCCDDc25AjgMMHSOAil0Myeickl3NE60PVcN/s200/DSCN4918.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228274492479290178" border="0" /></a>Hey, something from back home, all the way out in a museum in Hanley Falls, MN. Ruth had us fill out and sign the guest book and we put a pin on the map in Seattle – the only one from Washington. I guess the Farm Implement museum doesn’t get a lot of traffic. We gave them $20 in their donation bin and headed back out on MN-23, looking for a place for lunch.<br /><br />The next town up was Marshall, and according to Ruth at the museum we’d be able to find something there. I told her we didn’t want to do “chain” places, we wanted real food, and I wanted some place with a swrily vannila ice cream cone on top and she assured us we would find it In Marshall. I had grave reservations however as we rolled south as the sign for the “Adopt a Highway” litter pick up was for the Marshall Starbucks. Now as an investor in Starbucks, I appreciate that – as a connoisseur of road food, any town with a Starbucks means the hunt for real food will be hard. It was. We cruised down the main drag – finding nothing but Mc Donalds, Carls Jr., Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Applebees, and then hidden off in the corner of a motel was “Mike’s Café”. It wasn’t a chain. So we did a U-turn and headed in. It was the best decision of the day.<br /><br />Our waitress brought us menus and water and asked where we were from and going to – the typical question everyone asks traveling road bikers. We told her we were riding from Key West back home to Seattle, and said “ you are crazy!”, paused for a minute and said “Seattle” her eyes lighting up. Yep, we replied, she asked “what part”? We told her West Seattle and she said she lived in Puyallup for two years. Her name is Karen, and her husband took a job out there so they packed up and moved out for a couple of years despite being born and raised on the Minnesota prairie. She didn’t look it but she said she had a 20 year old son and a 16 year old daughter, and, she’d move back in a second. She said her son was in a class of 70 in Marshall, but graduated from a class of 900 in Puyallup, and she was grateful for the diversity and culture of Washington. She said she could talk with us all afternoon about Seattle, and how nice it was there, and how pretty and green, and the water, and the mountains. She just gushed – and we had to agree since neither of us can imagine living anywhere else. They were sad to have her husband’s job transfer him back to Minnesota.<br /><br />About that time a table full of characters right out of the Andy Griffith show wandered into the<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-_UVJX_NG0X9Di1dKYTf2Fuav_rgRhkQvd0GSv3wkFAEa010siaYQHQfg9YF4DnvJlaM6e2nEZta0P3g_cGFJbcPZGmrqF6_-lk0Zh_uD_bN_CRYDRNP-_8R7jyvqPRKtaG-y/s1600-h/DSCN4926.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-_UVJX_NG0X9Di1dKYTf2Fuav_rgRhkQvd0GSv3wkFAEa010siaYQHQfg9YF4DnvJlaM6e2nEZta0P3g_cGFJbcPZGmrqF6_-lk0Zh_uD_bN_CRYDRNP-_8R7jyvqPRKtaG-y/s320/DSCN4926.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228275760290781490" border="0" /></a> café, including a deputy sheriff. I overhead someone say “tornado warning” and indeed the sky was getting dark. I decided to wander over and ask about it, and was invited to sit down for a moment. There was a mention on the weather about the conditions being ripe for a tornado, although there was no watch or warning. One of the farmers said he’d had one cross right in front of him last week and it took off the roof of a barn. I asked them “what should I do if we spot one”, and was advised to get in the ditch as quick as I could, and if possible crawl into a culvert. At my size, I don’t think there are many culverts that I could crawl into. They told me what to watch for, and said to listen to the radio. I’ve been teasing Tony about his “Geezer Glide” with all its gadgets, but right now I was very glad to know he had a radio. Then one of the guys said, “say hello to my sister in Enumclaw for me”. Small world indeed – at a café in Marshall, MN, we run into two connections to home – a waitress who would love to go back to Puyallup, and a farmer with a sister in Enumclaw.<br /><br />For dessert I had peach pie and Tony had some sort of pudding concoction that was out of this world. Karen talked about how she missed the flowers from Pikes Place Market, and that it’s a big conspiracy to tell people that it rains a lot in Seattle. We settled up, and the farmers all wished us a safe ride, one of them even coming out to show us what to watch for in the sky. However, as an omen of things to come I noticed across the street from Mike’s Café a new Arby’s under construction – with the sign saying “Coming soon – the Excitement is building”. I think not. Lets hope that Mikes’ Café stays in business a long time.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkhc_7GHZjuLDUdNLMSpNM46OHoHCHZaEPWtfIOx8WN-hTUX5BBflapGMr7QrsYJnpgZOM-3XocIb6xeOzXGp5Zf7atxGhcqY84u1Bt66oYTP67ZF2ZML9hVblrk9RBZ07gfZz/s1600-h/DSCN4924.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkhc_7GHZjuLDUdNLMSpNM46OHoHCHZaEPWtfIOx8WN-hTUX5BBflapGMr7QrsYJnpgZOM-3XocIb6xeOzXGp5Zf7atxGhcqY84u1Bt66oYTP67ZF2ZML9hVblrk9RBZ07gfZz/s320/DSCN4924.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228275246834635490" border="0" /></a>We headed out, underneath a dark sky, keeping a watch out for swirling clouds, and flying cows, and passed the local BNSF Freight train. I was very nervous looking for any sign of a twister, but Tony kept an ear on the radio and said nothing was being reported. We passed a huge windmill farm with hundreds of giant windmills out in the corn. These things were gigantic and really fascinating to watch.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXepAktFXqiGUV0U5pKVi8OJDRCNhCxGN4U7jSDy4KXPqsperu7-46rj3y4Uzm3k2T5snkeHJp9iI5zo95x6ycX2C_ztsZ7MKZ3tEAZqTm4gRp0OtX_CeFV2dhCnzQeD58vyU/s1600-h/DSCN4939.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXepAktFXqiGUV0U5pKVi8OJDRCNhCxGN4U7jSDy4KXPqsperu7-46rj3y4Uzm3k2T5snkeHJp9iI5zo95x6ycX2C_ztsZ7MKZ3tEAZqTm4gRp0OtX_CeFV2dhCnzQeD58vyU/s200/DSCN4939.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228276956535826738" border="0" /></a> A bit further down the road we turned West on US-14 towards the South Dakota state line. We also passed our first “Wall Drug” sign of the trip. This famous South Dakota tourist mecca in Wall, SD is famous for having signs all over the world pointing you to this kitchy little place. You know you are getting into the West when you run into Wall Drug signs on the highway. Us-14 is also signed as the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway”, as it apparently connects several of the settings from her “Little House” series of children’s books.<br /><br />We crossed into South Dakota and up the highway we came into DeSmet, SD, which has a warring faction of Laura Ingalls Wilder booster clubs – one with the actual house they claim, and one with the “homestead”. The homestead is about a mile off US-14 and on a dirt road. I turned down it. Tony’s big geezer glide doesn’t handle all that well on dirt roads, so by the time he rolled up five minutes after I got there I got a look that said we should keep going. So we kept rolling west towards our destination – Huron SD, not wanting to contribute to the 21st Century’s South Dakota equivalent of the Hatfields and McCoys or having to endure Tony’s look.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkEpxB5cnRqrdgmVz_juo-ffvw1N2Xb_o-VmWoTORyd0oe1MA34etQGi-mRDDe8RSsfRUrHkaPk5k_QZpQuB7fZG8wsYHhf7A2J8dsAETFCG4fn6scuCL5c47wwE4iqud58rLt/s1600-h/DSCN4950.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkEpxB5cnRqrdgmVz_juo-ffvw1N2Xb_o-VmWoTORyd0oe1MA34etQGi-mRDDe8RSsfRUrHkaPk5k_QZpQuB7fZG8wsYHhf7A2J8dsAETFCG4fn6scuCL5c47wwE4iqud58rLt/s320/DSCN4950.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228278085104262194" border="0" /></a>We settled in for the night in Huron, SD after riding 297 miles today, and had dinner at a local dive that deep fried everything. Now we have a spectacular lightning storm to watch, along with listening for a tornado warning siren. Huron is the home of the "World's Largest Pheasant". <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWjKFH1dTwRkk1NPK_3jWVV3qBnazYoxfA4GMKWFndoePrUCMFFrcNhw4AyLDYyuCtzC5zXu0zfxc5dWCbHFT_yqY_VYIFpZHmEbpPawRsDkDhr4Bkg97zRgMc1C7Y1iILzO8m/s1600-h/Pheasnt_HuronSD.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWjKFH1dTwRkk1NPK_3jWVV3qBnazYoxfA4GMKWFndoePrUCMFFrcNhw4AyLDYyuCtzC5zXu0zfxc5dWCbHFT_yqY_VYIFpZHmEbpPawRsDkDhr4Bkg97zRgMc1C7Y1iILzO8m/s200/Pheasnt_HuronSD.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228288901614203778" border="0" /></a>My bike is acting up with some sort of electrical malfunction, but I was able to get it started after dinner and am hoping we can nurse it to an HD Dealer down the road. Tomorrow, we’ll take a short ride into Sturgis, SD. Now the famous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally doesn’t officially start until next week, which is why we could get a hotel room! We plan on spending the day exploring – there should be a number of early arrivals and folks setting up, plus riding to see Mt. Rushmore and Devils Tower. Then on Wednesday, we’ll keep heading West towards home.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-60454539874815983812008-07-27T09:03:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:20.093-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 7, The Pasty Highway<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_yeX2a8QnBHHw8xxg8t2tU524NgtbFjtINAAXK9TFX7vTfBQmKC9KtYFQelRe-9pIsTyJXSY5_8MMgrD6JVxO7glj4CysF6LB_cRwSH8hJJJzdv5hFzhMRAHZv1d1sMtj12BH/s1600-h/DSCN4861.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_yeX2a8QnBHHw8xxg8t2tU524NgtbFjtINAAXK9TFX7vTfBQmKC9KtYFQelRe-9pIsTyJXSY5_8MMgrD6JVxO7glj4CysF6LB_cRwSH8hJJJzdv5hFzhMRAHZv1d1sMtj12BH/s400/DSCN4861.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227725614893545314" border="0" /></a>The rain had washed the air clean and it was a cloudless morning when we rolled out of Manistique, Michigan on the Upper Peninsula about 8am. We are definitely in the north woods, as it was quite cool and again we needed our jackets, and the bikes, as well as any surface was covered with large bugs that looked like a cross between a mosquito and a crane fly, and if they teamed up could fly away with a small dog. Fortunately they didn’t bite.<br /><br />We rolled West on US-2, which goes through the north woods of the U.P, and which I have now<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYujGFyIlBCME_39wjjjWEvNR6iiKOlbMg-tRoKrZULXOO4KaA4iZHhyYBHisnVqwd6_BNYuSfqX8TQDUQNqCNwzExeibMd1LiuJRdKY3GUk_XTrE_UOYOECsjiLQ3e24NJ4j7/s1600-h/DSCN4862.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYujGFyIlBCME_39wjjjWEvNR6iiKOlbMg-tRoKrZULXOO4KaA4iZHhyYBHisnVqwd6_BNYuSfqX8TQDUQNqCNwzExeibMd1LiuJRdKY3GUk_XTrE_UOYOECsjiLQ3e24NJ4j7/s320/DSCN4862.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227727889772237618" border="0" /></a> named the Pasty Highway. You see the road is lined with lots of small Ma and Pa motels and fishing camps, and even “tourist cabins” that were built in the 40s and 50s – most of which are still in business. These are the kinds of motels that used to line all the major highways before the chains took over, and it was almost like a step back in time. Almost all of them had big signs saying “PASTIES”, reminiscent of the “FRUIT’ stands that line the highway outside of Wenatchee and Yakima, or espresso stands in Seattle. I wondered if there was some sort of college for strippers nearby and there was a cottage industry of making the little tassel things that they put on their boobs. Tony, having spent time up in the U.P. said that they are “kind of like a Scottish sausage roll – a pastry filled with meat and potatoes or veggies, and they remind me of a beef stew.” However, that early in the morning, none of them were open yet, however one of them advertised on their reader board:<br /><br />Pasties<br />JESUS SAVES<br />$35<br /><br />So I have to ask, if He showed up at this little motel would He save $35 on a box of pasties while the rest of us paid full price?<br /><br />In Escanaba, Michigan we set our watches back an hour as we entered the Central Time Zone. We’ve been in Eastern Time for the last week as we’ve come up North from Florida, so this really does indicate we are headed West towards home. Outside of Escanaba US-2 is joined by<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuwxGmosGsIg0eecTczqX8VNwF8jjVe_X95wdBdG2ih8lZ5IoB2dbTRHT7bRTpSyaRDJGfuaUn5oOUD0H-S2Bxe8zg6nLtJ_dGD6todoYsy5Mu8AA-PEL3YHcsVKvDHbqndmYE/s1600-h/DSCN4873.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuwxGmosGsIg0eecTczqX8VNwF8jjVe_X95wdBdG2ih8lZ5IoB2dbTRHT7bRTpSyaRDJGfuaUn5oOUD0H-S2Bxe8zg6nLtJ_dGD6todoYsy5Mu8AA-PEL3YHcsVKvDHbqndmYE/s200/DSCN4873.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227726730696428930" border="0" /></a> US-41. If you recall, this is also the Tamiami Trail in Florida and what we rode across the Everglades, and is a main street in Tampa, Tony’s hometown. Looking at the map, US-41 runs from Miami up to Marquette, Michigan. I’ve always loved the visual image of highway signs, and their connection to places that mean something to me. For instance, US-89 runs north and south through Salt Lake City and the West. While I lived in Phoenix, it was my connection to home – I could be on US-89 and know that if I just followed it, like Dorothy followed the Yellow Brick Road, it would lead me home. I felt a kind of peace when I got homesick if I walked US-89 in Tempe. So here we are in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, about as far away from Seattle and Tampa as we can get, and what do we come across? A junction that split US-41 South from US-2 West. We pulled up and reflected on that -- it was a telling moment for Tony – the pull of his two homes. He could go West on US-2 home to Seattle, or South on US-41 to his hometown of Tampa. We’ve gone through a lot this year, and this trip through the U.P. had been a retrospective for him as the last time he was here 12 years ago he was ending his relationship. We sat there for a bit and reflected on things, and then pulled back onto US-2 West.<br /><br />Outside of Spalding, Michigan we rode past an outdoor display of finely cut iron work – images<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC1XZxpG_Hw6kpwg3iR_2Y4F81ZtIp0oIKIAPT1QqcBueE1hYgt95YJgPxDDo2Vj5IRokb4kENZTICtifXrTC-wdsEV4TFwiHX0rjNcVB7ssJpfdNp6m0J8vhv2yKIAbWH7fY6/s1600-h/DSCN4870.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC1XZxpG_Hw6kpwg3iR_2Y4F81ZtIp0oIKIAPT1QqcBueE1hYgt95YJgPxDDo2Vj5IRokb4kENZTICtifXrTC-wdsEV4TFwiHX0rjNcVB7ssJpfdNp6m0J8vhv2yKIAbWH7fY6/s200/DSCN4870.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227727114843797842" border="0" /></a> cut by a saw or torch into metal works – many on old saw blades. We saw one great “Welcome” one with a bear, and thought it would look good on the side of our new garage so we pulled in to get a closer look. The owner/artist came out to see us – his name was Eric, and he walked with a bad limp. He was a biker at one time, but arthritis made him sell it off. He’d created hundreds of these and sold them by the side of the highway. He invited us into his house to look at more, and we were very surprised to walk into his rec room to see a hardwood floor, mirrors floor to ceiling, some old leather couches, a bar with a metal Harley-Davidson sign, and in the middle of it all, a pole. A stripper pole. He caught Tony staring at it and said “yeah, it’s what you think it is.” He didn’t offer any explanation. Unfortunately it would have been rude to take a picture, although we discretely tried.<br /><br />The bear sign we wanted was $500 with shipping so we’ll think about it on the ride home. I still want an explanation of the stripper pole.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjz_PQF1t6ldy2hbuJN3ZyavwTFLR_HUiR9EZUvEYAFcZkCN-xLNMB5GLPk_M_L7SHbLRVY94Ispc5NN_85NoyvrOasMQykknmqPbND6H2ZrdaeZq8uuXqaR4vnJE5yr0Zv0rO/s1600-h/DSCN4877.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjz_PQF1t6ldy2hbuJN3ZyavwTFLR_HUiR9EZUvEYAFcZkCN-xLNMB5GLPk_M_L7SHbLRVY94Ispc5NN_85NoyvrOasMQykknmqPbND6H2ZrdaeZq8uuXqaR4vnJE5yr0Zv0rO/s200/DSCN4877.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227727438576276098" border="0" /></a>We crossed into Wisconsin and picked up US-8 West, and in the small town of Crandon, we rolled through a wonderful small-town main street festival with artists, and a car show, and horse rides, and of course booths selling Pasties. I love small town festivals like this, but we needed to keep moving, and I would have no doubt bought stuff we didn’t have room to take back. We stopped for lunch at a small roadside tavern outside of Tripoli, WI with a few other bikes parked out front so we figured it had to be good. I wish I could figure out how to phonetically spell a Wisconsin accent. It’s quite nasal and drawn out – with similar but softer vowel sounds to a New England accent, with some Canadian in it, and they say “yah sure” a lot. They are almost as nice as Southerners and just as helpful.