This is a week late in posting, but I just came back from an amazing weekend. 1200 miles in 72 hours on my motorcycle. Here’s a quick recap:
We left Friday July 11 in the morning around 8. Rode 2-lane roads all the way down to Toledo and across Ohio. It was a great day. Sun. Fun. Battling the fatigue of losing feeling in my “saddle”. But an amazing day of enjoying the journey. One thing I love about the bike is being able to interact more with the environment. Like smelling, tasting, and seeing more of this great country. Especially discovering places I’ve never seen before. We got to Dubois, PA around 7ish. Had dinner at Ruby Tuesdays and then rode into Caledonia. It was a great ride. And great to have made it. It was my first all-day long bike ride.
I slept like a stone Friday and we decided we’d go on a short ride Saturday. Dave had some ideas. So we rode into St. Marys and Emporium, my hometown for my senior year in High School. I stopped to take a pic of my old house, the church, my High School, and some other things. We saw Rock and Sherri Pifer, friends from another era, who were planning an outreach event for bikers in the area. Great to connect with them. Special people. We then headed over to lunch at Luigis. A place I used to eat at as a high school student and had never eaten there since I was 18. It hadn’t changed at all. We got their famous hoagies for lunch.
We then rode out to a state park, took a dip in a lake, and rode up a mountain. This was the part of the trip that wasn’t really my favorite because of excessive speed and lots of corners. But Chad and Dave loved it. After eating dinner in St. Marys, we wound up getting back to the cabin at 7ish. After leaving at 10ish. Our “short ride” had turned into an all day adventure. Dave and I took a hike to the first pipeline in the forest and then the three of us chit-chatted a bit before turning in.
Sunday we said our goodbyes and watched and listened to the rain storms head our way. We knew this would be a possibility. Now we just knew it was a certainty. We got just west of Dubois when the heavens opened up. And I mean opened. Let me just say this to all of you car drivers. Rain hurts. Bad. We waited under an overpass after we were totally soaked. Tried to stay on highways all day to get ahead of the rain. But never succeeded. So 70mph in driving rain on wet roads was our situation for about three hours.
The rain subsided and turned to sun east of Cleveland. We stopped to have lunch with Ryan and Joelle and their two cuties. Dried off a bit. Bought new socks. And headed into phase two: Wind. We fought off 30 mph wind for the next three hours until we were north of Toledo. Wind so strong it was literally pushing me off the road. There were a few bridges where the wind was so strong, signs were being blown off to the side. It was grueling. After stopping north of Toledo, Chad and I decided we may not ride up to Ferndale to see the Foremans and Shiela Jones. Just worn out. Beat down. But the ride up Telegraph to Ferndale proved to be the best ride of the day.
We got to Foremans and enjoyed a juicy steak and brief but good conversation. It’s always good to see those guys. But we needed to get home, so we left around 9ish to ride home in the dark. Another test. We decided to try highways in Detroit as safer than slower two-laners with deer jumping out. We made it home in record time safely.
Let me say that triips like that are awesome. And inexpensive when I get 66mpg. And fun to take with a good friend. And even better to meet up with a good friend there. Despite the amazingly horrible ride home, I’m grateful for it. I got to ride in some of the worst conditions. And survive. And I still want to jump back on the bike and do it again. I love it. Feel free to check out the pics from the trip. I tried to document it as much as possible to remember as much as possible. Thanks Chad and Dave for a great weekend. Thanks Bryan, Erika and Shiela for a great dinner. And thanks again, Micki for the wonderful gift of this motorcycle.
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