October 21st, 2001

One needn’t be a geography whiz to estimate that 4,300 miles does seem a rather indirect round-trip route to Florida from Michigan. But then I’m not really planning a route. I never really plan a route, at least not fully. By preference I start out upon a certain road heading in the right general direction and then proceed by whim and dead reckoning after that...unless (or until?) I wind up semi-lost. Never well and truly lost, only semi. I pretty much always know where I am. But in refusing to plan far ahead I sometimes find that a certain road will peter out in the middle of nowhere, so that I’m not entirely sure just where the next best (or next worst?) road may soon be picked up.

Indiana Milton KY Pleasureville KY US25E in NC

So it happens that I’m on Indiana State Road 9, chosen some hours before from a map. Then I spy this other road thatlooks to be more interesting and switch over to it on a whim. So next I’m cruising on SR-109, and it’s going fine. Then on yet another whim I switch again to SR-140 somewhere down around Carthage, IN. Well, before too long this last road narrows down markedly, acquiring more seams, patches and pot holes the further along that I proceed, until I come to a sign declaring SR-140 ENDS. So...here I am in the middle of nowhere, but yet the road still goes on.

Do I turn back? Of course not. That would be to admit an error which this is not. No, truly...it’s an adventure just as I’d planned for. So I continue further still until it tee’s into a crossroad (sans street sign) at a corn field. Hm, well... Florida is south and east... So I turn east. And stop for a picture. (see photo) Then I continue east, and find that barely a few miles further I stumble right into SR-3 so that I may turn south again. There... You see? Right on track! And my theories are proven right yet again. Short of running out of gas, it’s almost impossible to get lost in America. Always you will run into another road going somewhere.

I stick with SR-3 for a while, until it dawns that not every one of these paved-over cow paths will merit a bridge large enough to span the Ohio River.

Now I like bridges, very much, especially the older ones. Each one is different, has its own special character. Some year I might plan a trip to zigzag down a river crossing every bridge spanning it, or at least the interesting ones (excepting, of course, the utterly mundane elevated concrete slabs for the Interstates). I know the Ohio is somewhere not too far ahead, so now is time to have a gander at the atlas.

At the next gas stop I drag this year’s Rand McNally out from its zippered anti-rain bag. Shortly I elect to switch from SR-3 to US-421 at Greensburg. This will take me across the Ohio from Indiana into Kentucky. The Madison-Milton Bridge (as it’s called) turns out to be a fine, narrow ironwork trestle of noble vintage. It has a low guard rail, and spans the river from fairly high up, affording all who cross a very fine view all around. From this vantage I spy out a good location for to snap a picture. And once across I head for that spot.

There I meet Tyler, and Ruth Ann his mother. She tells me a little about the area and offers to work the camera so that I can be in my own picture. (see photo) Tyler is showing an interest in the Royal Star. Ruth Ann must ask him to turn around so as to capture his face instead of the back of his head. Ruth Ann says that they have access to a computer. So I give her the URL for my web site and suggest waiting a week or two so that I’ll have time to update it. Then I put the camera back in the saddle bag and take off again.

At Frankfort I make the switch from US-421 to US-127, at Danville to US-150, at London to US-25 and then at Corbin to US-25E. I don’t bother to check the map for this whole time. I’m just keeping an eye on the sun and trending generally south or east, there being no major river or white-capped mountain range to impede my vagrant passage. Many are the places where I might like to stop for a digital picture. But the Sony Mavica, chosen originally for its convenience of storing onto a floppy rather than for its size or its weight, must ride in the saddle bag instead of in my pocket. I had once thought of hanging it on its strap around my neck. But second thoughts gave me to worry for that nearly-unbreakable nylon noose ’round my neck. For any picture I’d have to stop, unlock the saddle bag...and all of that. The prospect dissuades me on most occasions. Only a few times do I bother, like when somewhere along US-25 I come to a town called Pleasureville. Really, I simply must snap a picture of the Pleasureville United Methodist Church. (see photo) There I chat with a couple of locals. They inform me that I am not the first to execute a U-turn in front of their house for just this purpose. We talk about bikes for a couple of minutes and then I ride on.

I cross into Tennessee at Cumberland Gap, going through a fairly long tunnel. Since Pleasureville I haven’t gotten any more pictures. Not that there weren’t any worth taking. I just didn’t want to stop again. But exiting from the tunnel I find the fall colors to be rather fine. Not quite as bright as way up north in Michigan, though. Up where I come from the reds and yellows will range from crimson to bright canary. But also up there, some of the trees will have dropped their leaves before some others have even started to turn. Resultantly, the panorama might be punctuated with bright spots and dark holes all around. Here I observe an unbroken carpet of dull reds, russets, burnt oranges and banana yellows. (see photo) It’s not the misty mountain air which filters them so, I am sure, since the nearby trees display themselves quite similarly. And don’t judge by my digital picture alone. The Mavica is a pretty fine camera, but it does tend to subdue hues a bit. I rate its performance in the color rendering department at about on a par with the Polaroid SX-70 I used to own.

I don’t spend long in Tennessee, cutting across the northeast corner, as I am. Most of what I recall are the horses. Quite a lot of horse farms there were. And even some of the rural houses showed off a horse or two munching the grass in the front yard. Horses are nice, but I think I like my steel horse really quite a lot better.

The next part of my journey I do not ever care to repeat again. Here I must admit to a certain tendency which annoys my wife, Karen. I like to ride long and ride hard, ride straight on into the night. Unless I am either hungry or sleepy I do not very much care to stop. So here I decide to ride on past dark, at least till Asheville. But long before I get that far then it grows very dark indeed. And still ahead lay (or rather, loom) the Bald Mountains. Or at least I’ll later find them to be called the Bald Mountains in my atlas. The Rand McNally shows them just north of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of Appalachian Mountain Range.

Ex-post-facto I’ll realize that I should have stopped so that I might better enjoy this view. But now in my headlights the only view that I am afforded is one of low guard rails with drop-offs into darkness beyond on almost every outside turn. If those drop-offs are anything as steep as the rises which I see on the inside turns, then going off any one of them in the dark of night (or indeed at all) would prove a most unhappy occurrence. And the speed limit here runs as high a 55 MPH in many places, punctuated regularly with yellow 35 MPH warning signs, and even a few 20 MPH ones. So instead of me passing most of the cars, as is somewhat more often the case, here the half dozen or so cars still on the road mostly wanted to pass me. Some few of them will tailgate close enough for their headlights to make mountain mist glow around me obscuring my view. The jerks won’t take it upon themselves to execute a pass on the left. And this forces me to perform a reverse-pass of my own. I must, myself, slip into the oncoming lane, slow down, lock the throttle, and wave them on with my right hand. One of those who zoomed ahead in a lead-footed manner I later catch up with, come the next 20 MPH turn. No longer in quite the same hurry, he too seems to have learnt some prudence. Happily, nowhere do I come upon any broken guard rails, especially any with bright, shiny, rust-free score marks.

By the time I roll down out of the mountains and into Asheville, NC I am getting tired and hungry. Trying to insure that as many segments as possible of this little adventure will be remembered be novel experiences, I hunt up an as-yet-unsampled restaurant. I settle upon the Back Yard Burgers joint, and squeak through the door just prior to closing. This is easily accomplished since, unlike as in Michigan, states down South often have laws which forbid locking the door anytime during posted business hours. That’s a good law. I like it. And I very much enjoy the burger which I get here, and the spicy fries also. I’ll be glad to see the Back Yard Burgers chain expand up North, should that happen. I’d prefer them even to Wendy’s. (I haven’t been too happy with Wendy’s ever since Dave sold them out and Wendy’s went corporate. Yes, I remember distinctly when the For Storage of Buns Only signs came down off of every one of their outdoor freezers. It just ain’t the same.) Yes this is a very fine burger, and not only because I’m so hungry.

Hunger sated, now it is time to find a motel. And again for the novelty of it I avoid defaulting to Motel 6 but elect rather the Plantation Inn (see photo) on US-19/23 in Candler just outside of Asheville. It isn’t really so very late, but a full stomach tends to magnify drowsiness — clearly a motorcycling hazard. And after the concentration required to pass through those mountains, I’m just a little bit dragged out. So I slip off the Royal and press the night buzzer. An Indian (as in from India) gentleman answers the call. Now usually I don’t have much trouble with accents. But his speech, combined with noise from the road and some ringing in my ears from all those past hours of wind noise and my Bub pipes make it hard to communicate through the slot in the bullet-proof glass. We manage to get it straightened out though. Not a bad motel at all. But for $38 per night, I could have been just a tad more comfy at Motel 6 and saved two dollars. Still, the room is neat and clean. And I can park my bike right outside the door where I can look through the window and see it.