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmnS-PNtZWIPKjD0Ag1OdH1NioTeqJQD6JQGdjRkqFue8l2nJ40XLNGMdGNZw_0M0E1CS9RiC6rTXZJUCgS3z-wDv7DlR8cN8XxOvaqFtdG7zTJTXPhIpzq2XqyWyJ7Lep65r0/s1600-h/DSCN4881.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmnS-PNtZWIPKjD0Ag1OdH1NioTeqJQD6JQGdjRkqFue8l2nJ40XLNGMdGNZw_0M0E1CS9RiC6rTXZJUCgS3z-wDv7DlR8cN8XxOvaqFtdG7zTJTXPhIpzq2XqyWyJ7Lep65r0/s200/DSCN4881.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227728247041049826" border="0" /></a>After lunch we took off our jackets and continued West on US-8 as it dropped out of the North Woods and into the farmlands of Southwest Wisconsin. It was warm and nice, and as usual after lunch we got a bit drowsy. We’ve done six straight days of hard riding and we are finding we get tired a lot more – and we stopped about every 100 miles or so today. At a nice roadside park we even laid on the grass for a bit, and I had a hard time getting back up and getting on the bike.<br /><br />A few miles after our siesta, we rolled into Tony. Literally – Tony, Wisconsin. Tony has his name on the water tower, and the store is called “Tony Depot”, conjuring up an image of shelves full of little Tonys.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkxvcgqA6_ODlsNn_fT0PpGknbQ3P932eazFiJIKKm1v3htkNd8C8EjU1OiGXPsO0EYSstw895eSopTyotqFXCmaFqEBvaDhcBChW68vGXYOz3vDWZpoAJS3bqj3OmgOGIXbvC/s1600-h/DSCN4889.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkxvcgqA6_ODlsNn_fT0PpGknbQ3P932eazFiJIKKm1v3htkNd8C8EjU1OiGXPsO0EYSstw895eSopTyotqFXCmaFqEBvaDhcBChW68vGXYOz3vDWZpoAJS3bqj3OmgOGIXbvC/s320/DSCN4889.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227728769594974658" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Our ultimate goal was Minneapolis, as Tony has some friends here he wanted to see. I just love riding into a big strange city on a freeway, but we had no choice. Fortunately we had directions to the hotel and were able to navigate through the city OK. We arrived after 422 miles for the day, and had a nice dinner with some friends and watched a fireworks show over the Mississippi river. We decided to stay and rest a day and not ride, which is why this is being posted a day late. We’ll stay here Sunday and just relax, and then head West into South Dakota tomorrow.<br /><br />So you get a break from us as well. Feel free to get up and move about the cabin. We are half-way home.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-14690247455373717882008-07-25T21:38:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:21.610-08:00Corner To Corner - Chatper 6, To The Top Of Michigan<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7zDivbLrkeZ40oQWMbhI464XM_91lQytGfptwE7G05M6ITuf49qPUfkZgxla1mWcCVdkE412m4unkLuj01FIjiNPuLqE-RC9FfUED5G3vhrkNYl00ET3NzT7LdkZ9e4F0HtwO/s1600-h/DSCN4799.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7zDivbLrkeZ40oQWMbhI464XM_91lQytGfptwE7G05M6ITuf49qPUfkZgxla1mWcCVdkE412m4unkLuj01FIjiNPuLqE-RC9FfUED5G3vhrkNYl00ET3NzT7LdkZ9e4F0HtwO/s400/DSCN4799.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227178020377284562" border="0" /></a>It was a beautiful sunny morning when we rolled North out of Holland, Michigan a little before 8am. We thought t-shirts would be sufficient, but after a couple of miles we decided we needed our light leather jackets again. We are definitely getting further north. Holland is a tacky little place on the shore of Lake Michigan – made to look like a Dutch town (Holland – get it?) Lots of faux windmills and giant wooden shoes. I’m sure it’s popular with the elderly lady bus tour set. We rolled out late again this morning – it’s getting hard to get up in the morning – we’ve been riding hard for six days now, and we’ve never ridden six days straight without taking a break, and I could use one.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdG4RSEQQoQO-CAjJJby2RP3VlMjvboMPmWKAdD3AZTjX0I_UndVmJboJE2bGLMTK7QP0wmh-89D73T8q851ZKoka1TNvDZfPUSDaPnkxds8ijHJ6EhTnZhOahsusCQtgGoRJD/s1600-h/DSCN4791.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdG4RSEQQoQO-CAjJJby2RP3VlMjvboMPmWKAdD3AZTjX0I_UndVmJboJE2bGLMTK7QP0wmh-89D73T8q851ZKoka1TNvDZfPUSDaPnkxds8ijHJ6EhTnZhOahsusCQtgGoRJD/s200/DSCN4791.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227178218498004338" border="0" /></a><br />One of our morning biker rituals is a morning “good luck” tap – where Tony and I bump fists before throttling up and moving out. Well I bought some new fingerless gloves at the Goldwing rally yesterday back in Ohio – and as you can see no self-respecting Goldwing rider would ever wear them – they are too “motorcycle-ey” for them. However, the little spikes gave Tony a nasty jab this morning, so maybe they aren’t such good luck after all.<br /><br />We headed up US-31, which is another of these US highways that has been turned into a pseudo freeway – with a speed limit of 70mph that even the trucks exceed. I’m a little disappointed in the Harley-Davidson Road Atlas, which has been more or less our Bible on this trip. It shows this as a designated motorcycle ride with great scenery and places to visit. I was expecting to have some vistas of Lake Michigan and some cute towns – and what we got was miles of faux freeway, no views of the lake, and long strung out towns with slow traffic.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj6_RduZIZRhXMmJ1PGjzGXMc0EbG7xjHmZir8jfRC6wFSu3H0OunJsU_-p2P6752OKlJG8mPk03uIdRzp8q6qdvbIx-iimK0jZNiiaUJELcW_WGeGVsR6-vKd0sbXrJQSjmyW/s1600-h/DSCN4806.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj6_RduZIZRhXMmJ1PGjzGXMc0EbG7xjHmZir8jfRC6wFSu3H0OunJsU_-p2P6752OKlJG8mPk03uIdRzp8q6qdvbIx-iimK0jZNiiaUJELcW_WGeGVsR6-vKd0sbXrJQSjmyW/s200/DSCN4806.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227178653241156834" border="0" /></a>As we were rolling through Manistee, Michigan, we saw a group of three riders in a motel parking lot – two of them roared out in front of us, the third got caught behind us. After a few miles when it was safe we waved him up to join his group, and he paused and asked me where we were going. I told him the Upper Peninsula, and, as good Harley riders do when going the same way, invited us to ride along with them, and we accepted their offer. Well, we didn’t have much of a choice, since we couldn’t pass them. A few more miles down the road, he backed off and asked me where we had come from, and when I told him he said “no shit!” and rode up to talk to his buds. Another mile or so and he drifts back and says they are stopping for lunch in Traverse City and wanted to know if we would like to join them, and I said OK. Now these guys most definitely need to take one of Professor Tony’s classes in Group Riding, and their leader needs to take Dr. Gardner’s class in how to be a Road Captain. These guys had no idea how to ride in formation – let alone use hand or even TURN signals! The next thing we knew they were turning in – without warning – into a Harley dealership in Traverse City.<br /><br />It was at this point we all got to introduce ourselves. The three all work together – as Prison Guards – at the State Pen in Muskegon, and were off on a four-day trip to the Upper Peninsula. When they heard where Tony and had been and were going, Greg, Jerry and Brock were a bit shell shocked and in awe. In fact one of them had just bought his bike a few weeks ago. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9QvPma5VP_XahHzP94n6RYvYLH4WKFlAx5EVTcHD__m_rLz5YMrARJsUrXxqDl8FJv-F_45aJKkz2w_Z6RFn1jQNe5cilE81nWzl_e7MBS1ApLbJtFJz4HoCCB8_SiTSB68my/s1600-h/DSCN4807.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9QvPma5VP_XahHzP94n6RYvYLH4WKFlAx5EVTcHD__m_rLz5YMrARJsUrXxqDl8FJv-F_45aJKkz2w_Z6RFn1jQNe5cilE81nWzl_e7MBS1ApLbJtFJz4HoCCB8_SiTSB68my/s200/DSCN4807.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227179581238597122" border="0" /></a>We went into the dealership and all bought shirts (number three on this trip if you are counting). When they asked if we liked Mongolian BBQ, Tony practically ran to his bike to get going. We motored up the road to a nice joint and had a great lunch and learned that the prison portrayed on the TV show “OZ” is not at all realistic, and all of them were quite relieved to find out I was not a defense attorney. All had taken the job when there was nothing else to do after high school. The economy in Michigan is still not what it is elsewhere in the country.<br /><br />After lunch, their “Road Captain” Greg took off and violated Road Captain 101 – make sure<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAFVqZj0kIjrtoK5WO1heJ4XaoR1tWaGRwufcJSb-6umwbLTVE4TJeoK8jM9lgoKwBeV7fncSw9KqP3-Vk0b2VThrAjDA59H5Vddlw6qkGYKLIb1w-IhHkSWEESbhgpGLGV3vt/s1600-h/RSCN4851.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAFVqZj0kIjrtoK5WO1heJ4XaoR1tWaGRwufcJSb-6umwbLTVE4TJeoK8jM9lgoKwBeV7fncSw9KqP3-Vk0b2VThrAjDA59H5Vddlw6qkGYKLIb1w-IhHkSWEESbhgpGLGV3vt/s320/RSCN4851.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227178927126254002" border="0" /></a> your group is ready to go with you, and do not make a right turn unless the entire group can go with you. He rode alone for 20 miles in beach town traffic before we could rejoin him. We stopped in a nice park on the shore of the lake for a break, and had a chance to talk more and pose for a picture. When we left the park, I was able to maneuver myself into being the lead rider, which if nothing else made me feel safer since I wasn’t having to watch for sudden movements and turns on their part.<br /><br />When we got to the top of Michigan at Mackinaw City, just before the bridge to the Upper Peninsula, we stopped again at the Harley Dealership there and all bought shirts (four for us now on this trip.) They were going to take a different road at the other end of the bridge so we said our good byes there, and although they invited us to go with them up to Sault Ste. Marie on the Ontario border – and we were tempted because we were having a good time with these guys – we declined and decided to keep heading West.<br /><br />That’s the thing about Harley riders – you are instantly part of a bigger family of riders, and its rare that a group of Harley riders won’t ask you to join up with them for a ride. You get to meet the most interesting folks, and its one of the true joys of riding.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKuqvqCJdrsZhfKK_XZhwfqKqvzHmbKDOMkheB3cmqn9PWND-f2At3th0sxtelzp1i4lXXFWEPRXoZqLQAge4WB58flxY9ZU7ir2fHLnD3r9aaur9iymJwf5QGpwbu-FsjGY1L/s1600-h/DSCN4831.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKuqvqCJdrsZhfKK_XZhwfqKqvzHmbKDOMkheB3cmqn9PWND-f2At3th0sxtelzp1i4lXXFWEPRXoZqLQAge4WB58flxY9ZU7ir2fHLnD3r9aaur9iymJwf5QGpwbu-FsjGY1L/s320/DSCN4831.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227179286310174754" border="0" /></a>Now the Mackinac bridge is really spectacular – a high suspension bridge that goes over the strait between Lakes Michigan and Huron and connects to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is roughly two miles long. It’s also very windy and if you are afraid of heights, you don’t want to take this bridge. The views were unbelievable (as were the antics of our three new friends in weaving in traffic and taking pictures, and all to soon we were at the toll both. We waved goodbye again as Tony and I curved onto US-2 West and they headed up north on I-75.<br /><br />US-2 runs due west along the shore of Lake Michigan, and this is what I was expecting the road up from Holland to be like – miles of shoreline. This road is not highlighted in the Harley Road Atlas – a serious mistake in my book. What we were not expecting is a towering thundercloud ahead of us. About 40 miles down the road we pulled into a rest area to answer the call of nature, and I thought maybe I’d put on my rain gear just in case – we’d seen a number of bikers heading east with their gear on. Just as we pulled it out of the saddle bag it started to sprinkle, and by the time we got into the gear it became a full-fledged downpour like what we’d seen in Florida. We thought it might be best to wait it out so we sat on the front porch of the log cabin rest area building and watched <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXJ70FJpeVk_kJDf0O6nk3DIipTqUB0ehyIlsD-KprBQVBWvvYiV1f7LLHiOi_CBHu8UdwV39pNcBphGaEJyQjoWC6BBzwzH73CDLAwYttoMukiFPhbQC48-ym-WaSFBu53zYt/s1600-h/DSCN4849.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXJ70FJpeVk_kJDf0O6nk3DIipTqUB0ehyIlsD-KprBQVBWvvYiV1f7LLHiOi_CBHu8UdwV39pNcBphGaEJyQjoWC6BBzwzH73CDLAwYttoMukiFPhbQC48-ym-WaSFBu53zYt/s200/DSCN4849.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227179959295468866" border="0" /></a>the rain come down. A lightning strike across the parking lot scared the bejeezus out of us as well, and we were glad to have stayed put. The storm was moving west to east, so we assumed it would let up, but while we waited we called down the road to get a hotel room and to catch up with friends and family back home. Ain’t cell phone technology wonderful!<br /><br />After an hour the rain had slowed to a trickle and we decided to head down the road before it got much later. Forty very wet miles later we pulled into Manistique, Michigan and a Quality Inn. The storm had knocked out the cable and thus the Internet connection, but we were glad to get inside and out of the rain gear that is only 75% waterproof.<br /><br />We’ll keep heading West on US-2 tomorrow – and could, if we wanted to, stay on US-2 all the way home to Seattle. We won’t of course, but I’ve always thought it would be fun to ride from Key West north to Bangor Maine on US-1, then turn West on US-2 to head home – or maybe to US-101 and ride down the coast of California, and back to Florida on US-98. As you know by now, I find highway numbers somewhat magical – especially when I can connect them with a place that means something to me – like home. I’ve been thinking of home a lot today – and to be honest, while we are having a great adventure out here on the road – the call of home is being heard faintly in the background.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi879o4UJsTWSsZ7ZKgSXgeMluCVW2oqI8cFbAZL24S5KCuWiy8FThNVdNgwGVlJuDVfBmIuk6f7SAylaq6pJoYotbAq4InhwISiXi4pVL2ukLfOWK6t9oBSrZ5GcWmUMBYVG3l/s1600-h/DSCN4855.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi879o4UJsTWSsZ7ZKgSXgeMluCVW2oqI8cFbAZL24S5KCuWiy8FThNVdNgwGVlJuDVfBmIuk6f7SAylaq6pJoYotbAq4InhwISiXi4pVL2ukLfOWK6t9oBSrZ5GcWmUMBYVG3l/s320/DSCN4855.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227180254524207170" border="0" /></a>Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-14066340142260754682008-07-24T20:25:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:23.189-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 5, Farm Country<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFefQR468QIthfXuwB83nX_Ez4PkBtdPtNfHyJtZT795SwNHg2iN8mPTGb8xQYdCIEWPSDFqmPq7Ew2sEQrtL_KqwMjxoqeu_MQVXY0Spkre_HtjMSNe-t6y2VqNIMDEnOW68a/s1600-h/DSCN4764.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFefQR468QIthfXuwB83nX_Ez4PkBtdPtNfHyJtZT795SwNHg2iN8mPTGb8xQYdCIEWPSDFqmPq7Ew2sEQrtL_KqwMjxoqeu_MQVXY0Spkre_HtjMSNe-t6y2VqNIMDEnOW68a/s400/DSCN4764.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226788682695494370" border="0" /></a>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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmNLa6vxRspZkaK1flkUtNpzZH5u42aUAy72FrkCDuEkdJR8JmunHXmMw1BblTUquOBeOab42brKYqy4A4rhMJVnWRYyW5TdWSPvWhArdH2Xl_Nz02LhxDucW2bHUlm1S3YOsr/s1600-h/DSCN4751.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmNLa6vxRspZkaK1flkUtNpzZH5u42aUAy72FrkCDuEkdJR8JmunHXmMw1BblTUquOBeOab42brKYqy4A4rhMJVnWRYyW5TdWSPvWhArdH2Xl_Nz02LhxDucW2bHUlm1S3YOsr/s200/DSCN4751.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226789052190813906" border="0" /></a> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpHJm4yxtvzbm3QHVUaaAcdJxip89ILT692Qs3b2ujSYe_KTjjYrwtqHHtqFE5LiD78d3PKepb199s0LCmrUyE-V1Zkx1DMUyiyV2dCjJSqY-cB1g9botc0XnyLQPt1Uz7QB7v/s1600-h/DSCN4755.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpHJm4yxtvzbm3QHVUaaAcdJxip89ILT692Qs3b2ujSYe_KTjjYrwtqHHtqFE5LiD78d3PKepb199s0LCmrUyE-V1Zkx1DMUyiyV2dCjJSqY-cB1g9botc0XnyLQPt1Uz7QB7v/s320/DSCN4755.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226789457523876882" border="0" /></a>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!<br /><br />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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuO72kGKNqJbP6Yb_YoNwNMO9tsV8bcQ-Qw4zyweOkN8lO4hWy0ukpL7BWC3PtLykN-22bRggzSaUOpBKER_rZQsxZlnYxKpM0t9jrng6uOAwj8COhHD-gt_Z8liZCSmsJxoJc/s1600-h/DSCN4754.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuO72kGKNqJbP6Yb_YoNwNMO9tsV8bcQ-Qw4zyweOkN8lO4hWy0ukpL7BWC3PtLykN-22bRggzSaUOpBKER_rZQsxZlnYxKpM0t9jrng6uOAwj8COhHD-gt_Z8liZCSmsJxoJc/s200/DSCN4754.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226789683781548722" border="0" /></a> 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.