Loved the Northeast! Dodging Southeast storms!

As mentioned the Northeast has been one of the highlights of my journey to date. I anticipated that parts of this leg of my adventure would be good, but I honestly had no idea just how incredible this part of America really is. Any trip to New England is not complete without stopping at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Rutland, Vermont.

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One of the cutest towns I have come across was Woodstock, Vermont (not Woodstock, New York). While riding through town I saw three little kids on the other side of the street selling lemonade for only 25 cents a glass. You could just tell that they were dying to have a customer stop and take them up on their offer. I rode past about thee blocks and then decided to turn around and go back to buy a glass from them and to talk to them for a bit about their new business. I don’t know about you guys, but as kids, we had many of lemonade stand and would actually go door-to-door trying to sell soft drinks and/or collect refundable soft drink bottles or extra coat hangers and then sell them back to the cleaners. As I pulled up it was so obvious that they were all so excited to have one of their first customer of the day. There was no doubt that these two brothers and their younger sister were three aspiring entrepreneurial Donald Trump types looking to get on the Apprentice. They were so much fun to talk to and were also so polite. When I gave them three dollars and told them to “keep the change” you should have seen them yelling to their Mom and Dad with such joy. The parents were really cool too. I thought you might enjoy seeing them manning their battle stations like the staff at Starbucks.

The ride through New Hampshire and Main was difficult to top even though weather was working against me much of the time. After spending my first night in Bangor, Maine, I rode up state to Moosehead Lake which was absolutely breathtaking (a must see if you go to Maine). The next day I woke up early in the morning after spending the night in Waterville, Maine with the sun shining bright. This was the first day in quite a while that sun glasses were part of the “uniform for the day”. I was pumped up and decided to take my bike over to a do it yourself car was and get about three weeks of rain, dirt, and crud off of my dear old Captain America before a great day of motorcycling. I jumped out of bed and ever so confidently walk out to my bike only to find out that all my turn signals were flashing when I turned the key on and then I “tried” to start it. Only one issue, nothing happened. I had horn, lights, but no familiar sound of the engine turning over or the rumble of a cold engine could be heard.

What you could hear that early morning sunshine was Dave “going off”. I then paused and took a deep breath and started to determine my next step. I first called the towing service and had them order a pickup. Yes, there is a AAA type tow service for motorcycles. Second, I determined the closest Harley dealer which was about 25 miles away and waited the 30 minutes until they opened.

I got Ron (the service manager) on the phone at 8:31AM and told him that I needed a 10,000 mile service and a new rear tire and then I dropped the bomb on him about having to be towed into his dealership in Augusta, Maine. I described the problem and he casually asked me “if it was possibly that I had my security system turned on”. I said, “No way, I have not had it turned on since the day I bought the bike”. He suggested that I take my keys while keeping him on my mobile phone and that “we” walk out to the bike and hit the alarm button twice that is on my key chain”. By this time I would agree to try anything other than the dreaded “tow truck of shame”. I agreed and then hit the alarm button twice and then hit the starter button and the familiar sound of the roar and rumble quickly returned. Ron just started laughing over the phone. Thank God he could not see my red face over the phone! Apparently the ton of coins in my pocket hit the alarm the night before and disabled the start system. Oh well, you learn something new everyday. Did I feel like a fool? You bet, but what else is new? I was so grateful that decided to ride my bike to Augusta anyway and have the service and new tire put on even though it was a rare sunny day.

From Augusta I took Hwy 3 over to Hwy 1 and had a wonderful ride down the Maine Coast. I ended up spending the night in Brunswick and then headed south on Hwy 1 through Portland, Maine and into Massachusetts. I rode through Boston and out onto Cape Code. Sorry to those Boston readers, but I simply did not “get” Cape Cod!

The ride through Rhode Island, Connecticut, Eastern New York, Eastern Pennsylvania, and New Jersey was deeply forgettable. The scenery and ride started to turn back into a more the positive light once I got into to Maryland and then nature’s eye candy returned once I entered Virginia.

For the next three days the weather could not have been better. Highs in the mid 80’s with sun galore. One of my major goals for this trip has been to ride the Skyline and Blue Ridge Parkway from Front Royal, Virginia (the Shenandoah National Park) to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Virginia was everything I had expected. Warm southern hospitality, incredible green mountains and rolling hills, and the Blue Ridge Parkway had great views around almost every sweeping turn and plenty of tree canopies covering the entire roadway. This is a motorcyclist’s dream.
I had a somewhat bizarre experience in Asheville, North Carolina. As I was pulling into a mom and pop type motel there were a couple of guys sitting in front of the check in office having a beer. One was sober and sane, but the other guy was three “sheets to the wind” and you could tell “a bit down on his luck”. I excused myself as soon as possible once the “three sheets to the wind” guy jumps up in a very aggressive fashion and demands that 8 migrant workers return the $3.00 that the guy had given to them the night before to buy him dinner. The sane guy (who had just met the drunk too) and I looked at each other and concluded that this guy is about to get into a major “UFC throw down” with these guys over $3.00. The situation calmed down after about 5 minutes of yelling.