US23 Ashville NC US25 GA A1A Fernandina Bch

October 22nd, 2001

In the morning I take a shower and find them more than a little stingy with the hot water...the price of adventure. But in return, I have no smallest guilt whatever in using one of their face cloths to wash the bugs off my windshield, headlights and chromed front forks with warm water and sprayed on Pledge furniture cleaner. A few trips back and forth to the sink for rinsing out and everything sparkles once again. By the atlas I see that US-19/23 does not lead as I wish. So I must switch back to US-25 via I-40. It’s a short hop on I-40 back to US-25, but eastward, and almost straight into the sun. I take refuge in the shadow of a semi for the few minutes duration.

As with Tennessee, I’m cutting across an end corner of North Carolina, so it doesn’t last very long. I’m soon over the border into South Carolina. Twenty and more years ago I used to live in South Carolina, at Charleston. I was in the Navy then, a third class petty officer in the Mobile Mine Assembly Group. The Naval Base is closed now, I have heard. But part of my goal on this adventure is to stop over in West Palm Beach, FL for a visit with one of the two ex-mineman friends whom I’ve kept in touch with, off and on, all these years. (The other is in Couer d’ Alene, ID. So, maybe next year to visit him...) For nostalgia’s sake, if I had more time, I’d swing further east to the coast and cruise again the Dixie Highway ’neath its overarching live oaks with Spanish moss hanging down, right past Magnolia Gardens. That was my favorite route on the Honda 750 chopper (bike #5) which I owned back then. But, alas, there is not time. Some other year for that too, perhaps... I do see a few palmetto trees, as one would expect for South Carolina, but not so many as I remember from before. Maybe it is because US-25 is so far inland.

I cross over into Georgia at the City of Augusta. Here the traffic gets kind of heavy for a bit. I end up being crowded into the lane for BR-25, which leads into the city proper. Here I spy a sign indicating this way to US-1, which beckons invitingly. But again the traffic intervenes. Yeah, sure...I could gun the Royal and make it, just barely, through the gaps. But that annoying little voice which urges caution asserts itself; and again I choose to obey it. I stay where I am, and miss the turn-off.

Soon traffic in my lane slows to a crawl. Then it stops at a red light, and at another, and another. And at each I notice that folks are starting to look at me strangely, kind of the way they had up north. There it was for riding a motorcycle at all in late October. Here it’s for being clad head to toe in black leather under the noonday sun. As you might guess, I’ve been shedding layers by stages all the way since Indiana. In Kentucky I’d packed away the quilted liner from under my jacket and also stowed the snowmobile gloves in favor of plain, Army surplus, unlined outer glove shells. A couple more sweltering stops at red lights is all that it takes to persuade me into pulling off at the next opportunity, which turns out to be a mom-and-pop bait shop. Here I strip off the chaps and exchange my Brooks jacket for an unlined leather vest. I also rub sunscreen over my now exposed arms. I enter the bait shop, buy a soda and a Slim Jim for my lunch, then come back out and check the atlas. By this time I am well aware that Augusta, GA is no small town. But by the atlas I see that I’ve already plowed through most of it. Up not too very far ahead is I-520, which I can take to US-1. But US-1 is listed as a divided highway, which I don’t like. So I elect to return to US-25 after all. I stow the atlas, hop on the bike, and do just that.

Georgia seems to stretch on forever, not that I mind. Only that it seems my sense of time might have gone out of whack. I see a lot of cotton fields. Not that I haven’t seen them before. Both my parents came from the South. So we used to visit Virginia and Alabama quite often back when I was a kid. But never quite this late in the year; never when the cotton looked like anything more than scrubby brown weeds. Now the cotton fields look like cotton. Or at least a good many do. Most of the fields are quite abundant with little white puff balls. I wouldn’t have thought so many boles could have come from such small plants. A few other fields, compared to these, look pretty poor. Perhaps a soil quality issue? I don’t know. Also I ride by what appear to be orchards. These are vast, and the trees are really quite too large for peach I am thinking. So I am guessing them to be pecan. Some of these towns have interesting names, like Nahunta and Winokur, and I wonder what they mean. But inasmuch as I hail from Kalamazoo, it is not for me to comment on their strangeness.

Along the way US-25 has become US-25/301, and then just US-301. Now at the south-eastern extreme of GA, US-301 joins together with US-1/23. And it splits into a four-lane divided highway again. I don’t like it. So on a whim I turn east on Hwy-40. I’m thinking that by now Florida can’t be too far away. And were I to stop and look at my map I’d realize that just a few minutes to my right courses the St. Mary’s river defining the border, paralleled by the road I have chosen. Further along I come to I-95 and signs pointing the way to Jacksonville, FL. Despite it’s being an Interstate I choose to take it. That little voice again. And it is a good thing I listened too. Why? Because that little inkling I heard was doubtless my subconscious recalling from the map which I so disdain that this will be my last opportunity since I-95 affords the easternmost bridge across that river to my right.

And crossing into Florida I find it to be a very large bridge indeed: long and high. But four lanes wide it is, and thoroughly modern. But still it has some character, and I would have taken a picture except for the fact that no proper vantage presented itself. From dead on at either end it surely doesn’t look like much. And I just don’t see anywhere that I can get an angle on it. Plus I’d have to get off the Interstate and then get back on. So I talk myself out of taking a picture. The traffic on I-95 really moves along. I’m doing 80-85 MPH and just keeping pace. But cars and trucks are crowding in way too close for my comfort. I can’t keep a proper following distance. Jerks keep pulling into it and cut my view of the road in half. I’m expecting at any second to see a piece of truck tire re-tread, or maybe worse, a section of rusted fallen-off tailpipe appear out from under the back of a car or truck which saw it as no threat and simply chose to straddle it. I am not happy at all with this situation.

It’s too crowded to fall safely into traffic clearings seen in my rear-view mirror. And those times when I am able to dart ahead into an opening, I have gun it up to ninety or a hundred to pull off that kind of manouver. Yes I am very unhappy indeed. Such high velocity, even without the traffic, requires a bit of intense concentration. Here there is not much to see. But if there were, at this speed I would never see much of it. Most things off the side are just blurs. I can see blurs anytime I like by simply taking off my glasses. In all this harrowing traffic there is only one thing that is good to see: something I’ve never seen before. And it strikes me as truly hilarious. It reminds me of something from long ago.

Once way back when I was a kid I saw this very strange car, a convertible amphibious car with propellers in back. Whatever it was doing at the Southland Shopping Center in Portage, MI never did I learn. But it left a pretty big impression on me as a fifth-grader. I don’t see one of those cars here. But right in front of me there is an SUV; and it has a small propeller; and that propeller is slowly turning. It’s some kind of trailer hitch ornament, but very well made. The propeller itself is bright shiny chrome, but not chromed-over plastic it seems. Or at least I don’t think so. It rotates a bit irregularly, driven clearly, by the wind. The variance in its rate of rotation occurs with stately acceleration giving the impression of greater mass that I would expect from light plastic. So I am thinking that perhaps some one may have gone to the trouble to press a small outboard-motor propeller onto a shaft complete with ball bearings. It is also encased in a circular shroud so as to look more built in. There is only the one (unlike that car seen in my youth) and it is nowhere near of a size appropriate to the SUV. However well it seems to be made, the aspect is quite ridiculous. And I get a really big laugh out of that. To anyone glancing in my direction I must surely appear quite insane, cruising along at almost ninety and laughing my head off in an outright fit of mirth. Then, up ahead, I see a sign. The sign says this way to Hwy A1A. Hey! You know? Just like on the Jimmy Buffet album. Cool! I zip over into the furthest right hand lane and make my exit before the traffic can spoil my newly found good humor.

Now I distinctly recall that the A1A parallels US-1 down Florida’s western coast. But now I seem to find myself on a clearly east-west road calling itself the A1A. And it is four-lanes wide, divided like a boulevard. The A1A is not supposed to be so big. So I am puzzled. Puzzled but still very glad to have gotten off from that wretched I-95 with its jostling high-speed land yachts, motor homes and semi-trailers. At any rate I’m in Florida. I’m headed east, so really it is quite impossible to get lost. It’ll be hard to miss the Atlantic Ocean, will it not? So I keep going. It goes on for a bit, with a few stop lights; but I’m okay with that for a while.