<br /><br />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 <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAO6gURokKu17DlUbpcplWW2-WN-q5JnpkcxnCHzGXdBXspBuxGfAVEJDLs1jkbGTVvf3Xen1uwm4o5N_FoGWWJCLN3Y_YuY6cnxBCm0Cbdb8dJvslHcWno45r1JhFIsCERa2s/s1600-h/DSCN4774.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAO6gURokKu17DlUbpcplWW2-WN-q5JnpkcxnCHzGXdBXspBuxGfAVEJDLs1jkbGTVvf3Xen1uwm4o5N_FoGWWJCLN3Y_YuY6cnxBCm0Cbdb8dJvslHcWno45r1JhFIsCERa2s/s200/DSCN4774.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226790348540082690" border="0" /></a>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.<br /><br />So we continued up US 224 into Huntington, Indiana. This is the home of Dan Quayle<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOE6AC-5EP5gDbwxoSQsP-Jepyx7dYDkcvsvWHb8yV04TdtXUZFLhwzBYd2iXXk2URsQJEGhpPqp6DBx84q1omLpUcdtIkxC5Laf_f75gCG4YhFUUJCqZYt3hkEYnEynpigDYg/s1600-h/DSCN4775.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOE6AC-5EP5gDbwxoSQsP-Jepyx7dYDkcvsvWHb8yV04TdtXUZFLhwzBYd2iXXk2URsQJEGhpPqp6DBx84q1omLpUcdtIkxC5Laf_f75gCG4YhFUUJCqZYt3hkEYnEynpigDYg/s200/DSCN4775.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226790680013899746" border="0" /></a> 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 <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixejY06kvNP3FPw_cFC2vvR_LtQjKBBj0EHLm6mMKEIPZm-6gHYcbSf6ZxTOUAfaTf-mdZk6HdSiq41sKOBmmXCF6jpQ05lInq6v9CsVoOxDz0mQY2a-XTgTI_z5Nzrj2g8eO8/s1600-h/DSCN4776.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixejY06kvNP3FPw_cFC2vvR_LtQjKBBj0EHLm6mMKEIPZm-6gHYcbSf6ZxTOUAfaTf-mdZk6HdSiq41sKOBmmXCF6jpQ05lInq6v9CsVoOxDz0mQY2a-XTgTI_z5Nzrj2g8eO8/s320/DSCN4776.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226791590512454770" border="0" /></a>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.<br /><br />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!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiabfNBXQQ1gvKCl6lDHEd052aYBHbqvmiXKEOfg_gsARf64F5LArO8gO_WqA3beaw1pkzZyRZP51ViXZ32ZwyjLukBdFEqrZ9XLDBpTfToHx3Xrdz-SbuH1TCESI2iRLr7irkr/s1600-h/DSCN4785.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiabfNBXQQ1gvKCl6lDHEd052aYBHbqvmiXKEOfg_gsARf64F5LArO8gO_WqA3beaw1pkzZyRZP51ViXZ32ZwyjLukBdFEqrZ9XLDBpTfToHx3Xrdz-SbuH1TCESI2iRLr7irkr/s320/DSCN4785.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226792033224304658" border="0" /></a>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.<br /><br />Tomorrow we’ll continue up the coast of Lake Michigan, and up across the bridge onto the Upper Peninsula.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-80469898084034800152008-07-23T19:02:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:23.871-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 4, The Country Music Highway<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9eBlUiNHvhVHsKjH38nHZm_zYE4b1DxCxeozj_hvxrurM40GDraFiabvB2MLRndA5OiE-6kbVxDVcWMf-tPVJrI_WJqGgqa9KUX9kngK5YRfHcRriItAKXXnEDttC_4XvCamS/s1600-h/DSCN4746.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9eBlUiNHvhVHsKjH38nHZm_zYE4b1DxCxeozj_hvxrurM40GDraFiabvB2MLRndA5OiE-6kbVxDVcWMf-tPVJrI_WJqGgqa9KUX9kngK5YRfHcRriItAKXXnEDttC_4XvCamS/s400/DSCN4746.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226400118116603170" border="0" /></a>There was quite the thunderstorm last night in North East Tennessee, so once again it was cool when we set out, but not raining – cool enough that we wore our light leather jackets! Quite the change from the extreme heat of Florida and South Georgia two days ago. We gassed up and hit US-23 North, which, as you will recall from yesterday is marked as “Future I-26”. It still felt like a freeway to me. In fact we stayed on this road the entire day today.<br /><br />US-23 is for some reason also branded as the “Country Music Highway”. I’ve not figured this one out since it doesn’t go anywhere near Nashville. However, I have a gut feeling that it is because a number of country stars were born in the vicinity, as this road traveled along the canyon of the Clinch river and through the “hollers” and small towns of eastern Kentucky coal country, which if you know Country music, is the breeding ground for much of it. Much of the country looked like the set from Coal Miners Daughter!<br /><br />The canyon is dotted with big coal mines, and the road runs along the bottom of the canyon with the Norfolk Southern railroad and the river, and the towns. The towns are actually long and narrow things, with two or three streets wide, and run for a mile or so up and down as there is really no place else to build. It looks like a great big model railroad come to life!<br /><br />The place is also crawling with Baptists – in fact we passed one church that had a sign saying it was a “Primitive” Baptist church. And despite my personal belief that religion in general is primitive, I couldn’t fathom what “Primitive Baptist” is – the building was rather new, so maybe they don’t have flush toilets or something? After all if Jesus didn’t have it, and the Bible is literal, we shouldn’t have them either.<br /><br />We stopped at the Harley-Davidson dealer in Pikeville, Kentucky to have them look at Tony’s bike after he went down on it yesterday on the Blue Ridge Parkway outside of Asheville. The service guy said “y’all had a wreck?, le’ me look at err and see if we can get y’all goin' quick.” He looked at it and noted that while there was nothing structurally wrong, the engine guard was bent from the 900 pounds of bike that landed on it when Tony went into the shoulder. He’ll need to replace it when he gets back to Seattle, but the bike is safe to ride, and after he re-adjusted the headlights back into alignment, and I bought a t-shirt (first one this trip!), we set back out onto US-23.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm09-3ICEokR8i1h8zyIAuX_70PutqFdZKrF3FiqYvSg-cFWnz-shf8j9bdiaMGbzUFv9h_yAVwv5TGQ7MD78WuiJx_wg_G7xWgUfcv7sYhz6iJ2hLoaIsvUypH2bCEfq34ehL/s1600-h/DSCN4733.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm09-3ICEokR8i1h8zyIAuX_70PutqFdZKrF3FiqYvSg-cFWnz-shf8j9bdiaMGbzUFv9h_yAVwv5TGQ7MD78WuiJx_wg_G7xWgUfcv7sYhz6iJ2hLoaIsvUypH2bCEfq34ehL/s320/DSCN4733.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226397399731503138" border="0" /></a>We’d only gone about a quarter mile when we saw a huge black cloud in front of us, and another quarter mile we were in a sprinkle. I turned to Tony and asked if he wanted to get rain gear out, and he said no. In another quarter mile it started to pour and by the time we pulled into a Shell station it was a full blown shower. We changed into our rain gear.<br /><br />Tony was a bit apprehensive after his incident yesterday and the rain didn’t help, especially a deluge like this one, but he toughed it out and went slow – we put our flashers on for good measure and I asked him at one point if he wanted to pull off and wait it out, but he said no. After about 45 minutes and 20 miles it stopped raining hard, and another 20 miles it was just cloudy, and about 10 more miles it was sort of sunny, so we pulled off in a Wal Mart parking lot to wiggle out of the now soaked rain gear, and grab a sandwich at the Arby’s.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgagLl0NEVc1mrUnsXvF6wNaY2HYBK6Dk9lDFvtZIIzRSh_H4sYH8zvQoavqkYwYGPlEAfv1JkBWm1bBXobqlyPWnmA_8gQcuSdTnA-zAqHZWa6fw4p29n2Lo73c5hX9nF6YTb1/s1600-h/DSCN4738.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgagLl0NEVc1mrUnsXvF6wNaY2HYBK6Dk9lDFvtZIIzRSh_H4sYH8zvQoavqkYwYGPlEAfv1JkBWm1bBXobqlyPWnmA_8gQcuSdTnA-zAqHZWa6fw4p29n2Lo73c5hX9nF6YTb1/s200/DSCN4738.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226398197792128642" border="0" /></a>I absolutely hate the way the bike gets dirty in the rain. I almost can’t stand to get on it. My nice denim black paint gets an ugly <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1atg9i4B1py4DIxoRs2TV4Vo5upt6iLPjpd5ElcqcdjPSqlxPHPmf4L9GrFnjeLorZD9pXUl42Bzmowk-3-7qYW8a7Drs83nGMCrp2L62SfdBvmkHiYxyHU9Yyfx0hzNEPXNf/s1600-h/DSCN4747.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1atg9i4B1py4DIxoRs2TV4Vo5upt6iLPjpd5ElcqcdjPSqlxPHPmf4L9GrFnjeLorZD9pXUl42Bzmowk-3-7qYW8a7Drs83nGMCrp2L62SfdBvmkHiYxyHU9Yyfx0hzNEPXNf/s200/DSCN4747.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226398813460747666" border="0" /></a>dirty grey, and the chrome is dull. Fortunately we were able to wash them up in a small coin operated hand wash in Waverly, OH. A quick spray and scrub and while not showroom ready, they were tolerable to drive.<br /><br />We kept rolling north on US-23, and dipped into West Virginia for all of one mile, and then into Ohio along the Ohio river for a number of miles before turning north. I was quite surprised by the huge amount of corn they were growing here – and the flat land after one gets out of the Ohio river bottom – I thought perhaps I was in Iowa. We did 355 miles and rode into Columbus a little after 6pm.<br /><br />In my book, any day on the motorcycle is a good day – and except for the rain, the ride today was quite nice both in weather and in scenery and places seen that I haven’t seen. However, it felt “rushed”, and I think I violated my cardinal rule. I’ll borrow one of the lines from the Disney/Pixar movie “Cars” that I have adopted as one of my personal anthems. In explaining the love of the road and why the town or Radiator Springs died, Sally the Porsche says: “Back then people didn’t ride on the road to make good time, they rode on it to have a good time.” I firmly believe that. But today it felt rushed – that we “made good time”. Tony has some friends in Columbus and I have a client who wanted to go to dinner, and we stayed on the same road the entire trip, and didn’t once get off to explore, find a nice place to eat, a neat park or a roadside attraction. We just drove and on a road that often looked and felt like a freeway too, despite being a US-highway. We drove and drove – and while I saw some interesting things, we didn’t stop, we ate at an Arby’s and we didn’t once get off of US-23. I didn’t even write down directions on a yellow sticky note! The hotel is right off of US-23. We didn’t even meet any interesting people to show you, and because of the weather, hardly any pictures. It’s not a disappointment – but its also not why we came on this trip.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU4Bl8eQDfivLfq74pR6aMRPaGEfFRZHax0qajKPC4iY8oE5KjJtCuyMIv0V-Xp5-CdsFdEuHQKx02CBKvPoTZ310m4xPQyjM2cW1UwH1Xx0uQPzZQO7dqHgH4wk0Wil8Yvu58/s1600-h/DSCN4729.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU4Bl8eQDfivLfq74pR6aMRPaGEfFRZHax0qajKPC4iY8oE5KjJtCuyMIv0V-Xp5-CdsFdEuHQKx02CBKvPoTZ310m4xPQyjM2cW1UwH1Xx0uQPzZQO7dqHgH4wk0Wil8Yvu58/s320/DSCN4729.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226399414228970850" border="0" /></a>That won’t happen tomorrow. I’m vowing to work our way up to Michigan via back roads, and not even aim for a city to stop in – just ride until we get tired and start looking for a place.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-58867652314967933972008-07-22T19:07:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:25.214-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 3, Lost in the Blue Ridge Mountains<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjujHjhUqMY8vjZvIxffmVxtIPLgLqcZVwhAzhEeUaTkyf3IDSSNbUoU855GMKawvl8AwHxicCyNrEi0BGE53auMMordx09D9l4mn3aJcOqel-wHxel1uJM6xhK9AtBi3-3KiHm/s1600-h/RSCN4716.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjujHjhUqMY8vjZvIxffmVxtIPLgLqcZVwhAzhEeUaTkyf3IDSSNbUoU855GMKawvl8AwHxicCyNrEi0BGE53auMMordx09D9l4mn3aJcOqel-wHxel1uJM6xhK9AtBi3-3KiHm/s400/RSCN4716.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226025817663076514" border="0" /></a>It was the best day riding of the trip, although it was not long in miles -- only 276 today. But its not distance, its quality that counts. There was a spectacular thunderstorm near Thomson, Georgia last night, which cooled things off nicely and actually de-humidified things as well, so when we hit the road a little after 7am it was actually kind of chilly, but it felt wonderful after all the sticky heat of the last three days. The sun was just starting to come up, and the clouds a vivid salmon color, which makes riding that early in the morning so wonderful. And after a rainstorm, the air smells so clean and fresh you wish you could bottle it up and sell it as an air-freshener. We headed north on GA-43 through the pines and red-Georgia clay hills along the Savannah River. Of course on such a beautiful morning, Tony tries to take the first picture only to find that the camera battery died. This is not the land of 24-Hour Walgreens so we had to ride until we found a min-mart just over the South Carolina line where we bought a couple of emergency AA batteries which will work in a pinch.<br /><br />We motored up SC-23 which runs along the Strom Thurmond Reservoir on the Savannah River,<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6xCXjkZVgq84wTdsh7bBCLxcUGfQpr68PX4XzHvUH77FyLUoAFYZHi6utZebwOgERJatVi7ZyHuEknOEUpWLhQFT6m9cImIJ3yb0dBoluDSfMnfN19h1AcgFia-hMP_cDo1aW/s1600-h/DSCN4695.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6xCXjkZVgq84wTdsh7bBCLxcUGfQpr68PX4XzHvUH77FyLUoAFYZHi6utZebwOgERJatVi7ZyHuEknOEUpWLhQFT6m9cImIJ3yb0dBoluDSfMnfN19h1AcgFia-hMP_cDo1aW/s200/DSCN4695.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226030471392772866" border="0" /></a> through lots of small little towns that could have been stand-ins for the set of the movie Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café – with abandoned stores and buildings covered with Kudzu vines. It was such a pleasant ride this morning we hesitated to stop in Anderson, South Carolina, but we needed to check the map, and to get real camera batteries and a few other sundries. Besides there was a Harley-Davidson dealer and we had yet to stop at one this entire trip! I know, hard to believe coming from the guys who have over 170 HD shirts between us.<br /><br />Now I’d carefully plotted out a nice route for the day, but it was becoming obvious that it would be to circular and we needed to find a slightly more direct route. The Walgreens clerk had one idea and her manager had another, and they argued among themselves for a minute while I tried to write it down and couldn’t. However they could agree on how to get to the HD Dealer, so we went there, and while Tony got some parts for his bike, I asked the parts counter lady what she thought. Well she and another parts department lady go into a discussion of which was the better way to go and how far we could get and was there food or gas along the way. In the middle of that, along comes a customer who had to give his two-cents. Now mind you this isn’t a heated discussion by any means, just a long drawn out Hee-Haw sketch of how to get from point A to point B and where to eat and stop along the way, with me trying to pick up key words here and there. So we decided that we’d head up into North Carolina and ride the Blue Ridge Parkway into Ashville, and stop in a town before that to ask about timing. All three could agree on that.<br /><br />We left out of the HD dealer and headed north on US 178, and passed several more big Baptist Churches, one of which told me that Jesus was coming and asked if I was ready (I better have Olga come clean before he gets here). When the ladies said it was slow going they were right. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigYWIUpQiuPRu9tO5kBLvvmMaRz3TP4FH4HSt2nCoO2pUNFg3dAJtA1hhc5Er_Q5PDyJ9_5q7eKdpUFvel2tYXB7BA3jAwIjJJB7aY5GpD0nLqmmuxJiTZfGtsbzm-0TQElTO5/s1600-h/DSCN4710.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigYWIUpQiuPRu9tO5kBLvvmMaRz3TP4FH4HSt2nCoO2pUNFg3dAJtA1hhc5Er_Q5PDyJ9_5q7eKdpUFvel2tYXB7BA3jAwIjJJB7aY5GpD0nLqmmuxJiTZfGtsbzm-0TQElTO5/s200/DSCN4710.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226026279917552770" border="0" /></a>We averaged 30mph for well over 65 miles between Anderson, SC and Balsam Grove, NC. I would estimate only one mile was actually straight as an arrow through the trees and up into the Blue Ridge Mountains. This was grand fun for me, as my bike is nimble and quick, however Tony struggled in this big lumbering Ultra-Classic Geezer Glide, which is very heavy and not made for quick sharp turns.<br /><br />We climbed up into the mountains and crossed into North Carolina and it seemed like a great place to stop, take a picture, and answer the call of nature.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZR4_qxpq1dPZ5hEN1h7MZq69qi9WKcrh0f4an649k-zd3sScKm8c5IIU6uIqatz0SB55LrIGCGZcI07O9s5-om4xB-JbuYCOEHsAIpy9JZ2D74J30P4DSAiU9qeWOwIkt_3Y/s1600-h/DSCN4711.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZR4_qxpq1dPZ5hEN1h7MZq69qi9WKcrh0f4an649k-zd3sScKm8c5IIU6uIqatz0SB55LrIGCGZcI07O9s5-om4xB-JbuYCOEHsAIpy9JZ2D74J30P4DSAiU9qeWOwIkt_3Y/s200/DSCN4711.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226026757914700402" border="0" /></a> We’d not passed any cars for a long time so I figured it would be safe. Well, I assumed the position and just then Tony heard a bike, and around the corner came a group of 8 other HD riders on their way back to Ohio, who also decided then and there to do the same thing I was doing. So one glorious mass urination and <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgac-yvzGTCFN2bdVMvpIo_AY9Esd2wstwEGAuD3QkBVyoHHSPH-92uM4-KqcxWU1pCTzsWOidt5AQuom3jNJ9hiob0nrPJLj1VH1EHmH7xpGxOm09VRRq83-mf7YXDqJZ1wAO8/s1600-h/DSCN4712.