I ended up going into my room to get cleaned up and then headed across the street for dinner and a beer at a sports pub. As I arrive at the pub I see the sane guy and we talk about the idiot who for $3.00 could have been seriously hurt had these 8 guys decided to shut him up. That being said -within about 10 minutes the drunken guy and one other guy covered in prison tattoos came into the pub. I thought this could be interesting. The drunken guy took off shortly thereafter. The other guy was a really nice guy, but I could tell he had a flash temper… what a story this was about to become.. You know me, I wanted to ask him some questions so I did over a beer. His name was “Tattoo” (surprise, surprise!). The guy was 31 years old and had gold front teeth like the guy in the James Bond movie. He had a medium to thin build, spiked hair, and tattoos everywhere… neck, arms, legs, back, stomach, etc. Here is what I learned from my conversation with him:
1. He has spent just under 25% of his life in prison (7.5 years)
2. He has been arrested for assault 14 times, robbery once and convicted of manslaughter
3. He said in prison you learn to fight or you die! His hands were mangled from all his fights.
4. He has 9 children by 9 different women
5. He has less than 2 years to live due to a rare disease that has destroyed his kidneys
6. He is hoping to stay alive for the two years because he has some insurance policy that will allow his kids to be taken care of when he dies
7. He works as a railing installer and “makes good money” and is trying to do right for his children
8. He has a lot of regrets in his life and would like to have a second shot at it
9. His former girlfriend hit him in the face with a beer bottle in February of this year causing multiple fractures and requiring 75 stitches. He has had to have three follow-up operations since then to try to repair the damage. I asked “Why did she do it?” He said that he took a sip out of her “wine cup” and “she just went off”! He then lifted his shirt and showed us three other healed wounds where she had stabbed him in the past on three separate occasions. He said he is now done with her.
10. He next showed us his forearms… he is what some would call “a cutter” kind of like Angelina Jolie in the old days. He must have had 15 or 20 bad scars on each arm where he said that he used to like to “cut himself”.

11. I asked him how do you do tattoos while in prison? He said that you take a piece of the heel of your shoe and light it on fire with a piece of paper or cardboard held above the flame. The soot sticks to the bottom of the cardboard and this black soot is the basis for the tattoo ink. You then get a paper clip or pen and use it as the needle.

12. He is now having the black tattoos removed (really just neutralized) and then covered up with new colour tattoos (everyone knows they are prison tattoos).
13. He really wished that he never had gone the tattoo route. Why? “Because when I walk down the street do you know what it feels like to see people run in their homes, lock their doors, and close their blinds? He then followed it up by saying, “Do you know how this makes me feel?”
14. He was quite intelligent and I could tell at one time he was a very nice looking guy. He does not read and the only TV he watches is UFC which he loves.

Tattoo was a really a nice guy and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to him, but I could not help but wonder what roll environment, versus heredity, played in making him who he turned out to be. No question he had some real regrets in how his life has turned out. This was quite an experience for me and thanks to my scruffy look these days I was able to talk with Tattoo without him feeling I was judging him. I decided to call it a night when the drunken guy returned and kept butting in and when Tattoo almost snapped and called the guy out. I felt it was high time to get the heck out of Dodge (I mean Asheville).

Guess what happened on my forth day of cruising the Shenadoah Valley? The day started with very dense fog and then it turned into what else… rain, rain, and more rain! By this time tropical storm Fay was raging in Florida and headed my way. I decided to go south and west and pickup Alabama and Mississippi and then head back to Atlanta, Georgia to spend the night with Heidi and Eric (my cousin’s daughter and son-in-law). It would be really fun to see them after the great time we had together in Montana back in July. Unfortunately Fay now had moved up into the entire Southeast section of the U.S. and my plans were again foiled. After riding 430 miles in the pretty heavy rain I ended up in Jackson, Mississippi and the weather was worsening by the hour. The next day I realized that Georgia, South Carolina and Florida would have to wait a bit due to Fay hanging around like a bad habit.

One of the first Coca Cola bottling plants in America (1894) located in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

I decided to try to head west that morning and pickup Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma before heading back east to Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. My plan did not work out too well. I made it only 15 miles when the steady heavy rain turned into a fire hose type event. I quickly realized two things. First, this was dangerous and second that it was no fun. I pulled off and got a hotel room for the night and did some work yesterday and again this morning before heading down the road.

Today the weather forecast was poor at best, but I loaded up Captain America by about noon and hit the road. The rain was heavy most of the afternoon until I got about 20 miles from Monroe, Louisiana and then the skies opened up with the full fury of Mother Nature. As I was pulling off the highway after only doing about 107 miles, I noticed my oil light came on again when I was idling. This happened a few days earlier when I was up in Nashville, Tennessee. At that time I had dismissed it because I checked my oil and it was fine. This time I could not dismiss it again. Something was obviously wrong with Captain America again!

As it turned out there was a Harley dealer only about 2 miles away. I rode over to it in the driving rain and talked to them. Unfortunately their service department was not open today, but the parts guy strongly suggested that I should not continue riding until I sort out this latest “challenge”. I am now scheduled to take in my bike tomorrow at 9:00AM and see if they can get me out back on the road by the afternoon. I sure hope they can so I am not stuck in Monroe for the next few days. After all, I still have a lot of territory to cover.

Oh no, I just got word that another tropical storm (named Gustav) has now formed south of Cuba. Currently winds are already over 60 miles per hour and it could be classified as a full hurricane within the next 24 to 48 hours. They anticipate at least very heavy rainfall and maybe once it passes over Cuba it may well turn north just as Fay did. Here we go again! The adventure continues!

That is about it from here folks. Have a great week and enjoy one another,

Smiley