Then on my left, in the distance, I see this big long billow of cloud. It somehow doesn’t look natural. And I recall a sign from back a little ways north on I-95, saying Entering Smoke-Fog Area. At the time I thought what?...smog?...in Florida? So I’m guessing that now I’ll find out. And sure enough that smoke-fog cloud goes on for miles. I might suspect a forest fire, except for that sign. Who puts up a sign about a forest fire? And then I come to the source of that smog. Some kind of huge industrial complex, with a single gigantic smoke stack. It and it alone is the source all those miles of smog drifting inland. Then I consider the couple/three trucks I have seen headed in the same direction as myself: hauling logs, small scrappy logs, logs no good for anything but making paper. A paper mill. A whopping large pulp mill, the worst kind. And, of course, judging by its apparent location, right on the St. Mary’s river.

And worse than the cloud of smog drifting inland is the one along the coast. Some atmospheric effect has that cloud splitting in twain with one leg hanging low all along the coast. Inland, at least, the cloud rises high into the upper reaches where folks (for the moment) don’t have to breath it. Along the cost it is down to the ground. And I am riding right into it. Sure enough, at Fernandina Beach the A1A turns south and runs along the coast. And so does the smog. I wonder what these homes must cost? Some are very fanciful: shaped like stumpy lighthouses and such. But all are mired in the smog.

Pulp mill smog smells like burning oily mildewed rags. I know pulp mills. Know that Kalamazoo used to be called Paper City, we had so many pulp mills. We had the Monarch Mill, the Bryant Mill, the Hawthorne Mill, the Southerland, KVP and Brown mills. Then there were the James River and Georgia Pacific companies. The Monarch Mill is now torn down, land-filled and grassed over so that kids today would never know that it had even been. But its sludge field still remains, all fenced in, a Super-Fund site. When my sister and I were kids our dad used to drive us to church on Sundays, down Cork Street, right past the Monarch Mill sludge field. Patti and I used to try to hold our breath, the smell was so bad. But we could not, it went on so long. I’m not one of your rabid environmentalists, but I truly do hate pulp mills. And here is the biggest I’ve ever seen, belching vile acrid crud over the coast that I have ridden hard for two long days and over a thousand miles to see. I can only imagine the gallons of horrid glop that it is pumping into that river. I am resolved that when I get home I shall strive to go completely paperless. Currently I have six computers, but no printer. I resolve that I’m not going to buy one.

It is some further miles down along the A1A before the smog lifts off from the ground so that I am willing to stop and take a picture. There are not cute summer homes here pretending to be lighthouses, though; just the natural scenery. Still it is nice; so I take a picture. (see photo) Then I press on for it’s getting somewhat late in the day. I had hoped that the A1A would run on a bit more. In fact I am sure that it must. But somehow it seems to come to a halt, or at least a temporary hiatus. I find myself forced to veer a bit inland and the road signs now call this the 105. I am wanting to head south. So I take a left at Hwy 9A. Then after a while I end up on US-1 again, which is taking me though the towns and all. I can’t see the coast at all from here. But that hardly matters since it is verging toward dark. To avoid getting lost I elect to stay on US-1. After dark, the coast would not look like very much anyway. At night it is the towns which are well to see. Most towns look somewhat improved at night, I have noticed. So I get to see Daytona Beach at night, and then Vero Beach where my lovely wife Karen used to live before I had met and married her. And then Fort Pierce. And so on...

In the cities the roads are wet, whether from condensing mist or some earlier storm I don’t know. Between these cities along US-1 are some apparently desolate regions. Rural, as in flat out empty: just pavement ahead, occasionally star-lit sky above and dark vegetation to either side sides. Most all the curves are gradual. And traffic, at this hour, is extremely light. I find myself inclined to speed and having to pass only the very occasional car. I shouldn’t care for this inclination to become a compulsive habit. It is too good to last, I am sure. Someone once explained to me that when there is at least some traffic a rider can count on brake lights to flash from lead-footed drivers far up ahead to warn him of impending speed traps. I’m not sure how expensive of a ticket I would care to wager on that. And here it does not apply. Here there are almost no cars at all. And it seems to me, that only one car applying its brakes, versus several, might mean anything at all. So I cruise on clueless as to what may lie ahead.

It is only that the road and the night are simply too fine, out here all alone as I am. It is almost magical, so that the posted limit of fifty-five seems mundane and plodding indeed. I settle into a perfect meditative cruise at something rather higher for a stretch, expecting that I must tone it down again...just a little bit further ahead. Then the road takes a few more turns than I very especially care for, so that I must bank too hard. The hard banking I don’t mind, but at night my headlight beams fail to bend around the corners as I might like. I shouldn’t care to encounter an unexpected deer or one of those Florida panthers while steeply committed into a turn. So I wind it down yet again. But not quite down all the way to the limit. I retain a face-saving 5-10 MPH for pride’s own sake. And far, far up ahead are tail lights from the only other car on the road. Ever so slowly I edge up toward it from behind, until I am following it at something under seventyish.

After a some time I tire of his tail-lights for the entirety of my view on this lovely night. I elect to pass, choosing a most inauspicious moment for the maneuver. A state cop is lying-in-wait just there, sitting in the median, facing my way. And sure enough I see his tail lights come on in my rear view after I’ve passed. He makes the U-turn. He passes the car that I had passed. He closes with me and his lights flash on. As soon as I saw him I’d made sure to let off the gas, but not to apply the brakes, relying on the sail effect of my windshield to slow me down considerably without communicating guilt with a flash of my own brake lights — a sign which they watch for particularly.

Cops, of course, are understandably paranoid. They sit and watch you for a bit, calling in your license plate so as to get an ID. A cop wants to know that you won’t run away. So I put down the kick stand and shut off the motor. Also it is very well to act at least a little embarrassed, which is easy enough to do, since I am. And cops like to shine their flashlights in your face, which is rude; but I suppose that in their place I’d do it too. So off comes the full-face helmet, which I hang over the throttle. And off come the gloves, which I tuck into the handle bars.

In due course the cop gets out, walks up and shines his light in my face, as per schedule. He asks me how fast I think I was going, also as per schedule. I say, “No. I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying any attention.” Which is the only thing to say. Cops only ask you that to trick you into admitting that you knew you were speeding. It’s in the cop training manual that they should ask it that way. He says, “I clocked you at sixty-six,” No, he clocked the car I was passing at sixty-six, think I. The Royal Star is big for a bike, but still small and round compared to a big flat-fronted car. The antenna on a radar unit is nothing more than the open end of a conical wave-guide. So it has forty-five degree wide major lobe, with two smaller lobes to the side. (Did I mention that I have an Extra Class amateur radio license?) What this means is that a radar gun has all the pinpoint accuracy of a blunderbuss. And further, there is no range indication, in fact no proper display at all. Only a speed readout. So when it goes beep and displays 66 in the window, the operator must guess what has caused it. These thoughts run silently through my brain. I deign not to expound upon them to the cop. (Who probably knows it anyway.) I just repeat, “I’m sorry. I really wasn’t paying attention.” He asks for my license and registration. I fish out my license and report that my registration is at the bottom of one of the saddle bags, I don’t know which.

Being alone and without back-up, he probably won’t want me to open the saddle bags because he can have no clue what else might be in them. He says something like, “Okay, we’ll just leave that for later.” He calls in my Michigan driver’s license number on the microphone clipped to his shoulder. He holds it pointed at his ear and hears the answer. I have no outstanding warrants, nor indeed any warrants at all. Nor any tickets, not for the last several years. (Not that, on occasions such as this I haven’t deserved them.) He hands me back my license and strikes up a conversation. Where am I from? What do I do? I inform him that I am an engineer for a German automotive company. He asks what we make. I make mention of the rear axle for the Ford Windstar, the Jaguar X200, the Lincoln LS and front lower control arms for the PT Cruiser. I mention in passing that I own a PT Cruiser. He asks me, “Isn’t that built from a Neon?” I agree that, yes, the chassis originates from the Neon but that the drive train is from the Stratus. He asks me what I like most about the PT Cruiser. I say that people laugh at me when I say it, but that my favorite part is that the doors open very wide and that it is tall on the inside so that I can get in and out without a shoehorn. I expand that this is important because of back pain from too many years of awkward lifting of axles onto test fixtures before the company bought me a crane.