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgac-yvzGTCFN2bdVMvpIo_AY9Esd2wstwEGAuD3QkBVyoHHSPH-92uM4-KqcxWU1pCTzsWOidt5AQuom3jNJ9hiob0nrPJLj1VH1EHmH7xpGxOm09VRRq83-mf7YXDqJZ1wAO8/s200/DSCN4712.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226027121245727858" border="0" /></a>grunting and knuckle dragging Neanderthal behavior all the guys talked bikes for a few minutes. Hearing southern accents I asked them for their advice on where to go, and promptly got 8 more different answers and a long drawn out discussion. I pieced together some of it which will be helpful tomorrow as we get into Ohio, and we waved them off as they roared up the mountain ahead of us.<br /><br />Shortly after that we crossed the Eastern Continental Divide, and we both started getting hungry. Unfortunately there were no towns on the map, and we’d not passed any out of the way honky-tonks or bars. Fortunately we dropped into the small town of Balsam Grove which had a post-office and another building that said “sandwiches” and had an “open” sign. We did a U turn and went back and found ourselves at “Galloways” which was a small room with three tables, one of which was occupied by four folks who all said “Howdy” to the two bikers who just invaded their sanctuary.<br /><br />We went up to the counter to order, and I saw they had burgers listed, so I ordered a Bacon Cheese Burger and asked the cook “does anything come with that?”, and she replied with a drawl as thick as molasses, “a smile…” How Southern is that? Picture “Flo” on the old TV show “Mel’s Diner”. Actually it came with home-made potato salad or chips. I opted for the chips. We ate and looked over the map, and one of the men at the other table asked “y’all need hep?” And I replied we were trying to get to Ashville, which is apparently pronounced “Ash-VULL” note “ville”. He told us that we should keep going on NC 215 and pick up the Blue Ridge Parkway, then take it up to "Ash-vull" and take Highway 191 and pick up US 23 and go to Johnson City, TN for the night. While he was telling us this, his companions decided to correct him and tell him, no, take this road, or take that, and don’t take the freeway. It makes for a lively discussion, but once compromise and agreement is reached, we have a plan. Now it was time for desert – which in this case was home-made yellow cake with chocolate icing. The setting, the service, and the cake reminded us of the Whistle Stop Café in Paradise, Montana which we hit on our SMC ride a few years ago. THIS is why you get off the damn freeway and find the back roads!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ybVJUGrFpHkt8zdWw-EtEZ-GVj91UiduP29oOC1qVUPcxp62PspbHi8YOCnqkuWqYlgOkgCM7sX2AMZBYAixi9VHiocO4z_BtpGiwkAvRTD6PNvyY8uOOfcgAWrrgHbzrga4/s1600-h/DSCN4713.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ybVJUGrFpHkt8zdWw-EtEZ-GVj91UiduP29oOC1qVUPcxp62PspbHi8YOCnqkuWqYlgOkgCM7sX2AMZBYAixi9VHiocO4z_BtpGiwkAvRTD6PNvyY8uOOfcgAWrrgHbzrga4/s320/DSCN4713.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226027859497284530" border="0" /></a>We paid our tab and I wandered out and called back, “Thanks”, to which Tony said “you realize you just fell into a southern accent don’t you?” I don’t think I did, but he says I have a habit of mimicking accents in the oddest places.<br /><br />We hopped back on the bikes and headed up NC 215 and climbed up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. This spectacular road winds along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains for nearly 400 miles. When we got to the junction however there was no directional sign pointing towards "Ash-Vull" so I took an educated guess and turned. Tony unfortunately took the turn too wide and he and the bike went into the shoulder and down. He was OK, but we had to bend back his pegs and his mirror and his faring was a bit bent, and he was shook up, but otherwise fine. He rode a bit cautious for the rest of the day, and we’ll have the bike looked at by a HD dealer along the way tomorrow.<br /><br />We got back on the road, but after about 10 miles I felt we were going the wrong way – it felt “west” and we needed to go “east”. I had just a gut sense, because there was no way to tell from the maps or road signs. We decided to turn around – figuring the worst that could happen is<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLbCmtSgnVGAM7veRjEY5EPo6G0v-qFH0FhqLIwv8r5An1Q0_i9F-T0yX3RnOaqWHE0o-Rxwn1QUVKkWyc3n31NASqSRjidI9TEtEe9uVJDnzWK15hVA7Wxq_myOzZhaWmjeKa/s1600-h/DSCN4720.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLbCmtSgnVGAM7veRjEY5EPo6G0v-qFH0FhqLIwv8r5An1Q0_i9F-T0yX3RnOaqWHE0o-Rxwn1QUVKkWyc3n31NASqSRjidI9TEtEe9uVJDnzWK15hVA7Wxq_myOzZhaWmjeKa/s320/DSCN4720.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226028551912655922" border="0" /></a> that we’d end up a bit further away from Asheville than we wanted to be, when we came across a waiting boy-scout troop. Who better to ask directions right? So we pulled over and asked the scoutmaster who said that indeed we had been going the right way to begin with and he said it doesn’t “feel” right either but it was. We thanked them and did another U turn and went back the way we were going the first time. The weather was a bit cool up that high, but still we both agreed it was the best day of riding so far this trip, between the scenery and the weather. I would love to come back and ride the entire thing one day. As it was we did only about 50 of the 400 plus miles, and could have kept going all the way up towards Roanoke, Virginia. In fact we debated it as we got towards Asheville, but after looking at the big picture map realized we’d really be going the wrong direction and have to scramble to get back West. We will just put that on the list of rides to do in the future.<br /><br />In Asheville we picked up US 23, which has been re-signed as “Future I-26”, In other words, a “freeway”. Well, sometimes you have no choice, so we motored up “Future I-26” to Johnson City, Tennessee where we pulled into a nice Quality Inn. I have to ask though, what is it about Southerners and Buffets? The restaurant next to the hotel said “Steaks, Chicken, Buffet”. I was in the mood for a steak. I got yet another buffet and no steak. We had buffet for dinner Sunday, lunch Monday, dinner Monday, and now dinner Tuesday. They grow ‘em big here in the South and I do believe the prevalence of the Buffet is one of the culprits. I’m going to have to do double workouts at the gym when I get home to work this off!<br /><br />Tomorrow we’ll continue up US-23 (now NOT a freeway), and aim for Columbus, Ohio for tomorrow night. We’ll go across a bit of Tennessee, a bit of Kentucky, and a bit of West Virginia too, before crossing out of the South and into Ohio. I’m going to miss these southern accents and hospitality – where else so you get a cheeseburger with a side of “smile”.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP1AMcgAmpYu3kL1xc-vKSXlxlhz9YlsacLaD8E7xjiRJhtmV2NrG7rfCXrp-leeNHaX1XQ54w-6SAh6dEtllxWrU6XAvVlRKhNvR30CVxbr9cCZX5LIloerVPKRwZ6DINglSw/s1600-h/DSCN4718.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP1AMcgAmpYu3kL1xc-vKSXlxlhz9YlsacLaD8E7xjiRJhtmV2NrG7rfCXrp-leeNHaX1XQ54w-6SAh6dEtllxWrU6XAvVlRKhNvR30CVxbr9cCZX5LIloerVPKRwZ6DINglSw/s320/DSCN4718.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226029134436858370" border="0" /></a>Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-85999734405866412008-07-21T18:03:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:26.457-08:00Corner To Corner - Chapter 2, the Deep South<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibFBaQLnzWzWDw9rco9u7kglr65Hv79R-tQ_ki8fRRg-tG0tS-dNDwmk1i8orAZXwknsP6MAY_iv62kMVj4DE4QZVvigtWToRVveFJ-BDNxB_HVQaYbltOh26GQonPS5RKkazY/s1600-h/DSCN4670.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibFBaQLnzWzWDw9rco9u7kglr65Hv79R-tQ_ki8fRRg-tG0tS-dNDwmk1i8orAZXwknsP6MAY_iv62kMVj4DE4QZVvigtWToRVveFJ-BDNxB_HVQaYbltOh26GQonPS5RKkazY/s400/DSCN4670.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225639594024681474" border="0" /></a>After a restful quiet night at the Holiday Inn Express, Tampa Airport Runway, (it is literally right under the North aproach) we got up about 6am and enjoyed the standard free breakfast bar, loaded up the bikes and headed out. I’d spent the night before plotting a course that would take us, I hoped, up into Northeast Georgia near Augusta. I wanted to avoid Jacksonville, Florida, and any other big city, so unfortunately we couldn’t go through the Ocala National Forest like I would have liked to. Right outside our hotel was a ramp to the Veterans Expressway, so we took it – unfortunately it was a ramp that went South, rather than North, and the toll-booth didn’t have an automatic Sun Pass reader. In those cases, you are supposed to roll up to a staffed booth and the reader scans the pass and opens the gate, while the person in the booth sits and reads a trashy novel. Well in our case, the reader didn’t read the Sun Pass, so I had to get Mabel’s attention in the booth. I pointed out the Sun Pass and she said “What’s that, I’ve never seen one”, and I had to convince her, by showing her the large SUN PASS logo on it, that it was indeed real. I can tell the training department at Florida DOT is on the ball! She wrote down the unit number and opened the gate. She had to do the same thing for Tony. However, since we were going the wrong direction, we did a U-turn in the toll plaza and went back the other way and through an automatic Sun Pass reader that didn’t read it again. Nor did the reader on any of the other 5 toll booths we went through. I’m sure Florida DOT is going to have a field day with us.<br /><br />When we got turned around and heading north on Veterans I remembered how nice this part of Florida really is. Very green, very quiet and lush and the cool morning air made it a joy to ride. At one point as we were winding north on US-41 through some rolling hills passing some horse farms and nice homes, I had to ask Tony if we were still in Florida, as it felt like the hills around Lexington, Kentucky. The picture that starts this posting was taken along that stretch. As we pulled into Floral City we went passed one of those signs that explain how people get lost. We were going east into the sun, and the sign said, US-41 North, US 98 South. Huh?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjez6J5WMyMVX7oMjc0ZWtryv30OqdSmZ_xDBYzIe72WHVJoJ88T1xiXsnkUheL716be7-eabSC3VDQshXNm8pQb9Bspz1nfdyqNvc-SBSJ5zLvI1FJy4nO8G9ORYCdyhK9orS/s1600-h/DSCN4665.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjez6J5WMyMVX7oMjc0ZWtryv30OqdSmZ_xDBYzIe72WHVJoJ88T1xiXsnkUheL716be7-eabSC3VDQshXNm8pQb9Bspz1nfdyqNvc-SBSJ5zLvI1FJy4nO8G9ORYCdyhK9orS/s200/DSCN4665.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225644467985901586" border="0" /></a>As we neared the outskirts of Ocala it started to warm up, and the wide six lane road was reflecting a lot of heat back up on to us. Combine that with the heat from the V-twin engines, and the heat pounding down on you, it can get uncomfortable quickly in city traffic. I was hearing the lyric to a Jackson Browne song called “Loadout” where he sings about being on the road for a long time, saying their next show was “in Chicago, or Detroit, I don’t know, these towns all look the same…” Indeed they do these days, especially the miles of “big box” stores along major routes – Home Depot, Lowes, Kohls, Bed Bath and Beyond, Wall Mart, Target, and so on. Tony said that Ocala when he was a kid was just a small farming town. Not any more.<br /><br />We kept rolling northward through Central Florida on US-41 and US 301, through a number of farming towns and it kept getting warmer. We’d stop for an occasional bottle of water in the shade of a mini-mart or gas station, and we finally crossed the state line just outside of Folkstone, Georgia. We’d come 218 miles so far today, and add that to the 423 yesterday from Key West and we’ve driven the total length of state – 641 miles by our route.<br /><br />We had to gas up and get some lunch in Folkstone, so at the gas station, I asked the young man on the other side of my pump if he was from here, and he said, with the absolute deepest southern drawl that “yessir” he was. This is the deep south – since, as Tony says, Florida is South of the South, and thus not “southern” and we were just over the line in Georgia, this was about as “deep” south as you can get I figure. So I asked him if he had a good local <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNeQ5iuG8svQRPIhFvyroYQ73Fe8KONDrs56VxQZdECVQ0wZGNk_mqfIWLAyYEXEKuwBZpoWCC3F5HMxaat89Djyme1WP5Gjj8ZbMYfgnkIPnrQuESEwmkwQNovhX9wuLJAghL/s1600-h/DSCN4690.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNeQ5iuG8svQRPIhFvyroYQ73Fe8KONDrs56VxQZdECVQ0wZGNk_mqfIWLAyYEXEKuwBZpoWCC3F5HMxaat89Djyme1WP5Gjj8ZbMYfgnkIPnrQuESEwmkwQNovhX9wuLJAghL/s200/DSCN4690.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225639954068714770" border="0" /></a>recommendation for lunch, to which he replied, “Yessir.. ya’ll see that brick church over there, just passed it is the best place in town, called the Okefenokee Restaurant, y'all can eat off the menu or the buffet, and I’d say the buffet.” We thanked him and he hopped in his pick up and drove off. So we motored down to the Ofekenokee and parked the bikes and ambled in. The very sweet Kathy showed us to our table and asked if we’d be doing the buffet, to which we said yes. She said, it’s $7.50 each and help yourself. “Y’all want sweet tea?” and we said of course. The buffet was actually quite good, and the catfish were out of this world, as was the fried chicken. When it came time to go, Carrie noticed our shirts (those fantastic “Gary and Tony’s Corner To Corner Ride” ones that you can get on line at<a href="http://cafepress.com/tonyangary"> http://cafepress.com/tonyaandgary</a>.) She said “cool shirt”, so I explained what it meant and wrote down the address for this blog, and asked if I could put their picture in. They said yes, as long as they had veto power. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuvfhrDG88QVW-3pzND7NQsSCtETA_FWq2tPun4C8m8lYnZz42J7L2kxBZoKkndqtSZdH5xzRRR5lvMJnXKOHhL-nX9wnkZ9dQswJzlRNtHGsAxFGmXXB6c-VdkBR6FhNYGYD/s1600-h/DSCN4691.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuvfhrDG88QVW-3pzND7NQsSCtETA_FWq2tPun4C8m8lYnZz42J7L2kxBZoKkndqtSZdH5xzRRR5lvMJnXKOHhL-nX9wnkZ9dQswJzlRNtHGsAxFGmXXB6c-VdkBR6FhNYGYD/s320/DSCN4691.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225640349528891714" border="0" /></a>They liked this one, so here you go, Kathy and Carrie at the Ofekenokee Restaurant in Folkstone, GA. If you are in that neck of the woods, it’s the place to eat. I have to say though that the only disappointment was that they did not have any Peach Pie. This is Georgia for crying out loud, what kind of self-respecting southern restaurant doesn’t have Peach Pie? But I forgave them with their very sincere apology for not having any. Thanks Kathy and Carrie!<br /><br />We got back on the bikes, much fuller and satisfied, and it had warmed up even more. This part of Georgia is Baptist Country. Actually I think all of Georgia is Baptist Country, but it seemed like every hundred yards there was a Baptist church. Most had reader boards, so I was commanded to be SAVED, or to OBEY, or to ACCEPT HIM, several times a mile. I was tempted to stop and be baptized on more than one occasion figuring getting wet would cool me off for a few miles, and I could stop at a different church every time I dried off, and the ride would be much more comfortable.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHdozjTT5BGskBenbd5jNmNrdnuRZ1kqaNZIX4GAM9uLjLuh7a9fnJM1Aei87_zeQPhdakhGERmJ6n6g9Wv04_QUnM_Dk8monn5WAtyc2wbj1Lw5t7wymOeBp7KA2Mmfx4H40w/s1600-h/DSCN4692.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHdozjTT5BGskBenbd5jNmNrdnuRZ1kqaNZIX4GAM9uLjLuh7a9fnJM1Aei87_zeQPhdakhGERmJ6n6g9Wv04_QUnM_Dk8monn5WAtyc2wbj1Lw5t7wymOeBp7KA2Mmfx4H40w/s200/DSCN4692.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225640643199393554" border="0" /></a>We headed north on US-1 (same road as off the Keys), heading towards Northeast Georgia. As we rode along it got hotter and hotter, until we had to stop an hour later in Alma, Georgia to cool off and get some water. Once we stepped into the Min-mart I didn’t want to leave. I guzzled two bottles of water and we bought one more, and once we got outside, Tony was able to approximate a Catholic baptism by spraying us both down with the contents of the bottle to the amusement of the Georgia State Patrolman and Min-mart cashier. The patrolman said it was the hottest day of the year so far and you could see it in the air. He was right. He wished us well and told us "y'all have a safe ride home".