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Sunday, 30 September 2007
"Auntie Em, there's no place like home!"
The bikes are resting in their garage, and the bikers are resting in their own bed (or will be shortly)
for a welcome rest. Including the "warm-up" circle ride around The Chesapeake Bay through Maryland's Eastern Shore and
back through Norfolk, which added the eastern end of US 50, we crossed through 20 states (some of them
twice, but we only counted each once), the District of Columbia, and we're not sure how many Native American nations, treaty
territories and reservations, 8 for certain.
The last leg was a very pleasant ride, most of it at a more leisurely pace through familiar
Virginia countryside - at least until we hit the afternoon traffic nearing the southwestern outer suburbs of Richmond on Highway
360, where the road filled with more urban driving patterns. The drive north on the 288 western bypass was less busy, and
the relatively new road surface (only a few years old) a pleasure to ride on after a national tour of "caution - rough road
surface - road work ahead" on roads of all sorts - with interstates passing through the center of cities being a high-probability
place to encounter "infrastructure maintenance" , That's the most polite terms the experience evoked en route, thumping through
potholes, wobbling across grooves and metal grids, banging over lumps of randomly distributed temporary asphalt repairs, and
squeezing into miles of lane closures and traffic jams among trucks blocking all vision, and road-raged citizens (another
polite substitute word) clutching cel phones, endlessly racing engines and jockeying for the fruitless small openings
to swerve into and slam on their brakes thinking that The Other Lane Will Be Faster. It never is, of course, which only
makes them more frustrated and risky to be near.
The good news is that nobody ran over us, and even better that most of this great land is still not
in the middle of cities - so for almost all of the travel, we "went in beauty" as the Navajo wisely say. Almost
all the people we encountered, from all manner of motorcycle riders to older ladies done up in their Sunday best
with three-rollers-deep layers of carefuly rollered "perms" to deputy sheriffs to long-haul truckers to rich to poor to politicians
to waitresses to tourists, folks of all ages and shapes and sizes and complexions and accents and ethnic origins and
creeds, were friendly and good-spirited, curious about our quest and ready to share a hand, directions, notes on the weather,
local information,or just general good wishes.
It's too soon to try to put all our thoughts together coherently - maybe later, but right now we're
just happy to be home and blessed to have had a wonderful trip, visiting old friends and seeing the many beautiful faces of
the land and the people. Soon enough we'll be back in the saddle - maybe next weekend for a short trip through the Blue Ridge
and the Shenandoah Valley to try to catch the Fall color changes.
I don't know when we'll take another long ride, though at one point Sue was conversing with another
traveller about the AlCan Highway - good grief, what now? Maybe a spot on the "Ice Road Truckers" television series, senior
citizens on motorcycles trying to pass a semi roaring through 20 below weather in a blizzard over a frozen Arctic lake?
Let's hope she'll settle for paved roads despite her off-road tires! Sue did manage to bottom out the "bash plate"
armor under her engine once, but it wasn't bounding across some off-road desert, just a heck of a big "speed bump" a gas station
owner in the boondocks had home-built. Well, that makes her legitimately entitled to point out that she is the closest thing
to a GS all-terrain rider in the family!
Apologies to those who've wished we could put bigger pictures and more of them into this - but the
way it works is that there's limit on the "free" (HAH!) web site memory, and as soon as bigger or more pictures are added,
significant charges start showing up on the ISP bill. So, if there's a picture you wish you had a big version
of, let us know and we can send you a large, slow email attachment that you won't need a magnifying
glass to look at.
We hope you've enjoyed this log of our trip - we certainly feel happy to have shared it with family
and friends, and wish we could have conveyed a more complete sense of the wonderful experiences we found along the way.
Happy trails!
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| Last evening on the road, - Hickory, NC |
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| Celebrating a great trip! |
| Back in the garage at home |
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| What are they dreaming about? |
| Back home in bed |
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| What are they dreaming about? |
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