All in all it’s a very nice little chat. The cop may have been naturally inquisitive, or he may have been testing me for signs of impatience, a good sign that I may have indeed been speeding on purpose. I give no such sign because for a fact I am not impatient. These topics exhausted, he asks me if I have any tickets? I tell the truth, “Yes, sir. Just one, for five-miles-over, from about eight or nine years ago.” He asks, more specifically, “Any tickets in Florida?” I answer, “No, sir. Not a one ever.” Again the truth. He says, “Okay, the limit here is fifty-five. On down the road it drops to forty-five. Take care.” And I answer, “Yes, sir. I surely will. And thank you.” Then, with very deliberate lack of haste, I don the helmet and the gloves, ease off the kick stand and start the motor. Very casually I take off, never more to speed again for the rest of this trip...in Florida. Of course they will keep me in their computer for, at minimum, the next few days. I convince myself that it is just as well, a fine opportunity to further exert myself in the Buddhist Perfection of Patience. Not that I was really impatient prior till now. It is just boring and conducive of sleep to ride so slow. Whatever. The cop was polite and professional of demeanor. I can really appreciate that. Certain of those which I have had occasion to meet in Michigan are total jerks. So I elect to not disappoint this officer. For the rest of my trip...in Florida...I am a good little tourist and hold to within a couple/three miles an hour of the limit.

In due course I make it to Jupiter, where once my friend Rick had used to live. And then to Tequesta, where I stop to buy a map of West Palm Beach, the next city south. The counter girl warns me sternly about the bad neighborhoods just down the road in certain parts of West Palm Beach. I take this with a grain of salt. No one has very much bothered me in something over twenty years. I don’t know why except that I show almost unfailing courtesy to everyone. And I don’t act scared, or tough, or anything other than the way I always act. I’ve got this theory that putting on those kinds of airs provokes a response from strangers around you. I evolved that theory when I worked as an attendant nurse on the receiving ward of our local State Hospital. People are always demanding respect. Instead I give them courtesy, which is not really quite the same thing. But folks tend to settle for that; and so far the theory has held up. In short I go wherever I like with seldom a worry. I do that here, since the counter girl’s instructions on how best to avoid the bad area are too convoluted for me to remember. I trust to the map instead. It takes me right into the heart of where she didn’t want me to go. It’s not so bad. Kind of run down is all. With folks standing around doing nothing out on the streets at almost three o’clock in the morning. None of them look all that mean or angry, only bored.

Right away the map has failed me. There is a lot of street construction here abouts, and even the street signs for US-1 have led me astray. After my second trip back and forth I pull up under a street lamp and drag out the city map from between the handle bar clamps and the windshield. Before I can so much as take off my glasses to squint at it a car pulls up and rolls down the window. “Where ya lookin’ for?” asks the driver. I tell him the name of the cross street. He informs me that it is a bit further south, past the construction. I thank him and put away the map.

I make the U-turn and run again into the heavy construction. Not again, I hang a right further inland, away from US-1 and all the torn-up holes in the road. Come the next major cross street I start threading my way, by dead reckoning, southward and westward until I blunder into the major crossroad I had found on the map, Okeechobee. Then I turn west along it to a certain major road. At at that road I find the lesser cross street which my friend’s street tee’s into, but don’t find it. Even unto the dead end I don’t find it. Dragging out the map again I see that some of these roads are segmented by the odd canal. So back out to Okeechobee to get around the next canal, find the like-named side street, and then the street I was looking for. I recognize the house from twelve years ago, when I had come here to be best man when Rick married Nancy. I park the bike and the neighbor dogs all start barking. Rick comes charging out with a rifle. Same old Rick. I say howdy. It’s just past three o’clock in the morning and Rick was still up. Same old Rick. Now how many friends can someone have who is glad to have you visit them at that hour? I’ve got one, maybe two. They’re good to have. Anyway, I have arrived.

Rick and Nancy

October 23rd, 2001

Come morning I’ve a little important business to attend to. I left Kalamazoo with what I judged just enough tread on my rear tire. At a hundred fifty bucks for a change, I kind of like to try and get the most out of them. I’ve been keeping an eye on it for the whole long way as the margin got less and less. Having arrived I find the middle bit of tread to be hardly more than a shadow. So first thing I telephone Greater Yamaha of West Palm Beach. Sure enough they have a tire for me. I had no fears on this account since my size is common enough. I would have preferred to buy a Cruise Max, but the standard Dunlop 401 will have to do. I ride down there just before noontime. First they tell me it will be an hour, until they see that they must remove the saddle bag and the Bub pipe as well. Then they say it will take a bit longer. And they are very taken with my bike in general. The RSTD’s are no longer made. And too many of those who own them take offense at the jets and pipes that Yamaha sadly bogged them down with, selling them off to still other folks who simply run them into the ground. Mine is the first ’97 that they have seen in quite a spell in such fine shape, and all custom painted on top of that, and with proper jets and pipes, acres of chrome and all of that. Everyone there has some word of praise for my Royal Star. And I haven’t even washed yesterday’s bugs off it yet. I am very slightly embarrassed on that account.

I leave them to their business and trot across the street for lunch. I have brought a book with me to kill the time. But of course, on this occasion the service is swift. The waitress is upon my order in an instant; and the cook is no less diligent. I am hungry and the french dip sandwich is especially good so that I have wolfed it down in record time. I still have most of my hour and some yet to kill. So I recross the street and peruse the mall. By the time I get back to check up on the bike I find that they have also had to change the brake pads. Rightly they have assumed me willing to pay for this clearly important feature so that I am not made to wait further. The bike is being put back together, but is in need of being test ridden. The bike returns, I pay and ask for directions to the nearest U-do-it car wash, there to remove several states worth of bugs. Not nearly so many bugs as one might expect, not in October.

FL US1 Keys Sloppy Joe’ Sloppy Joe’ Andy from Alaska

Key West Southernmost Point US1 Florida Keys

October 25th, 2001

I have a nice two-day visit with Rick and Nancy, and his mom and her parents as well. But the week presses on and I am wanting to ride to Key West. So come the third day and with coffee as my only breakfast I make my goodbye’s and roll on south. Being somewhat in the mood to take lunch at Key West, and holding to my determination not to speed...in Florida...I elect to take Florida’s Turnpike, which proceeds, as you would expect, most uneventfully all the way south past Fort Lauderdale and Miami until it turns back into US-1 again just north of the Keys. Quite a few bikes I have seen all along this way. And quite a few more yet in the oncoming lanes. One bike I slowly catch up to and very slowly pass, a Harley. As are about half of them, or so it seems. As is my habit I wave hello. The rider, at first very intent on the road, finally looks up and gives a wave back.

US-1 out the Keys is a very fine ride. One of the first things that happens, though, is that a rain squall looms ahead. Florida is flat as Nebraska so that you can see something like that for a good ways off. I can see the whole cloud, the lightening inside, and the rain shaft beneath. So it comes as no surprise. The only surprise is that wind carries much of the rain well outside of the rain shaft proper. And this you cannot see from a distance, only when I’ve ridden somewhat into it, as the road does not yet appear at all wet. I crouch down behind the windshield until I locate an abandoned store with an outside walk and an overhanging roof. While I’m changing into my rain suit the Harley rider I waved at last rides up under the overhang right behind me. By now it is pouring down buckets. We exchange greetings again and he declares his intent to just wait it out, as last time it didn’t last long enough to merit struggling into his rain suit. I have my doubts, and in any case don’t care to just stand and watch the rain. So I finish suiting up, wave goodbye, and head out. Sure enough the rain continues for rather longer than I would have cared to wait. But soon as I am out of it the rain suit is transformed into a sauna and I can see the Harley guy’s point. I must pull over and shrug my way out of it sans delay. While I’m at it I get gas. I keep an eye out for the Harley but it doesn’t pass. May the rain let up for him soon.

I ride past Key Largo, and some others. I stop along a roadside park (I think it is on Marathon Key) and take a picture. (see photo) Here I refresh my sunscreen. One of the things I had bought while perusing the mall while my tire was changed was a nine-dollar bottle of sunblock 45. This time I make sure of having gotten my face, an area sadly neglected that time when I’d shed my jacket in Augusta, GA. I’ve got me a biker’s tan/burn. I’m brownish on my arms from T-shirt sleeves down to the glove top. And I’ve a red oval from the opening in my full face helmet, except for white, anti-racoonish areas where my photo-brown aviators glasses sit. The bridge of my nose is peeling. Pretty, no? No. But do I care? Again, no. I shouldn’t care to burn further however. So I lath on that sunblock. Level 45 ought to do the trick. And good thing for the gloves, as sunblock lotion otherwise makes it very hard to work the throttle. I’ll just have to set a new fashion trend with my tan arms atop white hands. Who knows? Maybe it will even catch on...