<br /><br /><br />Tony took this picture as we left Alma, and the "haze" in the picture is not pollution it is<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy7ubhAX7UpPoMRatooEY6et7r0_0R_nDN6_VYdtNEtQv63giswj4VMNtsdzkhCs2Kkq4-wKS3lVtpOTusI4MF0cx2f4aKU8e8ctdKf47iV4Vxsj_voDNXwNjh9YmMBpmbd5fH/s1600-h/DSCN4688.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy7ubhAX7UpPoMRatooEY6et7r0_0R_nDN6_VYdtNEtQv63giswj4VMNtsdzkhCs2Kkq4-wKS3lVtpOTusI4MF0cx2f4aKU8e8ctdKf47iV4Vxsj_voDNXwNjh9YmMBpmbd5fH/s200/DSCN4688.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225642153035012066" border="0" /></a> actually the heat and humidity. We seriously debated whether or not to get in out of the heat for a while, but decided to tough it out until the next town. And after we hit the road, and after the baptism had worn off, it wasn’t so bad so we kept going. We stayed on US-1, which by this time had combined with US-23 and GA-4 so the road signs were 1-23-4! In Wrens, GA we picked up GA-17 and it suddenly turned cooler and very pleasant. This stretch of rural Georgia was just as I’d pictured it – houses with no foundations on cinder blocks, red clay roads, and pine trees. It was a nice ride for 25 miles to Thomson.<br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span>We rolled into Thomson and found a nice Holiday Inn Express and checked in. What is it about Southerners? They are just so darn friendly! Either that or they are gay. You can’t tell. Tony says they are nice, and then after two drinks they are gay. Our desk clerk was no exception. Picture the actor Leslie Jordan, (from the movie Sordid Lives, and TV show Boston Legal) only a bit more masculine. After checking us in and chatting about the weather and the hotel, I asked him “if he could eat anywhere in town where would it be?” And without missing a beat he said “Augusta” (which is 30 miles east). I said, come on, there has to be a good local restaurant in town, and he said actually the Chinese Buffet in the parking lot was about the best we could do if we didn’t want fast-food. Then he gave us a goody bag of “snacks for later” and even signed me up for the Holiday Inn Express point program. Just what I need, another affinity program, but given we’ll likely be in these for quite a bit on this trip it does make sense. He let us park the bikes under the portico as well so he could keep an eye on them.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7kydvNAWTKG_5P0c7KqTItxvWqlwCQza8tqhqzPjEnpcAdt_Rd5TTSGhEWvItJiyK9f7SdlAVOCEeEN4lRenOMC-BMB1ub7d8WlhF5jCdHaotplpfPZkLf2N2lH0jsSZCRn6/s1600-h/DSCN4693.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7kydvNAWTKG_5P0c7KqTItxvWqlwCQza8tqhqzPjEnpcAdt_Rd5TTSGhEWvItJiyK9f7SdlAVOCEeEN4lRenOMC-BMB1ub7d8WlhF5jCdHaotplpfPZkLf2N2lH0jsSZCRn6/s320/DSCN4693.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225641161861698018" border="0" /></a>He was right about the Chinese Buffet too. It was actually quite good, and although the sauce for the sweet and sour was a bit too red (picturing Fred Willard in the movie Waiting for Guffman), it was tasty and filling.<br /><br />Tomorrow we’ll head northeast again, and get into South Carolina, where we’ll ride what the Harley Ride Atlas has nice green colored road which is their cue for a good motorcycle road towards Asheville, North Carolina and up the Blue Ridge Parkway. After tomorrow I will have been in all but three states in the lower 48 – Kansas, South Dakota, and Alabama. I’m hoping that Southern hospitality continues to find us as we head north.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-18545670230767896702008-07-20T18:12:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:27.881-08:00Corner To Corner -- Chapter One...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD86qG3yGCMCAUMXuaPQV5PmLbOUfcJJacQDFhpWXwTjzK7Ts7ZKYNlNOenFHiq7ffcPp24aQR9OE2bjqDrqN2MgTH6M54QdW3njcehnKvOm8dXC5CMOh5bYZPNFT0PbJjeoWW/s1600-h/DSCN4633.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD86qG3yGCMCAUMXuaPQV5PmLbOUfcJJacQDFhpWXwTjzK7Ts7ZKYNlNOenFHiq7ffcPp24aQR9OE2bjqDrqN2MgTH6M54QdW3njcehnKvOm8dXC5CMOh5bYZPNFT0PbJjeoWW/s400/DSCN4633.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225269572505004306" border="0" /></a>OK here we go. Chapter one, page one… Tony get me another drink... this isn’t so hard… You know every great story has to have a great opening line. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, or “Who is John Galt?”, or “Howard Roark stood naked on the cliff.” If this is going to be a good book, I have to have a good opening for the story. So…<br /><br />The sun was low in the Atlantic sky, the air heavy with the smell of jasmine and magnolia as we loaded up the bikes and tried not to wake the other guests of the bed and breakfast. We left the bikes off until we backed out of the drive, and turned south on Flemming Street and headed to Mile 0 on US-1 at the southern most point of the US. After tapping the sign for good luck, we turned our backs to the East and the Atlantic, and headed west without looking back.<br /><br />That work? We’ll see. None the less, we got up early and although it was 7am, no one was stirring at the guest-house. After all it was Sunday morning, and most of the guests had been out partying on Duvall Street or in the pool until 3am when we hit the hay. So naturally there was no breakfast in the breakfast bar. We snuck out as quietly as we could given we were on Harley’s and headed to the start of US-1 for the long trip back home to Seattle. We posed by the sign, and tapped it for good luck and roared off up the road. We went .5 miles and found an open Denny’s and stopped for breakfast. Sunday morning at 7:30 most Denny’s are hopping – we were the only ones there. A further testament to the partying ways of Key West. We stopped for gas, and finally got rolling north on US-1 for good a little past 8. It was quite pleasant that<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzcWVPeoszTK65bzzQNZVJu0PmiAhPaC4E6hoMen-Elba9A2dedqFoA9X5MNjGDZ4l3TegaxzHTF_qfEVBDAaJS5tINM9jOGU5QxNXkxm8VkeCMllMDgrsNE49rUa07vUhwsUU/s1600-h/DSCN4636.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzcWVPeoszTK65bzzQNZVJu0PmiAhPaC4E6hoMen-Elba9A2dedqFoA9X5MNjGDZ4l3TegaxzHTF_qfEVBDAaJS5tINM9jOGU5QxNXkxm8VkeCMllMDgrsNE49rUa07vUhwsUU/s200/DSCN4636.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225269817414161618" border="0" /></a> early – no traffic and it had yet to turn ungodly hot. We made good time up the Keys and again I was amazed at the railroad bridges that withstood time and hurricanes and still stood. The most amazing one is at the Bahia Honda channel, and as you can see, it is what is known as a “thru truss” bridge, meaning the support is over the tracks. This meant when the state took over to build the highway they didn’t have room at the track level so they chose to build it on top of the bridge. Can you imagine driving over it, on lanes barely wide enough for a single car with the mirrors pulled in?<br /><br />The 130 miles up to Homestead went by fairly quickly and it was a nice ride and didn’t really warm up until Key Largo and the last 30 miles to Homestead. We stopped at a McDonalds for a drink and to use the restroom and were resting in a booth when I spotted another biker drive in, and she was driving my exact bike, outfitted with bags just like mine. This bike is my Dyna FXDBI Street Bob, which is not normally a long-distance touring bike, and I’d never seen one outfitted for that other than mine – until now. We had to go talk to her. So we saddled up and rode around to the other side of the parking lot and met up with a nice biker chick who was as amazed as I was that here was someone on a dressed out Street Bob. She too thought she was the only one.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZaNFwpXgNEzO_PT2YMlf6wiClv355_AG8V4ZVOrc0BhFsBeDT6QbMT_YcoFxfk59sIN7_4RJ1rP5zH3rzBJS0xemlhiYFbk-c42eMIhIUeQJec_oK_VMkf6xXtldN7A7bit94/s1600-h/DSCN4649.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZaNFwpXgNEzO_PT2YMlf6wiClv355_AG8V4ZVOrc0BhFsBeDT6QbMT_YcoFxfk59sIN7_4RJ1rP5zH3rzBJS0xemlhiYFbk-c42eMIhIUeQJec_oK_VMkf6xXtldN7A7bit94/s200/DSCN4649.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225270318452594578" border="0" /></a>I asked her what her name was, and she said it was “Em”, and I said that’s short for what? Grabbing my note pad she wrote down “Emereldeyz”. She said her Grandfather gave her that name for her green eyes. She also handed us her contact information for her page on “bikerornot.com” which is a new “My Space” kind of place for bikers. We will have to check this one out. She also noticed the shirts we were wearing – I hope you do to. Tony designed them to commemorate this trip.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRbWtTbroRPbw0IH0tgjlnTR5bLnNxqupqpsPgw3739KdGPcSODde4VQrqe31RgtUck80ocSrYapyEIfRb2RGfFzYGtJvvKqK-LaS-tAuldaI_UC89gmnbwDq6GcOpojvsDL9K/s1600-h/DSCN4634.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRbWtTbroRPbw0IH0tgjlnTR5bLnNxqupqpsPgw3739KdGPcSODde4VQrqe31RgtUck80ocSrYapyEIfRb2RGfFzYGtJvvKqK-LaS-tAuldaI_UC89gmnbwDq6GcOpojvsDL9K/s320/DSCN4634.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225271784201852498" border="0" /></a>They have a big map of the US and say “The mildly amusing adventures of Gary and Tony – 2008 Ride, Corner to Corner.” She wanted one, but alas all we have with us are what we are wearing now. But she, and you too can buy your own. They are available on line, at: http://www.cafepress.com/tonyandgary. I could do a whole Ron Poppeil “Ginsu knife” thing here, but I wont. Aren't they cool?<br /><br />So we said goodbye to Em and her pals, and headed up the Florida Turnpike to pick up US-41 and go across the Everglades. The Everglades is very cool, and I’d wished we had time to stop<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBHDFFnG-xmkWf_KrkBPGuiEm0LHJUibnyjiuwkIra0dbHOAZTNcmKXsvoongvCLABnrmw2egAUq_KIZ7al002yEpXDSuBWM2I-MuIYVqNfJe6EjY1iLgXixinWfrU-Q7mScGc/s1600-h/DSCN4656.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBHDFFnG-xmkWf_KrkBPGuiEm0LHJUibnyjiuwkIra0dbHOAZTNcmKXsvoongvCLABnrmw2egAUq_KIZ7al002yEpXDSuBWM2I-MuIYVqNfJe6EjY1iLgXixinWfrU-Q7mScGc/s200/DSCN4656.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225270608145697362" border="0" /></a> and take an airboat ride or watch some alligator wrestling on the Microsukee reservation. US-41 is also known as the Tamiami trail – as in TAmpa/mIAMI. Get it? It’s also 100 miles of ramrod straight road with not a single curve or turn. This is absolute hell for a biker. We live for curves and turns. It’s about as exciting as watching paint dry at 75 mph. At least the road-kill through the everglades is interesting -- if not pungent and gross. I'd sure hate to run over one on the bike! I kept hoping for some excitement along the road, even a bump would have been nice. I might as well have been riding on a treadmill!<br /><br />On the other side of the state at Naples, Florida we picked up Interstate 75 to head north to Tampa for the night. We really had no choice, and you know how we feel about traveling freeways -- only as a last resort. So we blasted up the Interstate for 160 miles in the oppressive heat and humidity, feeling like a rack of Gyro meat on a spit in a Greek restaurant, glistening in sunscreen and sweat. However I forgot to put sunscreen on the back of my hands and it was too warm for gloves – so now I have nice lobster colored fists that hurt like the dickens.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg00pv7z8eOm7nJgGLu9YIW3hlQ4hrPV5l8TmgL1W5qJ6b7wC9Px7pU5UjWWOnf9Cphyphenhyphenb-QDU3hWUZnOanQmkexNVitrOvw0vk1EJlH5qsAfIm57RoQNjR8zT4aAfdDZogeTult/s1600-h/DSCN4661.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg00pv7z8eOm7nJgGLu9YIW3hlQ4hrPV5l8TmgL1W5qJ6b7wC9Px7pU5UjWWOnf9Cphyphenhyphenb-QDU3hWUZnOanQmkexNVitrOvw0vk1EJlH5qsAfIm57RoQNjR8zT4aAfdDZogeTult/s200/DSCN4661.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225271266393368162" border="0" /></a>The highlight however was the somewhat circular route we took into Tampa. Rather than stay on I-75 I wanted to loop through St. Petersburg and go over the Sunshine Skyway bridge. It was cool up on the bridge and the view is spectacular, and I love going over cool bridges on the bike. I could see all the way out to St. Pete Beach and the fabulous Don Cesar Hotel which is one of those turn-of-the century resort hotels built on the scale of and with the luxurious treatments of the Titanic. We stayed there last year for four days and I didn’t want to leave. Staying on the beach in a private cabana with a flag you could raise for cabana-boys to bring you new drinks and towels. It was heaven. And since I’d had just about enough of riding through a blast-furnace exhaust, I signaled for the exit to St. Pete beach. Now Tony, who is always riding back and to the right, usually follows along with me wherever I want to go. Not this time, no way Jose' -- he stayed put and wouldn’t move over, try as I may to get him to. So at the last minute I moved back over into the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4c_O_a5T3u4fPzp6vHRKhqFkoiFHQz-FB7No_JuZzWHVe85XPjEEybZn2mHPcDlkB8iDLvAyqt3VhEUEfmDn1i90ivWThwPVn2HLmk3W90tRGzFJxesRhyphenhypheng4k9sEIa-JJOlMS/s1600-h/DSCN4658.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4c_O_a5T3u4fPzp6vHRKhqFkoiFHQz-FB7No_JuZzWHVe85XPjEEybZn2mHPcDlkB8iDLvAyqt3VhEUEfmDn1i90ivWThwPVn2HLmk3W90tRGzFJxesRhyphenhypheng4k9sEIa-JJOlMS/s200/DSCN4658.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225272913967300626" border="0" /></a>thru lane, and Tony rode up and glared “NO” at me.<br /><br />You have to note too that Tony has let his beard grow and does not intend to cut or trim it this entire trip. By the time we get home he’ll look like ZZ Top. In the wind on the bike it curls up too, and so when he gets off the bike he looks a bit funny. I’m threatening to take scissors to it at night.<br /><br />We pulled up to a Holiday Inn Express near Tony’s folks house at 4:45pm and had put just over 423 miles on the bike today. I was so covered with sun screen and road grime the soap tuned black and stuck to my fur. However after a half-hour of cool water and lots of soap I felt like a new man and Tony was able to get his beard to lay down too. Tomorrow we’ll head further north, I’d like to head up through the Ocala National Forest and avoid Jacksonville before crossing into Georgia. We are aiming for Augusta, Georgia or vicinity tomorrow night we hope.<br /><br />Now go to: http://www.cafepress.com/tonyandgary and buy a shirt!Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-83026272929698265562008-07-19T21:53:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:29.622-08:00Corner To Corner -- To The Starting Point at Mile 0<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUztI_2zZq0x7RhauP_VYxvMGm0s4_ota3e8rrWBht42aCWOjyvjzezcPgbZkoyqXgQ1MgEf9p9TrzDdE2EcoThcrcxCL2dI7iJWd1WDE8OSztKIHFIBYtqyhaY0B0hDWFljjh/s1600-h/DSCN4620.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUztI_2zZq0x7RhauP_VYxvMGm0s4_ota3e8rrWBht42aCWOjyvjzezcPgbZkoyqXgQ1MgEf9p9TrzDdE2EcoThcrcxCL2dI7iJWd1WDE8OSztKIHFIBYtqyhaY0B0hDWFljjh/s400/DSCN4620.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224955496259273554" border="0" /></a>After a late night in the pool cooling off and celebrating the successful debut concert for Tony’s “<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">BEARatones</span>” group in Miami, the 6:45am wake up call <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">didn</span>’t do its job and we were awakened by room service bringing us our breakfast a bit after 7am. We quickly ate, checked out, and took the bags down and loaded them on the bikes. It was quite warm and of course too humid even that early in the morning and the short walk to the garage got us drenched in sweat. I got rather badly sunburned bringing the bike back from the Miami dealer to the hotel, so I chose to wear a short sleeve t-shirt, and to drench myself in spray-on sun screen. I forgot how sticky that stuff makes you feel, especially when you spray it on top of a layer of sweat. The road grime sticks to it as well and after several applications throughout the day, you end up with a layer that you can peel off with the edge of a credit card like candle wax dripped on a table.<br /><br />Leaving Miami proved to be a bit difficult too – given the one-way streets and the hidden ramp to the freeway, but we managed to find our way out and on to the Turnpike. Time to test out the Sun Passes. It was nice to ride through the reader lanes, and we hoped they worked. Checking the account on line <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">tonite</span> it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">doesn</span>’t appear that they did, so we will either get multiple $100 fines mailed to us, which we can fight, or they’ll choose not to pursue it (we hope), or we can prove we bought the pass and it was their fault it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">didn</span>’t deduct the toll.