Ride With Tank

I went out this afternoon to see the USAF Thunderbirds who were performing at Thunder over the Valley.

That’s not what this post is about, but if you want to see some pictures click here.

What this post is about is an gentleman I met and talked to as I was getting on my bike.

It was very hot and all I wanted to do was get on the bike and get some wind blowing on me when a older guy walked over and said, “You must be good people if you ride a motorcycle.” He had just finished helping his wife into the car and came over to talk to me.

I got the usual “I used to ride” talk from him, but this time it was different. Usually when you hear this the intent of the person is to establish that he is/was a rider and it is kind of like they are trying to impress me. I was not in the mood for this because it was just too hot standing there in the sun, but this guy was very different. There was a look in this guys eye that told me he loved riding motorcycles. He told me about the first time his wife rode on the back with him and how he almost crashed because he was not expecting it to wheelie so easily. He talked about some of the bikes he had owned and the whole time he was talking you could see he was reliving those days in his mind. He wasn’t telling me this to impress me or even for my own enjoyment. He was telling me this because he HAD to tell me this. There is probably no sense in telling these stories to most of the people he knows because they really would not understand, and if he finds someone who understands it is probably impossible for him to not talk about the old days.

He said that when he turned 80 he was no longer able to get his leg over the motorcycle so he switched to a scooter. Eventually, even the scooter became too difficult for him to manage and he was forced to give that up as well. As he told me this he was looking at my motorcycle and I could actually feel how much he missed riding. He was not admiring my motorcycle – he was yearning to be able to ride a motorcycle again. He did not appear sad, but it saddened me to the core.

I told him he should get a three wheeled scooter and get back on the road. He said “Yes, that would be a good idea”, but I could see he only said that to be polite. His riding days are over.

I have been thinking about our conversation all day and I think I understand why he was not sad. All things eventually come to an end, and his riding days are over. Even though his riding days are over, he still has the memory of all the adventures he had for so many years, and every once in a while he runs into someone who understands and gets to relive those memories again.

Lets get out there and make some memories while we still can.

What with our very late arival at our motel I gave up on the thought of riding New York City.  We had over 400 miles to get home and I knew we would not get out of the motel until late.   I just figured on getting on the road at 11 and heading home.

Around 10 i got a text from Mark asking if NYC was still on.  Something snapped in my brain and I checked the route in my laptop.  It said we could do NYC and only add 30 miles to the trip home.  In a fit of brainless reaction, I texted him back that we were,in fact, going to ride NYC.

We actually got back on the road at 10:30 and took the Palisaids Parkway to the George Washington Bridge.  It was $7 to cross this bridge!  Welcome to NYC!

Once into the city our first destination was Times Square.  The Sunday traffic really was not very bad.  I got into the spirit and blew my horn at people.  I saw a transvestite hooker.  I saw the ball.

New York has a lot of construction going on, yet their roads are in pretty sad shape for the most part.

Here is Mark in Times Square.

I could spend a lot of time in this city, and I hope I can go back soon when I have more time to explore.  It is a real teaser when you are on a tight time frame and you are having fun and watching the time fly.  In some ways riding NYC is like riding the Gap.  It sure is compeditive.

We made our way south to Battery Park,  passing by many things I have seen in pictures before, including the site of the World Trade Center.  We stopped for lunch at Battery Park where they served me the biggest crawdad I ever ate.

Above you will see our waiter.  He was either pretending to be French or he may have actually been French.  I think he was pretending because he handled my silliness far better than a real Frenchman would.  He actually had a sense of humor, so I suspect he was faking.

It was great hanging out and watching all the boats, ferries, helicopters, and whatnot going about.  Eventually we had to get back on the road.  Our path out was to be the Holland Tunnel, and just as we left Battery Park my GPS quit on me.  This was a huge problem.  I was coubnting 100% on the GPS and had absolutely no idea where I was going.  I had to fake my way through and this is where the driving got super compeditive.  The great thing was I was getting excellent video, or so I thought.  It turns out I never stopped the video at Battery Park and my memory card was full so I got none of this great stuff on video!  You can’t imagine how much it bummed me out when I discovered this.

Eventually we found our way through the tunnel and then got lost in Jersey.  It was a real struggle since my GPS kept dieing on me.  Eventually Mark took the lead with his working GPS and got us out of Jersey.

We basically took 80 all the way home. Ran into a few rainstorms on the way.  A ways out we decided to split uop because Mark wanted to take his time home, and letb me tell you 80 is a lonely road on the eastern side of PA at night.  Not much but trees and darkness.

I kept the throttle pinned and tried to ignore the pain in my rear end and ended up making it home a little after 11PM.

All in all it was a really great ride.  I saw many new things and put a few places on the list to return to and explore in more detail.  My only regret is that my tiome was so limited, but no matter how much time I have it never seems like enough.

Day four meant it was time to start working our way home and the plan was to work our way along the coast.

Lucky for us the White mountains were between us and the coast so we had to ride through them.

I have to admit it was hard to head for the  ocean and leave these awesome mountains.  I am not much of a “beach” guy, but I sure do love the mountains.  There is no doubt I will return to this area to explore it more!

As much as I loved the area, there were more states to see and time was running short so we headed south.

We caught US1 in Maine and took it into Portsmouth, NH.  This was a bustling area with big crowds and lots of activity.  Lots of action, but not really my cup of tea.

A guy at Prescott Park told me that in WW2 a German sub went underneath this bridge and into the bay.

There were many places to eat here, but I really was not hungry yet and decided to wait for our next ocean destination.

Our next destination was not the ocean – it was a pond.  Walden Pond specifically.  One of my favorite books of all time is Walden by  Henry David Thoreau.  I encourage everyone to read this book.  It is a book that will make you think about your life and it could very well be a life changing event.

Anyway, I was pretty excited about seeing the location where this book was written and upon arrival was quite surprised at how busy the place was!  i never knew there was so much interest in Thoreau!

Like far too many parks in the United States today there is an admission fee.  We were lucky and they allowed our motorcycles in for free and gave us premium parking!

First stop was a recreation of the house he built and lived in.

The bummer about the house is the fact that it is not in the original location.  The original location was “on a hillside elsewhere in the park”.

On we went to see the actual pond.  Over the years I had formed a image in my minds eye of what the pond loooked like.  In the picture below you can see exactly bwhat I had pictured:

Unfortunately, that carefully framed image is not an accurate representation of what we saw.  This is what we saw:

Good God.  The place is nearly a theme park.

I have been thinking ever since about how Thoreau would feel about this.  I don’t think he would like it.  On the other hand he might like the fact that people were enjoying the simple pleasure of his swimming hole.  All I know is that I was disappointed.  This is not at all what I was expecting.

Back on the bikes we start heading for a lighthouse at Beavertail State Park on Conanicut Island, New Hampshire.  There was no disappointment here.  This is an absolutely stunning location that made me forget all about the mountains.

I also got this great video of a couple guys trying to land a fish!

I was so overcome with the place I began sending pictures to bunches of people.  It is honestly one of the nicest places I have ever set foot – nearly the equal of the Deals Gap overlook.

The weather was absolutely perfect, and then almost instantly the sun was gone abnd we were buried under a heavy blanket of fog.  It was a bummer to have the weather change, but the reality was that we needed to move on anyway.  Our final destination of the day was to be Nyack, NY and it was still a long way off.

It was pretty late when we arived at our motel and we realized we were very close to NewYork City.  Neither of us had ever been to NYC so the temptation was strong to detour through the next day on the way home.

Watch for the next update to see what decision we made!