Along US-1 to the Keys you see these signs: 18 fatalities so far this year. Drive carefully. I elect that here for certain I must do so. After all, the nearest hospital is how far away? And helicopter rides are quite expensive. I don’t care to think about it. I’ve already sworn off speeding...in Florida...so not to worry! And besides, at eighty or more I just can’t see very much, as stated before. And I’ve come down here for the view. Would be a shame if memory of it were only a blur. So ride extra safe is what I do. And take in the sights.

One of the sights is Seven Mile Bridge, both the new one and the old. Or parts of it, anyway. Remnants of the old one are off to the right. Last time I was down this way I drove Rick’s brother-in-law’s car (from his first marriage) across on the old bridge on that trip. The wide track Pontiac had its power steering out, which is worse than no power steering at all. I was driving because the brother-in-law was maniac behind the wheel and Rick and I had decided that we forbid he should drive any further. And it had no air conditioning. By motorcycle it is better by far! The Keys are very fine to ride on. There is quite a lot to see: the Atlantic on one side and the Gulf on the other; pelicans, egrets and herons; other birds of I know not what kind; all manner of exotic things. And the weather is perfect. Not another drop of rain falls from the sky.

I get to Key West, quite some time later, hours...I think. I’m not sure since my watch is in the saddle bag with the rest of the stuff I hope not to need on my vacation. But it’s verging on lunch time; I know that for certain as my stomach so informs me. Where did those two cups of coffee go? The very first thing on my agenda is to locate Sloppy Joe’s Bar, a Key West landmark, if ever there was one. I went there the last time too. But Key West then was not nearly so built up if I remember correctly. I find Duval Street and Sloppy Joe’s Bar and park right in front of it, or rather right beside of it, in a kind of loading zone (as I find out later). I trot across the street and snap a picture. (see photo)

Then a guy pulls up on a BMW and asks me about parking. I point to a sign that says Police Vehicles Only which seems to have dissuaded all others, calling attention to the fine print that further explains the warning to apply only to next Saturday and Sunday nights. So he backs in his BMW. We exchange howdy’s and he offers to get me with my bike in the picture with my camera. I was just about to ask someone, so I say yes. It takes a couple of trys because the sun is bright and it is hard for him to make out the display. But we get it. I brag that I have just ridden down from Michigan. He says that I take a look at his out-of-state license plate. I do so and am quite properly deflated. His says Alaska! And he shows me his driver’s license. It says Alaska too! I am very much impressed, exclaim, “Cool!” and put him to the question, ”What’s that like? How bad is the deep gravel? How do you think my own bike might hold up?”

His name is Andy and he informs me the deep gravel is not any fun, but that his bike made it rather well. He stated that guys on Harleys and Gold Wings were laying them down. I look his bike over and ask its weight. He reports it as something over five hundred pounds. Bad news for me. Weight-wise, my Royal is in Harley/Gold Wing class. My wallet is not up to replacing the custom paint for a trip like that. Maybe I’ll settle for Vancouver Island...some day.

Andy tells the most wonderful story about a certain drunken, rather obnoxious hoglodite from California who had been making no friends at all in this bar in Daytona Beach. It wasn’t so much his bragging folks minded, except that there was no end to it, and that he punctuated it with disparagements of any lesser accomplishment than his own ride to Florida all the way from California. Andy, quite unaware of this continuing episode, by way of mere conversation conveyed to the waitress that he had ridden down from Alaska. Immediately she offers that he may have his burger for free if only he will participate in a little jest. For a free burger, Andy agrees. He must keep quiet about his arctic origin until such time as she shall indicate to him. Again he agrees. The waitress has a talk with the D.J. who hasn’t cared very much at all for the negative atmosphere which has settled upon the bar since the arrival of the abusive hoglodite. Together they conspire to a plan.

Shortly the D.J. announces a contest. The winner shall be whoever will have come from the farthest, by the most unusual means. The hoglodite, seizing this opportunity to wrap himself up in yet more glory announces himself to one and all. The D.J. lauds his accomplishment, then calls out for challengers. The waitress then gives Andy the sign, and quietly he steps forward. “And where have you come from?” asks the D.J. “Alaska”, says Andy. “And how did you get here?”, inquires the D.J. “By motorcycle”, Andy replies. “Wha? No way!”, exclaims the hoglodite, and demands to see Andy’s drivers license. When it’s produced, the hoglodite is vastly annoyed. And then the D.J. lays into him right and proper. He suggests that this issue be settled with a geography quiz. Where, he asks of the hoglodite, does California lie? And where, exactly does Florida lie? “Now tell me”, he asks, “does Alaska lay anywhere between those two?” The crowd laughs down the hoglodite. The D.J. suggests he return to his seat, raking him properly over the coals with extra quips along the way. So the waitress has had her revenge. And Andy got to enjoy a free burger. And I trip over the Royal’s kickstand, staggered backwards and almost fell in a fit of laughter to hear Andy tell it to me there in the street next to Sloppy Joe’s.

There were some more details to the story, but I fear I’ve forgotten them. Would that Andy were here to correct me as I put it down in writing. He told it better, as I remember. (Hey Andy! If you read this, straighten me out, please?)

Now the last time I was here Rick, his brother-in-law, my friend Tom and I all got into Sloppy Joe’s and sat right down at a table, no problem. And it was evening, too. That was memorable for me in particular inasmuch as I have this picture somewhere of my late father during WW2. It depicts him in his US Navy crackerjack uniform with gunner’s mate insignia, sporting a long Navy beard, obviously drunk and holding up the original bar at Sloppy Joe’s way back when it was still in Havana. But now Key West is quite a bit more built up than I seem to remember. And on this Wednesday afternoon the whole room is packed solid. I really don’t care to wait around. In daylight hours it all looks oh so very touristy and is just not the same. So I go off in search of elf gifts instead. Elf gifts are what my wife Karen calls those little presents you give to someone for no special occasion whatever. I try to make a point of never going off anywhere too very far by myself and then come home empty-handed. So I must find a little something each for Karen and for Skyler. For Karen I find a pretty necklace: synthetic blue cat’s eye with silver findings on stainless steel braided wire. (Synthetic as in real, but man made. The chatoyancy of the beads is entirely too regular. In fact, they are perfect, which is a dead give-away. And in any case, I rather doubht that azure blue cat’s eye occurs in nature. Nevertheless, I’m sure Karen will still love it.)

Skajler (pron. SKY-ler) at ten years old, does not play much with stuffed animals any more. But we have this kind of tradition. On all prior trips I have gotten him a beanie baby (or equivalent) on a theme somewhat akin to where I had gone. In South Dakota I got him a prairie dog, in Wyoming a buffalo, in Idaho an eagle...and so on. So this year I’m hunting an alligator, crocodile, something like that. It takes me all of the next two hours, but at last I do get one. I am at just about the last store in all of Key West that has any Bennie Babies at all. And as yet nothing close to what I want is yet to be found.

So now I am at the Conch Tour Train Gift Shop near to the far end of Front Street, having criss-crossed all over town, and digging through quite a pile of cuddly creatures. And eureka! A crocodile, the very last one. A quick check for any damage... There isn’t any. Perfect! In fact it is priceless. And I mean that for a fact indeed, since there is not any price. No matter. After two hours searching I would have gladly paid over twenty dollars. But it seems a rather vexing problem for the clerk, who is a youngish Indian (from India) fellow and intent on performing his task to perfection. So it’s another five-minute wait while he leafs through a quarter-inch thick sheaf of Xerox copies dug out from under the counter. Several minutes does he search without avail. Next he must ardently consult with the head cashier, a middle-aged black lady, who patiently suggests that he simply compare it against another like it from the display. I must inform her that it’s the last one. She glances over the top of her glasses, librarian fashion, toward the line queing up behind me. “Okay...” she says, “Let’s not make a big deal out of this. What say we just charge the same as one of the other similar items? They’re not so different after all. Is that okay with you, sir?” The younger cashier frowns just slightly at this very clear breach of check-out line protocol, but reluctantly complies when I vigorously respond with, “Sure, fine by me!” Behind me I hear at least one dramatic sigh of relief.