<br /><br />The Turnpike ends at Homestead, Florida, where we picked up US-1 for the 130 mile run down the keys to Key West. This road is just like I remembered it – mile and miles along blue green water, over long bridges and short islands. Originally the highway was built mostly upon what was left of Henry <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Flagler</span>’s Florida East Coast Railway which was built in 1908 and abandoned after a hurricane in 1935, The Railway sold the bridges to the state who built the original US-1<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0yz5oCvApfhoIT2NxdxLB4rValX8HwC0LL8K_D-CNRa80XdWN4pYA97N0ctvytCvBBBLrcbNYew4oY_Hxwz77dXzy91ufQcxLVZGuGNJHqPsKX571fxlzWoH9wOZhWov1uMMg/s1600-h/DSCN4618.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0yz5oCvApfhoIT2NxdxLB4rValX8HwC0LL8K_D-CNRa80XdWN4pYA97N0ctvytCvBBBLrcbNYew4oY_Hxwz77dXzy91ufQcxLVZGuGNJHqPsKX571fxlzWoH9wOZhWov1uMMg/s200/DSCN4618.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224957759174802322" border="0" /></a> on top of it. Much of the road on the islands is still built upon the roadbed right of way. The old bridges and causeways still stand for much of the route and are now used as fishing piers.<br /><br />The Key’s have interesting address systems too – by mile marker. So if an address is 45009 US 1, you know it’s just past mile marker 45. It starts at 0 in Key West and gets higher as you go North. About mile 45 is the famous Seven Mile Bridge, and midway along is a small island called Pigeon Key. This is where the railroad had a work camp for the massive bridge, and today it’s a bit of a ghost town. You can take a ferry from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Vaca</span> Key to get there. I read up extensively on the building of the railroad after the first trip down two years ago, and I wanted to see it. We need a break from the ride anyway, so we stopped at the small museum on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Vaca</span> and bought tickets and waited for the boat.<br /><br />Now the fun think about Key West, and other “end of the road” towns like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Provincetown</span>, MA, and Homer, AK is that they tend to attract a lot of human <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">flotsam</span> and jetsam. Folks who drift or run away end up in places like this because they literally can’t get any further away. They attract all kinds of oddballs and interesting characters. Our boat captain was no exception.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8HyS4KDBORpxURJn4H32reE-FORF1u1AR3mbEiJ47x2_CkILtzR_TkllBchi-CygH23gi5L68WPZF1bnSABm-n04HBbsXM69JC7yeuRknbzrZrzWuLMcnASKKre3-jP_VsH48/s1600-h/DSCN4611.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8HyS4KDBORpxURJn4H32reE-FORF1u1AR3mbEiJ47x2_CkILtzR_TkllBchi-CygH23gi5L68WPZF1bnSABm-n04HBbsXM69JC7yeuRknbzrZrzWuLMcnASKKre3-jP_VsH48/s320/DSCN4611.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224955719569946322" border="0" /></a>He introduced himself as “Captain Billy”, and he piloted the fishing boat with Tony and myself and a newly moved to Florida retired couple from Michigan. Captain Billy is originally from Long Island he said, and started coming to the Keys on fishing trips as a kid, and as he got older each trip lasted a little longer and a little longer—first a week, then two, then a month, then two, and finally decided to not go home. It’s typical of the folks who populate ends of the road. He had that permanent Florida Key tan, was barefoot, and in shorts the whole time. He talked of fishing charters, and hurricanes that he’s ridden out, and how shallow the water was, and what it was like to live in the humid Keys. “You get used to it” he said. I suppose, but I <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">couldn</span>’t I’m sure.<br /><br />We toured the buildings on Pigeon Key in the sweltering heat, wondering how construction workers 100 years ago could stand working there, and we climbed up on the old railroad bridge<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_XhdtCrimvnFx0ZtpssMi_p1m62NJTDbeGG1v7YeioXrD6qTr8e76yyoiIUamxhqiK-5t6e1N7d_e68DX-4d7x2W1kzlSCP0HlaYZb8dWRwb1xHYfkzLQRTU9yptC4YpoEhVL/s1600-h/DSCN4605.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_XhdtCrimvnFx0ZtpssMi_p1m62NJTDbeGG1v7YeioXrD6qTr8e76yyoiIUamxhqiK-5t6e1N7d_e68DX-4d7x2W1kzlSCP0HlaYZb8dWRwb1xHYfkzLQRTU9yptC4YpoEhVL/s320/DSCN4605.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224956133439453426" border="0" /></a> for a spectacular view down the Gulf. We could look down in the shallow waters and see Tiger Fish swimming about, and figured that Captain Billy would be the perfect model for “Crush” the Sea Turtle in the movie “Finding <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Nemo</span>”. He came to pick us back up and we sailed back to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Vaca</span> key where we hopped back on the bikes for the 30 miles down to Key West. I have to say the post noon heat was excruciating. The wind was hot, and once you get away from the water you lose the cool breeze, and all you feel is the heat radiating up from the pavement, and down through that hot moist air, to where it feels like you have molten steel being poured on you. We had to stop about 5 miles from the hotel and duck into a Wendy’s for a frosty just to cool off and rest in some A/C comfort for a bit.<br /><br />Key West is literally the end of the road. The road ends at a marker for the Southern Most Point in the Continental US. We posed the bikes and had our picture taken. The fact that these are <span style="font-style: italic;">our</span> bikes – with <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington </span> plates, and that we rode them<span style="font-style: italic;"> here</span> and will start riding them back tomorrow is what I think makes this something special and intimidating at the same time, especially when I think about the distance and exactly how far we are from Seattle. These bikes, which reside in our garage at home, are literally as far away from there as they can possibly get, and when we get home, we can look at a map and say – “we rode these guys from there!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5ZxWX-El3PDJDe8gk3Q-OO85vfE9tx_hUkiNOCi0bkZHlPYqMk4RcsR1LnmKD9tVejmmc_gK7o6voZHFb7zGySc49scwAJdKE8LYoQEDBymXbat6aMnG6moWycqHjTeGG3o9/s1600-h/RSCN4625.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5ZxWX-El3PDJDe8gk3Q-OO85vfE9tx_hUkiNOCi0bkZHlPYqMk4RcsR1LnmKD9tVejmmc_gK7o6voZHFb7zGySc49scwAJdKE8LYoQEDBymXbat6aMnG6moWycqHjTeGG3o9/s320/RSCN4625.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224956507742300626" border="0" /></a>Tomorrow the ride home officially starts. We’ll get up early, swing by and pose at sunrise at the end of the road, then turn our backs to it and start heading home.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-55893851819076082092008-07-18T15:28:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:30.616-08:00Corner To Corner -- Getting the Bikes Ready<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYBIAtSyT_XTlxH2BSH87ZRSE9EjoHK1jw3APklfgCyKX9Gfs4v_VodHOVYEg_GehTDI7FaOuIK4VPrNXv2VLT4NmqTwcF64sChG0K-lqhE2Pkw3dsJN2KKi7ZHcIenY6gZ9An/s1600-h/DSCN4575.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYBIAtSyT_XTlxH2BSH87ZRSE9EjoHK1jw3APklfgCyKX9Gfs4v_VodHOVYEg_GehTDI7FaOuIK4VPrNXv2VLT4NmqTwcF64sChG0K-lqhE2Pkw3dsJN2KKi7ZHcIenY6gZ9An/s320/DSCN4575.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224485323799101778" border="0" /></a>I swear I don’t understand at all why people are moving in droves to Florida. It’s hotter than hell – 95 degrees and 99% humidity, the air is heavy and smells not of the ocean but of heat, and sweat and grease. It’s flat as a pancake and all you see when driving are trees or swamp land on the side of the highway which has no curves – unless you are in the city, when all you see are strip malls, CVS Pharmacies, more strip malls, Walgreen’s Pharmacies, more strip malls, STRIP club, another CVS… and on and on. Me, I need mountains, and cool clean air, and rocky beaches, and pine trees, and curvy, twisty roads that climb and move with the land. You don’t get that in Florida. Tony has been here a week for a conference, and I just got here last night. I’m ready to leave. None-the-less, here we are. You couldn’t pay me enough to live here however.<br /><br />The bikes, which were shipped on July 3rd, made it in fine shape, albeit a tad late. They got here yesterday – three days late. And despite the last minute arrival, Petersen’s Miami Harley Davidson did some work on Tony’s bike, (thanks Nick!) and we drove 20 miles from the hotel to pick them up this morning. Florida has toll roads – lots of toll roads. Toll roads on a motorcycle are very difficult. First, you can’t just “toss” in a quarter, since the tolls are all $1.25 or more. Second, you have both hands on the controls of the bike, so you have to go up to a booth. Then you have to, kill the engine, put your foot down in a puddle of water and oil and hope you don’t slide and tip the bike over. Then, while standing up straddling the bike, reach into your pants pocket and get funds to give the non-English speaking toll taker. The then give you back your change, you put it back in your pocket, sit down on the bike, start the bike up and drive off, hoping again you don’t go down in the ice slick oil and water puddle while pulling out into merging traffic at 60 mph. It’s great fun.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmJ4Xz-Nlvaj_b9-2FCjisB-ueJhMOBqkLfE_h7zdtn1m2vquKLXsoshdUarb387qI_QzxIF1YUWJTrz22PBMIM_zQe3YfvxUR7yRXvUaEvzuf2dMGMvEfDCm9f9Hi2j8AfhuI/s1600-h/DSCN4577.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmJ4Xz-Nlvaj_b9-2FCjisB-ueJhMOBqkLfE_h7zdtn1m2vquKLXsoshdUarb387qI_QzxIF1YUWJTrz22PBMIM_zQe3YfvxUR7yRXvUaEvzuf2dMGMvEfDCm9f9Hi2j8AfhuI/s200/DSCN4577.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224485767463419506" border="0" /></a><br />Or you can get an automatic toll transponder, or Sun Pass as they are called, and ride through on a fast lane without stopping. So as Tony rode back to the hotel, I went in search of a CVS Pharmacy where they sell them. As I said earlier, you can find a CVS about every block in Florida. Not this time – not when you need to find one. I finally came across one about 45 blocks from the hotel and bought two and came back to the hotel to set up the account, then pre-loaded them with a credit card, and stuck them on the windshield of the bikes. The stickers have an RFID chip that overhead scanners read and deduct from your account. Pretty slick.<br /><br />Now comes the fun part. First thing in the morning we hit the road to Key West. I’ve been looking forward to this for two years – the last time we rode the Overseas Highway. The road is US-1, and its 130 miles down to Key West, island hopping and on bridges the whole way. It’s cool since you are over the water, and the scenery is amazing. It's one of the most magical motorcycle rides in the world. This picture was taken on the last trip two years ago when we rented bikes in Tampa and drove down. We’ll spend a night in Key West and first thing Sunday Morning head to Mile 0 at the southern most point in the US, and the “lower corner” of our Corner To Corner journey.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcIUC9ZG0Gu_CTiJkoKPbWgXkvH0w1MEzmIyvAqOqKeX44ZsN8kzraXijxdNSY__FozdR2GnRvEyLr7X2YlPikX6NJP5WYHEv4C_QQ7GGYncF9Zedm5yONxjW8UoA2pFiL-jvZ/s1600-h/DSCN2720.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcIUC9ZG0Gu_CTiJkoKPbWgXkvH0w1MEzmIyvAqOqKeX44ZsN8kzraXijxdNSY__FozdR2GnRvEyLr7X2YlPikX6NJP5WYHEv4C_QQ7GGYncF9Zedm5yONxjW8UoA2pFiL-jvZ/s400/DSCN2720.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224486444356356306" border="0" /></a>Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-47467887226594133292008-07-16T10:13:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:31.601-08:002008 - Corner To Corner, a Prologue<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijdlt10Vrfhjy6cATs6PrUcHDaJ7CH6kGTXUTwc2JleGjM0fp8tgBi2bTxoekigjboZHPARdYuCLx7p5msGtuWr31kUUrrw2OK4lvSl5TJsro_EHixAiF1LnAq5Npz58NOxc9I/s1600-h/DSCN4123.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijdlt10Vrfhjy6cATs6PrUcHDaJ7CH6kGTXUTwc2JleGjM0fp8tgBi2bTxoekigjboZHPARdYuCLx7p5msGtuWr31kUUrrw2OK4lvSl5TJsro_EHixAiF1LnAq5Npz58NOxc9I/s320/DSCN4123.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223667438680406002" border="0" /></a>A year ago Tony planted a seed of an idea – and last fall, while riding through the fallow fields of the Midwest on a gorgeous fall day, it started to take root.<br /><br />We had found ourselves in Chicago so Tony could attend a certification class for work, and we had the weekend to spend riding before things started. We picked up a couple of Ultra Classics at Wildfire HD in suburban Chicago and headed north into Wisconsin on a pilgrimage of sorts to the home-town of Harley Davidson, Milwaukee, WI. After we left the suburbs of Chicagoland we headed north, riding along US 45 through farm country and freshly plowed fields where they had stripped the harvested corn stalks. It was chilly as it usually is in the fall, the leaves a brilliant yellow, orange and red. As we rode through picture perfect Midwest small farm towns I was moved to thinking about Tony’s idea of riding “corner to corner” of the US. His idea was to ship our bikes to Miami where he’ll once again be at a conference, and then at the conclusion, riding down to Key West for a night, and then starting at Mile 0 on US-1, heading back towards the northwest corner of the US – ending our ride at the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula about three weeks later.<br /><br />I looked at the map and got somewhat intimidated at the distance and the time it would take. I take that back – the distance actually looks scary when you stand back and look at a continental US map. But when I was riding across the prairie in the early morning, watching the hunters dressed in cammies off to the fields after pheasants, smelling the fresh crisp air, and watching the farm town water towers that look like giant golf balls perched on 10 story tees rise before me as we near a town – riding through at 25 mph, past the town café where we can smell the bacon cooking, I was moved to want to see all of this great land.<br /><br />We took two days riding through Illinois and Wisconsin – spending the night at the small town of Lake Geneva, WI, which sits along US-12. Once again I was drawn to the fact that if I turned West, I could ride that highway all the way home to Washington. We spent a lot of time on US-12 two years ago on the big SMC ride, and that small black and white shield with the number “12” on it is one of the icons that makes me want to hit the open road. Hell almost any road sign does that, but the black and white “US” numbers, especially ones that I know go “home”, pull at me like nothing else.<br /><br />We’d ridden down from Milwaukee, stopping at a few spots along the way, seeing the small town kids starting out on their trick-or-treat rounds, and knowing it would be dark soon, decided to stop in Lake Geneva. It was almost a déjà vu moment, as it was a very similar night that we rolled into Rockland, Maine last summer. It was starting to get dark and a bit chilly when we saw the town ahead, and rolling past a small-town multi-plex and seeing a nice Comfort Inn off a side road, we decided to stop for the night. Once again we hit the movie and then went for dinner in a small town café, just like we did along the coast of Maine.<br /><br />The next morning we rolled out early and headed further south into Illinois. We motored through Hebron, IL where the town water tower was painted to resemble a giant basketball and commemorated the local high-school’s state championship. In 1958! The paint was still fresh, and this small American town still remembers it’s crowning glory, which still has not faded from memory. The fall harvest moon was still full in the sky and we rode south along with the migrating birds in their “V” formations. We neared Chicago and the suburbs ate into the farmlands until we rode up to the HD Dealer and reluctantly turned the bikes in on yet another perfect fall day.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY4KqdSnpHOysTwRrEwZzpY3G6FlwXl5vEHmQ8bVpOskUX35krW_Lv5Fj3Lal-QnyJUKGJuoB06ISWkJpFMoBZEio1rKXMWIP_7Mgq9oqPhS_n4kCF5CenIydza1j2_pfqeFCp/s1600-h/7-2-1a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY4KqdSnpHOysTwRrEwZzpY3G6FlwXl5vEHmQ8bVpOskUX35krW_Lv5Fj3Lal-QnyJUKGJuoB06ISWkJpFMoBZEio1rKXMWIP_7Mgq9oqPhS_n4kCF5CenIydza1j2_pfqeFCp/s320/7-2-1a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223666993209675874" border="0" /></a>I realized I couldn’t pass up the chance to spend three weeks riding like that again making the journey itself the purpose of the trip. Riding until it gets to be dusk, looking for a nice motel and maybe a movie theater for a break. Seeing what it is that makes this, such a remarkable country, the people, places and history. Enjoying the total freedom of a motorcycle, the open road, a book of maps, no schedule, and an American Express card can bring.<br /><br />The question I have now is not “can I do it”, but what can I do with it. I’m told that I have a gift of writing. If we do this trip would I be able to take the adventure and describe the people we meet, the places we go, and the roads we take in such a way as to make it a book? Could I take others along this journey and make it worth reading? Has the “motorcycle road trip” book been done to death, or could I write the next “Travels with Charlie” John Steinbeck’s masterpiece about hitting the open road, or Jack Kerouac, or even Long Way Around, Ewan McGreggor’s book about going around the world on a BMW bike a few years ago? To me the pure enjoyment of riding is the purpose, not the “ends’. I ride to have a good time, not to make good time. If I make this a “project” will it become just that – a project, and not a trip? All great writers have a plan, an outline, a goal in mind when they start. Do I do this as well, or does that make it less of a trip and more of work. If I want to see if I can become a writer do I make that the purpose of the trip? Those are now the questions I’m asking.<br /><br />Tony’s seed has now grown into a tree. On July 3rd we shipped the bikes to Miami. We used Federal Motorcycle Transport, a division of Allied Movers, who put the bikes on a pallet and shipped them in a moving van. We dropped them off at 6am.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrKtgPJddshKf2MlFIWM0ip-pUNrvI6xxHC8ulIk3kJLp-KBsPH9DuP7ZIrNG4r6xd39lc7uPdRGVYZkmzM1G50Jb9z_6HW1B2skgrqWHQg3UbssojvL3Kh4Qn64B5FI8Mo3sT/s1600-h/DSCN4502.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrKtgPJddshKf2MlFIWM0ip-pUNrvI6xxHC8ulIk3kJLp-KBsPH9DuP7ZIrNG4r6xd39lc7uPdRGVYZkmzM1G50Jb9z_6HW1B2skgrqWHQg3UbssojvL3Kh4Qn64B5FI8Mo3sT/s200/DSCN4502.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223661598926772066" border="0" /></a><br />We pick them up on Saturday July 19th and ride to Key West. As another of my heroes, Warren Miller the ski bum/filmmaker/philosopher says: “if you don’t do it now, you’ll just be another year older when you do.” The question now is what kind of fruit will the tree bear.<br /><br />You can follow along and find out with us here.Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-72672559584863857072008-06-19T11:47:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:32.435-08:00Corner to Corner: Tony's Prelude<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihci0FcVdAcPYQ3Wh9Whjpi6D_2-aXHZscln0zBAH3BMQ2T9C0iR7CBDONDp8eQ181aJiaTdB8sbti9eUxHFSLBscqiMeG3723Nwb3PqsQiuj74PVNSlGJnHiTVGJG00d9Vgqnbg/s1600-h/PTownEndOfRoad.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213671508244520498" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihci0FcVdAcPYQ3Wh9Whjpi6D_2-aXHZscln0zBAH3BMQ2T9C0iR7CBDONDp8eQ181aJiaTdB8sbti9eUxHFSLBscqiMeG3723Nwb3PqsQiuj74PVNSlGJnHiTVGJG00d9Vgqnbg/s320/PTownEndOfRoad.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />On July 19th (just over a year from our last posting on this blog) Gary and I will be venturing out on the biggest motorcycle trip <strong>in the 4 years that we have been riding. We are calling this trip "</strong>Corner to Corner" as we will be riding from the Southeast Corner to the Northwest Corner of the United States on two of our Harley's.<br /><br />Prior to this, there are a few things that will happen. First, we will be shipping my 2008 Ultra Classic and Gary's 2006 Dyna Street Bob to Miami, Florida around the 1st of July. It will take about 3 weeks to get there, which is perfect timing with my plans to attend GALA Festival 8 in Miami.<br /><br />In fact, three weeks from tomorrow I will be leaving Seattle to fly on the Red Eye flight from Seattle to Orlando. I will be picking up a car at the Orlando airport and then driving direct to Miami, where I will pick up Steve, fellow Seattle Men's Chorus and The BEARatones member, at the Miami airport before driving to our hotel in the city.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTKHdYcd43rmJpblmHwy-_LHVXdAH5Bh7QAkEiLpUH0ZAHgWHwlVNAj4RshmAVPt5st1OogpES9MlICYl_Q5uvIBsyLKm0lO8gOIsu1RYoxO6_HzjUqFRR6O_lWXF65e_pZORHcw/s1600-h/IBR2008_4.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTKHdYcd43rmJpblmHwy-_LHVXdAH5Bh7QAkEiLpUH0ZAHgWHwlVNAj4RshmAVPt5st1OogpES9MlICYl_Q5uvIBsyLKm0lO8gOIsu1RYoxO6_HzjUqFRR6O_lWXF65e_pZORHcw/s320/IBR2008_4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5213671798816136050" /></a>The GALA festival is a gathering of gay and lesbian choruses and small groups from around the world. The week will be filled with performances from all the various chrouses and Seattle Men's Chorus will be anchoring the Tuesday evening (July 15th) performance at 11pm. Then my small group, The BEARatones will be making our debut GALA performance on Friday, July 18th at 4pm.<br /><br />Gary will join me in Miami on the 17th so that he can see the BEARatones perform and then we will pick up the bikes from the Miami Harley-Davidson dealership on Saturday the 19th and ride the 130 miles across many bridges and blue green water to Key West.<br /><br />We will be blogging the trip here like we do with all of our trips, so look for more postings about our stops in between.Tony Gilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02635234578903200899noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-54433105706761176052007-07-14T15:54:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:33.311-08:00The Road To Alice's Restaurant - Day 11, Washingtonians Crossing the Delaware<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNdhJfiiwu4tYCk6W2gnpRSOfKWY6fheM1uIw0c8x_e6cVgPkm7dOzIifTwVR9FUNuYuL7Rd4nt9U1j7D_MHEugTDGKyRhkC6fY8om4UmUIKtOBsBqPer_lmpqcJISE5IB5orP/s1600-h/DSCN3739%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNdhJfiiwu4tYCk6W2gnpRSOfKWY6fheM1uIw0c8x_e6cVgPkm7dOzIifTwVR9FUNuYuL7Rd4nt9U1j7D_MHEugTDGKyRhkC6fY8om4UmUIKtOBsBqPer_lmpqcJISE5IB5orP/s320/DSCN3739%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087192393141518818" border="0" /></a>We woke up to brilliant sunshine and very warm temperatures in Goshen, NY today. One last time I wrote out directions on a yellow sticky note for the windshield -- this time a bit more detailed with Mapquest directions to our hotel in downtown Philly. After our free breakfast of generic "Holiday Inn O's" and toast, we loaded up the bikes. Two ladies enjoying a morning smoke came over, and sounding to the world like Edith Bunker with the thickest Brooklyn accents we've heard, asked about the bikes and how much they cost (one lady saying her son wanted one). We told them and they were surprised at the cost (the bikes we are on list for $18K), and we had a nice chat about our travels. They were here for one of the weddings at the hotel today.<br /><br />Indeed it was so warm and sunny that we decided to attempt to even out our tans (our arms looking like<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTlDrB1PSosK7zfxf9_3u9jGE0tMwf8b52J252eOVt0FiDrlVKBuW7IAqSCN7eeixtVDj_IY88zciqsJrK4imz9bkBhL6f_J4oCnsggJ_nOEfDXI-A3R8q3S4w56p2uXso37fP/s1600-h/DSCN3744%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTlDrB1PSosK7zfxf9_3u9jGE0tMwf8b52J252eOVt0FiDrlVKBuW7IAqSCN7eeixtVDj_IY88zciqsJrK4imz9bkBhL6f_J4oCnsggJ_nOEfDXI-A3R8q3S4w56p2uXso37fP/s200/DSCN3744%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087192715264066050" border="0" /></a> they'd been dipped in brown paint) by riding shirtless. We sprayed what's left of our sunscreen all over and throwing all sense of decency to the wind, rode out of Goshen bare chested. The morning sun felt so nice on my skin, and the quiet back road we were on through the corn fields reminded me of the opening scene of the movie "Love Valor and Compassion" where the young Ramon enjoying a similar road takes his shirt off and sits on the back hood of a VW bug and throws his arms to the sun as his friend James drives them to upstate NY. Hard to do on a bike, but doable. We had to pause to allow Tony to cease his hysterical laughter. He had the camera so there is no corresponding picture of him shocking the NJ countryside.<br /><br />We had a very short ride anyway today, so we took our time and enjoyed the NY, NJ and PA backroads, and went diagonally across NJ before crossing the Delaware into PA and riding down the west shore of the Delaware River along the old Delaware and Pennsylvania canal. (You will recall we went on the north side of the river when we left Philly last week.) We stopped at a nice biker friendly bar that overlooked the river for lunch -- there must have been a dozen bikes parked out front and we passed many other bikers enjoying the cool ride along the river.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsibKr5tZxRIpvD_XRd93joVIfRKwEotbPSr3H4kg8Hud305C8X82v-O-WnDCTSOCkJS08q6ac1ahdYwEPAwynx3FSgA7SztJIfaF-_mBsbn3sZv34Elb6j-1upW8SwbCs4dOX/s1600-h/DSCN3750%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsibKr5tZxRIpvD_XRd93joVIfRKwEotbPSr3H4kg8Hud305C8X82v-O-WnDCTSOCkJS08q6ac1ahdYwEPAwynx3FSgA7SztJIfaF-_mBsbn3sZv34Elb6j-1upW8SwbCs4dOX/s200/DSCN3750%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087192831228183058" border="0" /></a>All too soon we were nearing the outskirts of Philly and had to hop on the freeway to get into downtown. Riding on a freeway in a strange big city is a nerve racking experience, but it was Saturday and traffic was very light. We motored into town and right down past Constitution Hall where the Declaration of Independence was written. Tony, as always the showman, while we were waiting for the light, launched into his litany of tunes from the musical "1776", to which I had to tell him "Sit down, Tony, sit down..for God's sake Tony sit down..." the light changed and on we went to the hotel. The hotel itself was an interesting experience. Last night we'd booked a Rodeway Inn right down town at a decent price. When we got there we found a dirty little place with a malfunctioning elevator, a desk clerk who gave us a room already occupied (and did so to two other guests while we were there too), and no promised Internet connectivity. We left there and went to a real hotel, a nice Marriott three blocks away. Heck, we can splurge on a fancy hotel once on this trip.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWR5xDe-cuYhheJuF5vKbq5Hsr2uK0byrVUsI-QgRac8EdnpjpjDjaevrj9I2qIwbU00_kgzRTqGRXpK2PrSHT8i8RnNeQajp1X8cdMHFG2XMut2wnnJaZlDQvi2q-S7Ktsfze/s1600-h/DSCN3738%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWR5xDe-cuYhheJuF5vKbq5Hsr2uK0byrVUsI-QgRac8EdnpjpjDjaevrj9I2qIwbU00_kgzRTqGRXpK2PrSHT8i8RnNeQajp1X8cdMHFG2XMut2wnnJaZlDQvi2q-S7Ktsfze/s200/DSCN3738%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087192552055308786" border="0" /></a>Even Mariott's will take dirty bikers. And one thing you get while on the road all day is dirty, which is why it's so nice to check into a hotel and jump into a shower. Witness the washcloth that I used to just wipe my face when we checked in. Need I say more. A nice refreshing shower after a day on the road is why we stay in hotels while on the road rather than camping in a tent. <br /><br /><br />It's been a great 11 day trip. We took some great roads thanks to our friends at the Camden, NJ and Framingham, MA HOG chapters. Riding in today we passed a sign for the New Jersey Turnpike, which made me start to hum Simon and Garfunkle's song "America", with a line in it "...counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they've all come to look for America..." That's why we ride, and why we explore the roads. I'm not sure what exactly we are looking for, so therefore you can't really find it I suppose. However, we went through a lot of the country -- nine states and areas neither of us have ever been. We met some cool characters, and we ate some great meals. We racked up about 2200 miles on the bikes, and went through our country's early history along the Delaware River, the Boston Post Road, and the Pilgrim's landing at Provincetown. We went through the East's great mountain ranges -- the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the Adirondacks and Poconos of New York. We past countless Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields and old forts, and went through towns that were founded in the late 1600s. So did we "find" America? Like I said, I don't think you can find it, you can just live it, and so far I think we have. Remember, there is no wrong turn, as long as it leads to more pavement.<br /><br />Tomorrow we'll take the bikes back to the dealer, hop on the train to Newark and then fly home to Seattle. It will be good to get back home, to the house and our bed and the dogs. We hope you've enjoyed coming along with us on this trip. <br /><br />From the Mariott in downtown Philly --<br /><br />Gary and Tony<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht6G5yR0FxtLFD6CL59hU1WgoIQ-zC_TPRuURBt7rzHRjRozAaryW3hcWcAEiYgUZKziUCZZhRf2D5F_2_VG_6UBwyuiFMey6xAvOlblQZUK0czwkILTplcNiWPcrcnWy5beBt/s1600-h/DSCN3651%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht6G5yR0FxtLFD6CL59hU1WgoIQ-zC_TPRuURBt7rzHRjRozAaryW3hcWcAEiYgUZKziUCZZhRf2D5F_2_VG_6UBwyuiFMey6xAvOlblQZUK0czwkILTplcNiWPcrcnWy5beBt/s320/DSCN3651%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087191237795316178" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHFP6lHkm2VMKjzWQqioU2aiOLG4wFGPhCgO5k6Cg21a8bGzcUsITKUhhyZHfLVHAK22RIpQMWJmChCX8FwMjkoiLQEN_S8caqf_JFb7nDiHfcVy7WBREB78mQl-L2pck3DyiT/s1600-h/DSCN3739%5B1%5D.jpg"><br /></a>Gary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-64350399896317892582007-07-13T19:22:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:34.866-08:00The Road To Alice's Restaurant - Day 10, "They went forth unto the land of Goshen"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBXZ3F-DbZAhpXGJ2_wKPyhW24DtxzRK7HgM4MfXpCxApFgG7i2WcfeOlYwhZDJEmdOcckm2S_cbDCVzryhzuwISa0dEk8PC3FOOin6WACx1l7Zum3YRYtLE6ZgDLZssu_Z0U7/s1600-h/DSCN3719%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBXZ3F-DbZAhpXGJ2_wKPyhW24DtxzRK7HgM4MfXpCxApFgG7i2WcfeOlYwhZDJEmdOcckm2S_cbDCVzryhzuwISa0dEk8PC3FOOin6WACx1l7Zum3YRYtLE6ZgDLZssu_Z0U7/s320/DSCN3719%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086872787445154114" border="0" /></a> Like the Children of Israel leaving Egypt, we left Montpelier VT, not knowing exactly where we'd go, what route we would take, and where we would end up. Though we weren't in bondage, we went forth, and ended up, like like the Children of Israel, in the Land of Goshen. Our Goshen is in New York however, but it truly must be a similar Blessed and Holy Land -- as there is to be a wedding in the Holiday Inn Express off Exit 127 of NY Route 17 tomorrow. In the lobby was the grand announcement. I suppose it's a step up from the Shiny Pines Mobile Home Court rec room -- with the proud father of the bride giving away his precious at noon tomorrow in Meeting Room A of the Holiday Inn Express.<br /><br />Indeed the Holy Spirit seems to be everywhere -- Tony has been reading "Mormonism for Dummies", a real book from the "For Dummies" series that he found in Barns And Noble just before we left. He said he's learned more about my family, our vernacular, and our peculiarities by reading this book than in the past 11 years. He even said he was feeling a burning in his boosam at times, but I told him it was more than likely the chili covered nachos he had for dinner.<br /><br />We left Montpelier a tad later than we'd wanted to. When we got up it was raining, but <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ1He3_THvjmcHdU4X2T_0W3haTg6AaKEc1yizg9_7dwrF2Rxp1tHqYJfr1KEkOrAJD2BnpWPFUEsHEv3mAAAXwDiMgqLcmLtX9LY5xnBQN7mxaVoVgAKmiquXWPm_lnEpAzCq/s1600-h/DSCN3715%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ1He3_THvjmcHdU4X2T_0W3haTg6AaKEc1yizg9_7dwrF2Rxp1tHqYJfr1KEkOrAJD2BnpWPFUEsHEv3mAAAXwDiMgqLcmLtX9LY5xnBQN7mxaVoVgAKmiquXWPm_lnEpAzCq/s200/DSCN3715%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086872886229401938" border="0" /></a>according to the Weather Channel, it was due to stop and so we waited out the rain after breakfast and hit the road at 10am. We rode past the small State Capitol, with it's dome gleaming in the sun, and headed south on VT-100. This road came highly recommended by both the HOG Road Atlas and other riders we'd talked to, so we were looking forward to it. It did not disappoint. This probably ranks right up with the great roads we've ridden both on this trip and elsewhere. The picture at the top of the post is from some point on the route, which heads more or less due south and runs through the heart of the Green Mountains, past great farms, along the Mad River, past small villages and covered bridges. We both agreed it is exactly how we pictured Vermont would be. We went past some of the great ski resorts of the east too -- Sugarbush, Killington, and Pico -- all large for the area but nothing like what we've got back home in the west.