Throughout this quest I have by no means forgotten my lunch. Certainly, my stomach hasn’t. So on exiting with Skajler’s elf gift, across the street I take note of the Two Friends Patio Restaurant, where as it happens I have parked the Royal. I trot on back there and sit down for a very fine, grilled mahi-mahi sandwich, with onions and peppers. Most excellent. Days later, in reviewing my receipts, I’ll be annoyed to find my meal recorded as DOLPHIN SAND-LUN. It will take me slightly aback since, although my friend Rick proclaims himself a proud and life-long supporter of P.E.T.A. (People for the Eating of Tasty Animals — as you might have well supposed by the his-n-her trophies on the wall behind them in my photo), my own convictions fall somewhere rather closer to center (or left as Rick would surely judge them). I don’t much care to eat creatures quite so smart as a dolphin. Then I’ll recall the bun, peppers, onions and all to have been exactly as described for the mahi-mahi sandwich on the daily special menu. So I’ll conclude the receipt to have been an error. And much later still I’ll make it a point to order mahi-mahi come my next visit to Red Lobster, whereupon my assumption will seem to be vindicated. It rather tastes like what I remember, so that I put it out of mind.

Now returning to my narrative... With lunch taken care of, there is just one more thing left to do, something which I had not thought of myself. Andy from Alaska had suggested to have someone take my picture at the official Southernmost Point in the Continental USA. This I do and then when it’s accomplished, decide to cruise on back northward (there being quite officially no place further southward to go). By preference again I employ the tried and true method of dead reckoning, wandering just a bit vagrantly about Key West in the process. (Remember! By definition, you can’t get lost upon an island...)

Fifteen minutes or so of aimless sightseeing shows me a number of interesting side streets, some of the eastern beachfront and a high school which is just now letting out. Next I wander into US-1, hang a right and am headed back north again. This being the only route, I am now re-seeing all the same sights as I had only just seen this morning, but from a bit of a different angle. At one location I come upon one of the several historical markers which I’d not given much thought to before. So these rise in importance to items of special novelty evokeing a desire that I must read at least some few of them.

One marker in particular catches my eye, but not quickly enough, so that I am past the entrance convenient to northbound traffic. I try the one intended for southbound traffic instead. And making an entrance by that way I am required to negotiate a turn inconveniently hairpin-like for my un-nimble, 700-plus pound machine. The slope seaward is also disconcertingly steep, and the gravel footing treacherous. Never my favorite combination. I fear, briefly, for my expensive hand-brushed paint. It is mostly only at times like these when I wish to be several inches taller, or the bike a hundred pounds lighter. (Writing this it occurs that I’ve not shown you a photo of me sitting on the bike. Since most of these pictures I take myself it is rather hard to do. So try and picture it yourself: the saddle height is 28 inches and the tag inside every pair of jeans I own says inseam 30 inches. At stop lights I ballance on tippy toes.) Still I manage most any obstical course okay and this one too proves no worse than many another so I manage to get past it okay and even turn the bike turned around to point north once again. I park just beside that marker and get off to take a picture. (see photo) I am glad to have done since the marker tells of how that tiny key seen just offshore, originally home to an Indian village, also served as the seat of the Dade county’s first official government. The key is so small and seemingly insignificant; it is a wonder. Someone clearly lives there now. That tiny speck to its right appears to my eye a yacht of rather impressive size. I expect it would have to be pretty good sized if only for very practical reasons. After all, they’ll be needing to pack up and leave come each and every hurricane. And as for insurance, my guess would be they must buy direct from Lloyd’s of London. However did the indians manage to keep a village there I wonder. But I don’t wonder long and am off again shortly.

Quite a bit further north, nearly,but not yet wholly out of the Keys, I see ahead another squall. This one looks to be located in the same place as I remember from before but rather larger. A glance at my rear view mirror shows two bikes behind me, trailing politely at a distance. Then ahead, a lone bike pulls out from the left into the equally vacant space ahead of me. A girl. From her initial position right in the left-hand tire track (where I am riding) she then slips over to the far right-hand fraction of her lane, almost atop the outside white line. I have learnt to take this as a sign of welcome, an invitation to ride alongside for at least a short ways. So I pull up beside her on the left, there to recognize her bike for a V-Star very like my Karen’s. On this account I thumb the throttle lock down so as to gesture an appreciative thumbs up. I don’t know whether she recognized my Royal or not, as I don’t think she turned her head toward me in the slightest. Eyes straight forward, she just nods, and before long pulls off to the right at some tavern or restaurant which I didn’t catch the name of.

The sky is now well toward darkening, and not entirely just from the squall underneath the verge of which I have yet to ride. But the squall is quite near and I can see that all beneath is shaded in dismal grayish green thunderstorm hues. I note that behind me those other two bikes have already pulled off. And recalling my surprise of entry into rain rather prior to having ridden underneath that earlier squall, I too now choose to pull off from the highway. I select the convenient parking lot of a closed veterinarian clinic to climb into my rain suit. It takes me rather quite a while. But still those two bikes which were once behind me do not go by, nor indeed any other bikes. Lightning flashes from inside the squall are illuminating the sky like some kind of not-so-distant bombardment, with only the faint rumble from some of the more prolonged ones. Then, all suited up, back up onto the Royal I slide. And northward once again I ride.

Funny thing, but my preparations work like magic, as a talisman that is. The entirely ward off the rain. My rainsuit gets wet not in the slightest anywhere underneath that great, dark and flashing cloud. Not a drop of it marks my windshield. Not until I am out of the Keys and back onto Florida’s Turnpike, not even until I’ve past the first couple exit markers for Miami do I get wet. And then it is only a kind of heavy falling mist. But from there on until Orlando, it increases, somewhat intermittently, toward a steady drizzle. And not even any lightning to make it more interesting.

Now comes the part I hate most about toll roads. I don’t mind paying my toll at all, not as long as I can do it but once whatever the cost. But all along the southern and northern extremes of this road are many a piddly 75-cent and one-dollar toll booth. I very much dislike having to stop for those. People in cars que up behind and get impatient while I must stop, put down the kickstand, pull off my gloves and fumble for change from zippered pockets. And, no, do not suggest it. Don’t even think about trying to do without putting down the kickstand. Not in the rain. Every vehicle pauses at these booths, including big trucks and old jalopies dripping oil. It’s just too damn slick. And then having paid, I must put back my wallet, zip up my pocket, drag the wet gloves back on again, lift up from the kick stand and take off. Any three cars could have tossed coins out the window from off the dashboard in that same time.

Sometimes I try to be more efficient. I attempt to perfect safe removal of the gloves while still on approach to the booth. I do this by pulling each off one at a time and stuffing it between the handlebar clamps and the windshield. This, of course, requires one to steer a short ways with the knees. So my focus, of course, is more on the steering than on the pulling or the stuffing. One time too many I try this manouver and fail to stuff securely enough. As a result somewhere along that tenth-mile long, one-way stretch of wet, black pavement, my wet, black, right-hand glove falls away without my being aware of the fact. This loss I do not discover until it comes time to pull both back on. Gone, that glove, and no way now to safely retrieve it. I have already paid the toll; and traffic is queuing up behind me. Nothing remains except to ride on.

Up until now I had been undecided as to the route ahead. Once having progressed as far as West Palm Beach again, whither then? Rick had invited me to return, at any hour, for whatever remains of the night. I consider doing just that. But also I’ve got half a mind to swing westward so as to see Lake Okeechobee. Four times now I’ve been down to Florida and not yet properly done that. I did zip past it at night in a car once many years ago. But the weather, being dismal, dampens my enthusiasm. And it is late. It will surely be darkest night (again!) when I might set eyes upon that lake. And there are not any stars or even the moon to glint off the water. Yes, I could hunt up a motel and hope for nicer weather come the morning. But it has been either drizzling or raining outright all the way northward since Miami. So I hold out small hope for a sunny tomorrow. And yet again, the hour is still somewhat early, however dark that it may be. So I elect to press on further, even perhaps as far as Orlando.

Before ten miles have gone by however, that little voice in the back of my mind is giving me second thoughts about my decision to press on. And I have still a chance to change my mind. I’m due for a re-fuel. Service plazas on Florida’s Turnpike are most convenient for changes of mind, these being all built into the median, versus the flanks as in many another state. I favor this concept better than the out-flanking plazas of other toll roads. Travellers can make a U-turn at any one of them if they’re of a mind to do so. But I’m only half inclined. And in the end I do not so choose. Instead I see that they sell maps for the Eastern United States — more convenient for a quick consultation than my atlas, except for that they don’t often show some of the smaller, more interesting roads. In this weather, thought, back roads hold but little appeal. I buy the map, stuff it in between the windshield and my now-orphaned left-hand glove then press on again northward.

I make it as far as Orlando and then some, by which time I’m tired and just a little bit cold wearing only a T-shirt and jeans underneath my rain suit. So I decide to stop for the night pulling off at toll exit #285 at Hwy 19 and US-27. This despite the sign which reads NO RE-ENTRY TO TURNPIKE.

I ask the toll booth operator where might be the nearest motels. He tells me of three, two chain franchises on the left and a smaller one on the right. I head toward the latter. This is in the direction of a place called Howley-in-the-Hills. I find the joint, a bit further along than he’d said. The office is dark, and I find no night buzzer. Instead there is a phone on a stand outside the office below a sign telling of the number to call. I attempt this; but it’s no use. The telephone handset was not designed for commercial or outdoor use. It is a cheaply made and much abused. Light traffic on the highway behind combined with static from a loose connection allow only that I awaken someone, a woman I think, in the middle of the night. And all to no purpose, since I cannot communicate. Well...guess they don’t really want my business. Resignedly I hang up and point the Royal back toward the chains: a Howard Johnson’s and a Ramada. The Howard Johnson’s boasts Low Rates but the lobby is dark and sign says CLOSED from X to Y hours. And again I fail to locate any obvious night buzzer. So on over to the Ramada. They are open. I get a room on the ground floor where I can park the Royal just outside my door and view her through a slit in the curtains. No slightest hint of local flavor, but it will do.

US27 Havana FL US27 in GA

October 26th, 2001

Next morning I’m up, and there being no restaurant, I don’t get even so much as my coffee. And I’ve slept late. It’s nearly nine; so I must be off. After spending most of yesterday on the turnpike, 55 mph on US-27 does seems plodding. But I am still in Florida. I don’t want to break my contract with the Florida black-and-tan gang, not even by so much as my usual 5-to-9 mph. A deal, after all, is a deal. In less than a mile, though, I find myself tempted. I pass two state cops by the side of the road. They are busy with some guy which one has leaned up against the side of his white station wagon while the other regards its contents strewn out on the grassy shoulder. Upon spying these, that other little voice in the back of my mind (the evil one) hints that the gestapo are busy with matters more important and entertaining than chasing mere speeders. A guy in the car just behind me is hearing that same voice it would seem. While I yet debate he has listened and taken action, is passing me just around the next bend. And he hasn’t gotten fifty yards when enemy radar takes focus upon him. A third black-and-tan had found for itself a clever little sniper’s blind under the car port of some yet-to-open business. I see him start to roll forward and check my own speed. Oops, fifty-seven! I ease off. The black-and-tan passes me and flashes his lights at that fellow ahead guy ahead who pulls into the toll entry for the turnpike. He halts a little ways before the entry booth. Lights still flashing, the state cop eases in behind.

This I observe with some small surprise. Surprise because back when I’d gotten off from the turnpike a sign had warned there was no re-entry. But here I find a turnpike re-entry hardly even three miles distant. Worried for my seeming inability to hold it down below sixty without excessive vigilance, I elect a return to the turnpike. I slip past the poor unfortunate fellow who’d heeded that voice which spoke at the time also to me. Sitting there ahead of the cop, who has yet even to open his door, I can see that he is unhappy. Now as for me, I’ve still got quite a lot of Florida to go. But at least it is a bright sunny day, if just a trifle cold for being so far south. Would that I had heeded that even earlier voice which spoke last night (figuratively...please realize!) and taken the off ramp to Lake Okeechobee. This would have been a truly great day in which to see it. But too late now...

Standing still the air would be just fine for shirt sleeves. But at the turnpike’s 65 mph that gets chill. So I’ve put on my chaps and the jacket too, but no liner yet. Too soon for that. And no gloves, my sole remaining Army glove still doing service as a spacer for the Eastern U.S. map I’d purchased last night. The snowmobile gloves, at this point, would be major overkill.

Alas, the turnpike runs out pretty quick. And I find myself on I-75, which is not nearly quite so bad for congestion as I-95, but still no picnic. Then after some time I switch on over to head due west on I-10. This is much better. The traffic is less by a good ten percent. Better yet is the scenery. Interstate 10 from here all the way to Tallahassee turns out to be one of the prettiest I-states I have ever ridden. There is only one blot on the roadway, truck after truck bound westward carrying scrappy logs to that wretched pulp mill on the St. Mary’s. I try to put it out of my mind.

I peel off from I-10 onto US-27 at Havana. You must know that before heading south, when Karen had asked how far south I might go, I joked with her that my ultimate destination was Havana, as in Cuba. She’d gotten a little kick out of that. So of course I must take picture of the Royal beside the Welcome to Havana sign. (see photo) Shortly thereafter I am back into Georgia again. There is a sign: Speed monitored by detection devices. Great, Big Brother had come down to Georgia.

This is a concept which I abhor. And not just because it deters me from speeding. I’m not so much in the habit of speeding speeding in any case. I just don’t care to abase myself before some Great Machine Overlord. If a real, live, flesh-and-blood law enforcement type should care to exert him- or her-self in my direction, well then, I am wholly okay with that. The way I see it, genuine authority can only properly be invested in human beings, not in machines. Don’t get me wrong; I like machines. I make my career with some very expensively automated machines. And here I am coursing along on yet another machine. Machines are good. But they are my tools and not I theirs. It grates to submit oneself to machines as an underling. This is wrong.

Damn but these negative thoughts are distracting. Rage against the machine is taking my mind off the beautiful scenery. And that is a shame. Here again I am back in pecan and cotton country. And one field I pass reveals the cotton being actually harvested. There I see a bail of cotton which has got to be at least ten high, ten feet across and forty feet long. It must be some kind of amazing machine that is able to do that. And all along the side of this road are little tufts of cotton snagged on the grass and weeds. At first I think that maybe there has been a storm. But a quick survey shows the tufts to only be on the shoulder on my side of the road. So I suppose that they must have fallen off from a truck.

As before I’m venturing up through Georgia the long way. So it is dark before I am even half way though. And it is getting notably colder. I find myself doing the reverse of before: gathering layers of insulation along the way. From the map I elect a turn westward toward Alabama at US-278 at Cedartown. It’s really cold now. Some kind of front must have swept in. I’m having to wear the quilted liner and the snowmobile gloves. And these aren’t enough. Come the next gas station I swap my regular Timberline boots for the insulated, totally waterproof snowmobile ones. Then I press on toward I-65 in Alabama.

I get into Piedmont, AL at around 9:00 PM. And man is it cold. I stop for my first meal of the day at the local Huddle House. As I stroll in out of the frigid cold in my leathers half the people stare in wonder. The waitress says they think I’m crazy. I order steak and eggs for myself. These hastily wolfed down, I go the bike and fetch out a further two extra layers of insulation. I have to go into the rest room in order to put on the long-johns. Then returning to my table, the thin, fuzzy vest with its zip-up high collar goes on over the quilted liner and sweatshirt. All of thes underneath the Brooks leather jacket. There, I look like I’ve gained a good twenty pounds. And really it still isn’t quite enough. Even the snowmobile gloves prove a bit thin at highway speed.

Nevertheless, I press on. I-278 is curvy. This would be a nice little road to cruise in the daytime, I believe. Mostly at this hour it is solitary. Except at one point I meet up with a hundred cars in the on-coming lane. My guess would be that a theater or something has just let out. I never find out exactly what. But when they are past it is lonely again. At I-65 I turn north toward Decatur not far from which lives my sister Patti in Somerville , just a little bit toward Huntsville. I roll up to her house sometime ’round midnight. It looks as if someone still is up. I see flickering light from the television showing out from her living room window. I press their doorbell and when Scott, her husband, answers the door I say, “Boo!” it being close to Halloween and all. My assumption that they’d been awake was in error. They are in the habit of just never turning the TV off. But no matter, tomorrow is not a work day for either. We sit up a bit and talk. I am offered the same spare bedroom as when Karen and I rode down year June of last year. It is as comfortable as I remember, very much better than any motel.

Somerville AL Somerville AL Scottsburg IN

October 27th, 2001

Come morning I only hang around until noontime, long enough to mooch a free lunch. Scott has made lasagna before-hand, and it is excellent. I snap some pictures of Patti and her grandchildren perched on the Royal (see photos) before taking off again. Except for the changing geology, I-65 is dull as dirt, just as Interstates tend to be. But I stick with it all the way until southern Indiana.