<br /><br />When we got to Killington we had some decisions to make -- do we keep heading south on<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhInKCJoaopmY-cCx1G2Kyd5DYJylujZiK-sZC9r0T0qg5udBPWP3FOEZ7_ih35yWzAsn1ZH0er7AQE1yL-uuTmLh4m4viqLdvKVuXC8oomxbinbXE5xH4qtsLTCa2_dQQv9xhQ/s1600-h/DSCN3722%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhInKCJoaopmY-cCx1G2Kyd5DYJylujZiK-sZC9r0T0qg5udBPWP3FOEZ7_ih35yWzAsn1ZH0er7AQE1yL-uuTmLh4m4viqLdvKVuXC8oomxbinbXE5xH4qtsLTCa2_dQQv9xhQ/s200/DSCN3722%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086889271529636226" border="0" /></a> VT-100 into western MA, or do we turn west and go into upstate NY? We wanted to avoid NYC traffic, and we wanted to get as far south as we could without trouble so we would only have a short hop into Philly on Saturday. There was no burning bush to point the way, only our maps and intuition, and Tony's Blackberry which he was busy using to pull up radar and weather info for each route. We chose to head west into NY and then head south past Albany and end up somewhere close to the NJ border for the night. The weather looked clear with some storms far to the north. However, as soon as we went around Killington Mountain and into Rutland, VT, there was a doozy of a thunderstorm waiting for us and we hit it just as we crossed over into NY. So much for the accuracy of the weather.com. We got drenched as there was no overpass or pull out where we could pull off and put on our rain gear. However, the sun came out as we came into Whitehall, NY and we dried off rather quickly. We stopped for lunch in Fort Ann, NY, right along the Champlain Canal and had a HUGE meatloaf sandwich that kept me filled up until well into the evening.<br /><br />We headed south on US-4, aiming now towards Albany. Yesterday we rode on US-1, US-2, and<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpWMqrWHYsQXiTs0GmBwUZ-TdPChyphenhyphen5aIL66qR2ok5PB829mtQ4g-ey9CgTHHk0VGGgWPhJRscQO70HNx5Di0ZOHaS38OC7JhWKzIkPKu-QtF6-eHDCCjTdD2Iv2EAP2y1tHKzc/s1600-h/DSCN3726%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpWMqrWHYsQXiTs0GmBwUZ-TdPChyphenhyphen5aIL66qR2ok5PB829mtQ4g-ey9CgTHHk0VGGgWPhJRscQO70HNx5Di0ZOHaS38OC7JhWKzIkPKu-QtF6-eHDCCjTdD2Iv2EAP2y1tHKzc/s200/DSCN3726%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086873010783453538" border="0" /></a> US-3 -- today we are on US-4, and we'd been on US-6 and US-7 already, somehow though we've managed to miss US-5. Just an odd observation. US-4 however was in bad need of some paving -- there was a BUmp evERy fiFTy feET regULar aS ClockWOrk whICh drOVe us QUite MAd foR At leASt tEN miLEs. These were caused by the expansion joints being paved over but not smoothed down. We ducked under I-90 which, although it was a freeway (or here a turnpike/toll road) would take us directly home if we wanted to, as it ends at Safeco Field in downtown Seattle. If it were me, I'd rather head west on US-2 or US-6 than I-90, but it will be good to get home on Sunday none the less.<br /><br />In Albany we picked up US-9W and rode down the west (hence the "w") side of the Hudson River until we came to Woodstock. That's right, THE Woodstock, home of the 60s rock fest/drug party. There happened to be a Harley dealership too, so we stopped in for a rest and a t-shirt, and Tony used that time to try and find a hotel room for tonite. We'd planned on going to Port Jervis, NY, but since it's sort of a "resort" area and it's Friday night, we called ahead. None of the standard Quality Inn, Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn places had availability (good thing we'd called first), and so we were directed to this lovely Holiday Inn Express in Goshen, which is about 30 miles from Port Jervis. From Woodstock we had the choice of some NY back roads, or the NY State Thruway, which is a toll road. We debated for a while, but the weather was so nice, and the temperature about perfect, we decided to take the back roads. This caused us to wander like the Children of Israel all over Ulster county (hey, we got our "U" county for the Harley ABC contest anyway). <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH0BG-CRRgUMVstnt-jLucQ0-7HYZVbx9gmPxLspqdMEi-14Dfix_geC-KwS4iP90wdHcJpPJxoYejj64MESQLG_qT54uvQIULpTSyJ2yhgDvkVQps_WcwzHx3epCPTk3X6ZLS/s1600-h/DSCN3737%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH0BG-CRRgUMVstnt-jLucQ0-7HYZVbx9gmPxLspqdMEi-14Dfix_geC-KwS4iP90wdHcJpPJxoYejj64MESQLG_qT54uvQIULpTSyJ2yhgDvkVQps_WcwzHx3epCPTk3X6ZLS/s320/DSCN3737%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086873100977766770" border="0" /></a>The sun started to go down, and off in the distance we could see lightning from a thundershower to the east. We even ended up back at Orange County Choppers where we were on Sunday. Here we picked up I-84 for the short run to Goshen, where we checked into the hotel and went into the small town of Chester for a late supper.<br /><br />Tomorrow we will retrace our steps from Day One, heading down the Delaware River to Trenton and into Philly. So, we've wandered pretty much all over the North East these past 10 days, and we've got just a short day of riding left tomorrow. It's going to be sad to take the Heritage and Road King back to Barb's, but it's going to be good to be heading home as well, after all we are down to two pair of clean undies!<br /><br />From the Holiday Inn Express in Goshen, NY<br />Gary and TonyGary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16116295.post-21890048406775732912007-07-12T18:52:00.000-07:002008-12-13T04:41:35.795-08:00The Road To Alice's Restaurant - Day 9, Maine to Vermont<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiXeWQomA_2-5PppSDZYzHcvEJzghhkdMjR5AToYfDkjy_lPf9TM39jMtwWYXXwVJABCVn5xL6Lo1UCfl4qdXzn73yBME4Mq2Wv1ZoqkgNPuMjxnuaoWTei6TgDPluMRJwzXiP/s1600-h/DSCN3685%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiXeWQomA_2-5PppSDZYzHcvEJzghhkdMjR5AToYfDkjy_lPf9TM39jMtwWYXXwVJABCVn5xL6Lo1UCfl4qdXzn73yBME4Mq2Wv1ZoqkgNPuMjxnuaoWTei6TgDPluMRJwzXiP/s320/DSCN3685%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086493799530954978" border="0" /></a><br />Well, we <span style="font-style: italic;">finally</span> saw the Coast of Maine, and had a chance to ride up it for about 40 miles this morning. It's pretty much how we had pictured it for the most part -- rocky, with lots of harbors and bays. US-1 runs along the coast for almost the entire length of Maine, but we only took it for a few miles, and I'm suspecting that it gets much prettier, and much quieter the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMHkCqLKplc1UfdwfYRy9m2zbRN1FEvIqv40JECRDbkcympoz-8N7i2LzhZ3ezBoilegCJOLuA20D2I_iIUNTR95UeWrmtweldxGKsGheFwyqdpmSVCSu4cW4568gTfuapQlu7/s1600-h/DSCN3682%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMHkCqLKplc1UfdwfYRy9m2zbRN1FEvIqv40JECRDbkcympoz-8N7i2LzhZ3ezBoilegCJOLuA20D2I_iIUNTR95UeWrmtweldxGKsGheFwyqdpmSVCSu4cW4568gTfuapQlu7/s200/DSCN3682%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086493885430300914" border="0" /></a>further North one goes. The stretch we rode -- indeed the common denominator for <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> the coastal roads we took in MA and NH as well as ME, was that they consisted of strings and strings of small towns, and endless rows of motels and resorts and "crab shacks" or "lobster shanty's", and tons and tons of tourists. The towns are quite charming, and we actually have plenty of time to study the architectural details as we are stuck in traffic. Case in point, this picture, taken in Camden, ME. This is at 10am and the traffic is stop and go for the entire length of town. It's tough on the nerves and on the hands constantly riding the clutch. We were very glad to turn inland and head north up to Bangor.<br /><br />We pulled out of the Hampton Inn, in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Rockport</span> at 915am -- it was tough to get up as the bed was without a doubt the most comfortable one we've been on this trip, and this hotel the nicest as well. Harry Potter was good, and the dinner before the movie had spectacular. Now when you think of Maine, you think of Lobster right? Well next door to the hotel was an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Applebee's</span>, which we didn't want to go to unless we had to. The front desk suggested a place a mile up the road in the restored train station. As you know, if it has anything to do with trains I'm a happy guy, so up the road we went. This small train station has been restored, and the restaurant quaint with outstanding food. It always pays to ask the locals. While this place wasn't a seafood place, we did manage to have a spot of Maine lobster -- in a lobster <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">rangoon</span> appetizer. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMh5C5_UUUwpe_xQK0hNYkB7xDbiUJH2knTnybG7FnaVfG-hHazRf2Sf_3cTEW0jAVqs9whE7zkgI7VkYjM8lEr3MAvScW0Cncibc38QNIxlXGc4G4qEKfY2c4AZ3_hOh-XSn9/s1600-h/DSCN3684%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMh5C5_UUUwpe_xQK0hNYkB7xDbiUJH2knTnybG7FnaVfG-hHazRf2Sf_3cTEW0jAVqs9whE7zkgI7VkYjM8lEr3MAvScW0Cncibc38QNIxlXGc4G4qEKfY2c4AZ3_hOh-XSn9/s200/DSCN3684%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086493967034679554" border="0" /></a><br />Growing up the TV show M*A*S*H was a big part of my life, and if you know the show, you know that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Hawkeye</span> Pierce came from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Crabapple</span> Cove, Maine. Well, there is no <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Crabapple</span> Cove listed -- but I suspect it looked a little like this. Growing up I always thought <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Crabapple</span> Cove sounded so far away and romantic, and I had it pictured in my head. It's funny how pop culture can do that to you (there is no <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Shawshank</span> either, from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Shawshank</span> Redemption, but I digress.) Maine, like Washington, also has a propensity for unpronounceable place-names based on Native-American words, although the Washington ones aren't as tough. Where out in Washington we have "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Snoqualmie</span>" and "Salish", and "Walla-Walla" -- in Maine it's a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">tongue-twisting nightmare with places like Ogunquit, and Skowhegan.</span><br /><br />We turned off the coast road and north onto US-1A aimed for Bangor, Maine. The moment we turned off the coast route the traffic vanished, and we were able to make good time up to Bangor. As I often say, my motto is that I ride on the road to have a good time, not to make good time...BUT, there are exceptions, and sometimes you've got to let those big V-twins run! And you don't have a good time constantly clutching and shifting and braking despite the scenery. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqgIBkEWD117WhYa_fLJnWXjRMvMCJkMXP8Q43B7hqKFFef35xt0sGaZRls6an0b-KoStuLwE-HBkQQS_xRMRj1IgE8TOODu2BgUZQiVe455ItPuyJmmoY9ESvpJ8-Noi9-OG4/s1600-h/DSCN3687%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqgIBkEWD117WhYa_fLJnWXjRMvMCJkMXP8Q43B7hqKFFef35xt0sGaZRls6an0b-KoStuLwE-HBkQQS_xRMRj1IgE8TOODu2BgUZQiVe455ItPuyJmmoY9ESvpJ8-Noi9-OG4/s200/DSCN3687%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086494074408861970" border="0" /></a>Bangor was the furthest north-east point on this trip -- and when 1A ended, we turned west on US-2 at it's beginning in downtown Bangor. Actually, it felt like turning home -- as we are now <span style="font-style: italic;">officially</span> on the way home, having gone as far as we could on this trip. Heading west on US-2 really is homeward bound too, as US-2 -- if we were to follow it off into the sunset-- would take us home, eventually going up and over Stevens Pass and dropping down to the Sound to end in Everett, WA. The pull of that left turn was a pull towards home, and being on the road for 9 days it's good to aim for home at last. I admit, there is something that draws me to highway numbers, and I can't explain it, except that its a symbol of both the open road and it's draw, and the connection that we have to home. So when I see a road that I <span style="font-style: italic;">know</span> leads both away from and back to the places I love, it becomes attached to me for some reason.<br /><br />So we headed west into the sunshine on a glorious day in Central Maine, aiming ourselves to Montpelier, VT. US-2 was quiet and pretty much devoid of traffic and lucky for us, freshly repaved. Riding a motorcycle down a newly paved road is like skiing on fresh untracked snow, or skating after the zamboni smooths out the ice. We stopped for lunch at a small local "Dairy Barn" drive in -- sitting on a picnic table under a tree and enjoying the day and the rest. A nice older couple came up and the husband asked if we'd been to Sturgis (not yet we told him), and he gave us suggestions on roads to take and reminisiced about his friend who once had a '47 Harley after the war and headed out west on it. We roared out of the parking lot to the waves of his wife and himself, and kept ourselves pointed into the sunshine, all the time thinking how much of an adventure it would be to ride all the way home on US-2.<br /><br />The flat central area of Maine gave way to the White Mountains on the border with New Hampshire, and like US-2 was leading us home, this felt like home. It was the closest we'd seen to anything that felt like riding back home -- with the weather, the scent, the feel of the land, and the vegetation, AND we'd moved far away from that blasted coast. We both agreed<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm87J5iC4OemLaRnVMWXd07q5-h-ZeLlUc9wGWP-Nk41GPEjvQi5psVrf2ENLR0aiyBltiKMfsD4j7icbzhdIz0MPueVzufzRmGgPZ5Th_Jametq6Bfrf2B-QzuQQbo2kYUTX1/s1600-h/DSCN3712%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm87J5iC4OemLaRnVMWXd07q5-h-ZeLlUc9wGWP-Nk41GPEjvQi5psVrf2ENLR0aiyBltiKMfsD4j7icbzhdIz0MPueVzufzRmGgPZ5Th_Jametq6Bfrf2B-QzuQQbo2kYUTX1/s200/DSCN3712%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086494340696834354" border="0" /></a> that riding the coast, for all it's cracked up to be, is not as enjoyable as a nice lightly traveled road heading west. Indeed it got cooler as we climbed higher in the White Mountains after crossing into New Hampshire and as the afternoon turned to evening, we had to stop and put on our jackets! That's a first for this trip. <br /><br />We have noticed that there are far more churches in this part of the country than there are anywhere outside of Utah, where there are LDS chapels every few feet. However the churches out here, while predominantly white with steeples, that's it as far as commonality. Here they are different, where as in Utah they come out of a stock catalogue it seems. Here they are all different denominations, including several that billed themselves as "Full Gospel", which causes me to wonder "what about the rest? Do they only have 'partial gospel'?" I've yet to see a "half-gospel" or "partial gospel" or a "2/3 gospel" church in my travels.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2Q9KDD24gWGN_q6Zuz95GNInWr6vsC10CyH18kXJlW-6MgNvmlfjJMXjpLWvWnY6cvf9-VUS9zG6UCAJC5W8E0GK5_HpiRYcCnWEo-mcWu0GXsDyBBT3KMBh1_HcY43Jeb4d/s1600-h/DSCN3711%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2Q9KDD24gWGN_q6Zuz95GNInWr6vsC10CyH18kXJlW-6MgNvmlfjJMXjpLWvWnY6cvf9-VUS9zG6UCAJC5W8E0GK5_HpiRYcCnWEo-mcWu0GXsDyBBT3KMBh1_HcY43Jeb4d/s320/DSCN3711%5B1%5D.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086494241912586530" border="0" /></a>We hit Montpelier about 730pm, pulling on as the sun started to sink low and gleam off the capitol dome. We didn't see any hotels on our way in, so we pulled into the local Chamber of Commerce information booth and found a brochure for a Quality Inn out by the freeway (which is why we didn't see any hotels on the way in.) We had a bit of difficulty finding the damn hotel too. The local "fun" cartoon map was <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> accurate or to scale, and we figured the easiest way to get there would be to get on the freeway and go up one exit. However, we got on the freeway going North when we should have got on going South. This gave us a lovely 20 minute, 15 mile tour of north Montpelier as the next place to turn around was 7 miles up the road. To top it off, the local Quality Inn was booked and so we took a room at the statley old "Capitol Plaza" right across the street from the state house. <br /><br />We've got two more days of riding, and I've yet to map out the exact route. We can either head South through the Green Mountains of Vermont and end up somewhere in Western Connecticut (dangerously close to NYC), or we can head West into upstate New York and head south through the Adirondacks. Today we did a bit over 300 miles, went through three states, and got our faces royally sunburned as we headed on the road home. All too soon it's going to end.<br /><br />From the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Montpelier, VT<br />Gary and TonyGary Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00340421467903970129noreply@blogger.com0