Along the way, at Louisville, traffic on I-65 grinds to a halt...a dead halt. And this is bad news, since I am in desperate need of a fill-up. The light is on and everything, has been for about twenty-five miles. On the way south I’d been keeping track. When the light would come on, I’d switch to reserve and count the miles till I’d get nervous and stop for gas. At the station I’d peer into the tank and guage about how much was left. By this I guessed that on flat ground I was good for sixty miles at most after switching to reserve. At most. Now it has only been twenty-five miles, but this isn’t flat ground at all. And gear-wise, I’m also not in 2nd overdrive any more. So all bets are off and I start to worry. Then after a none-too-very prolonged spell of patient endurance, I slip over to the shoulder and pass a mile and a half or more of backed-up vehicles.

It’s a good thing I did as one has to wonder whether the battery could have held up to so very many twenty-foot hops while killing the engine in between to save on gas. I could have gone further along the shoulder, but some total idiot in an SUV has attempted the same trick as me, only to meet with a narrowing of the road at a bridge where only a VW beetle, or at most a corvette could have passed. A truck driver kindly lets me back into the right-most lane, but not, I note some minutes later, the SUV. I soon find this back-up is due to bridge construction ahead. And man is that bridge ever a doosy. A big massive curving ramp of a thing like what you see on television for places like Los Angeles. Sure glad I don’t live in Louisville. What a nightmare their traffic must be. And here I see my first robotic traffic sentry. Here at least on I-65 they make no effort at all to hide them. Big Brother’s little helper is mounted up high, on its own separate cantilever, right in the open above the road. Still I hate them. Had any true Liberty-loving American a ten-foot Louisville Slugger right now, then it might soon become techno-scrap. Who would report such a patriot? Not I certainly. And likely not the trucker behind me. But none have come prepared beforehand for this opportunity to quite literally strike a blow for Liberty. And so it remains, untiringly vigilant. And as like, being armed with camera able to record the face of future venging patriots. Alas and alack.

Past the construction I pull in finally to gas up. And peer into the tank as I may, I only seem to slosh the tiniest glimmer of gas. It is well that I did not wait longer in that traffic. Then I’m back onto the road, and across the line into Indiana. After only a little while longer does it grow dark. And it is freezing cold again, so that I must stop for the night. The aspect which most convinces me in that direction are the signs reading BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROADWAY. No, truly, I don’t care to discover one of those. Not at all. And I’ve skipped lunch, so am hungry. Therefor I pull off at Scottsburg, IN, at the SR-56 interchange. I find a novel-looking motel, the Campbell’s. Being an independent, I find it owned, as again expected, by a family from India. I ask the counter girl what part of India she is from, but she shrugs off the question. It is too soon, still, after fateful September 11th for most Middle Easterners (or even, apparently...Far Easterners) to not prefer avoiding excess attention from the Euro- and Afro- sub-sections of our not-so-very mixed American citizenry. Or so I am guessing. Or it may be my haggard, road-weary appearance which has put her off. I don’t know. It hardly matters, ’cause mostly I’m hungry, as stated before.

I dump off few things into my room and take the Royal out for a bite. I’m too hungry, really, to hunt around for local flavor that might add zest (or some other surprise) to my dining experience. Further, it being late enough that I fear some restaurants may close, I settle on the Ponderosa and a nice steak. Then it is back to my room. I make a collect call home to Karen and Skajler. Then I turn on the TV set. This motel affords its guests cable viewing. I settle on pick the History channel. There is a show, The XY Factor about sex in Classical Greece and Ancient Egypt. Quite an education, that. So how come my history teacher managed to overlook all this stuff? I see them now in a whole new light! And I thought it was all a joke, and a modern joke at that. But I learn that Heroditous had journeyed to Egypt where he truly did encounter a man with some kind of eye ailment. The Greek folk-remedy which Heroditous had wished to recommend required some urine from a virgin... And though he did search he could not find one! He found instead, that just as Amerind peoples had no word for lie, Egyptians had no word for virgin. The concept was utterly foreign to them. And as for the Classical Greek traditions with regard to sex... Well I just can’t go into them here. My web site would thereby obtain an X rating. Just let me say, that there is nothing, absolutely nothing whatever, new invented since that time. The only thing that we do different is that we do a lot less of it, and that we mostly do it indoors. I leave you to your imagination for the rest. Then there is a show on the Battle of Colodin. That, too, is interesting in its own way.

Elwood IN Wabash IN State Line Constatine MI

October 28th, 2001

In the morning I decide that I’ve had enough of I-65. So I give US-31 a try. But I don’t get far. I am detoured back to I-65 on account of a sign that says Bridge Out. So here I am, back again on the wretched, four-lane, divided highway. And man-oh-man is it ever cold. I am fully insulated just like last night. But my hands are freezing, even through the snowmobile gloves. Just a bit south of Indianapolis I spy a billboard for Mejer’s — which is a kind of northern Wall Mart. So I head for that, there to buy knitted gloves for slipping inside the snowmobile gloves. Ah, comfort at last. And this works out fine. Back on the highway I no longer have to steer one-handed while the other hand re-gains circulation in the shelter of the windshield. Now I’m okay.

Here and there I see more of these robocop speed traps, cantilevered out over the road. Sometimes I’m a tad in violation at the time. Not from any conscious choice, on these occasions. It is simply too cold to speed, even with my newly hyper-insulated gloves. I am also having to keep the faceplate partly open. Otherwise my breath will frost it on the inside. My current speed is only so as to not differ markedly from the traffic, which is tending just a few mph over. My only complaint about the Royal is her lack of fuel injection. Lacking this, I can’t seem to find an after market cruise control. So I must settle on only a Vista-Cruise throttle lock. This, as you can well imagine, is hardly very accurate, or even remotely repeatable. The Royal’s speedo is down on the tank, somewhat out of peripheral vision. So I must look away from the road any time I wish to consult it. Such excessive vigilance adds to the tedium. By preference I like to set the throttle at close to the limit, and simply accept the variances which may occur. A bit slow uphill, and a bit too fast down. In order to hold an exacting 65 mph, I must keep a very strict grip on the throttle all the while. Yes indeed, cruise control would be very fine. I’ll have to look into that again. Or I could retrofit the Royal with aftermarket FI. Meanwhile I just curse the cloned techno-sentries and cruise on.

At the gas stop prior I had taken the trouble to have a glance at my map, as I-65 is turning out a major drag. Up ahead now I see one of the alternate possibilities that had offered, Indiana SR-13, which I take. And now it is better. The speed is slower, but I don’t mind, as there is no pressing traffic to crowd up upon me from behind. And despite my gloves, the air is still quite cold on my face under the visor which is ratcheted half-way up. At least here there’s a pretty decent view. Just north of Elwood I halt to snap a very quick picture. (see photo) And at some point further along I see a very sad sight indeed: some horses standing, and one lying down. Surely a horse would not lie down, curled up upon the freezing ground were it still alive. The other horses are standing together some distance apart.

From there on SR-13 takes a few switch backs upon some east-west running roads. But mostly it is trending due north. Just north of Wabash I stop for lunch, at a cafe who’s name I’ve forgotten. Walking inside, folks regard me strangely again. I place an order for steak and eggs. At over eight dollars, not cheap at all. While awaiting my order’s arrival I enjoy some small talk with the older couple on the table beside mine. I am awarded some pointers on the pros and cons of various casinos which they have recently patronized while ventring out in the motor-home. I tell them somewhat about my trip. Then my meal is brought to me. The steak is indeed very fine, and cooked to perfection on top of that. So my eight dollars has not been in the least mis-spent. Before taking off, I snap a picture of the cafe. (see photo)

At this point I’m just a very few hours from home. A week of cold has denuded many, but not all, of the trees. Up around northern Indiana there are quite a number of Amish. So here and there I have to pass a horse-and-buggy rig. I always let up considerably upon the gas for these occasions. It is downright mean to startle the horses. Some of these farms I think are most likely Mennonite, versus Amish. They have curtains in the windows. The Amish, or so I am told, consider curtains with disdain, as if the dwellers might have something they wish to hide. I don’t know how true this is, except that I have indeed seen farmhouses which, although very well maintained, looked sadly vacant for having no curtains. At one red traffic light, a horse and buggy pulls up behind me. The driver has to get down and take the reins of his horse to keep it from spooking. When the light turns green, I take off extra easy...as the Bub pipes tend to blast their loudest then. In the rear view I see that horse is not spooked further.

In counter point, almost the next stop I have to make is for an iron horse. The gates are down at a rail road crossing. And when the train goes by, it is nothing but four diesel engines end-to-end: two facing forward, and to facing back. And next I find that I have chosen this road well indeed. By the map it came out somewhere close to the beginning of US-131 which leads straight past Kalamazoo. Instead of merely letting out near it, Indiana SR-13 turns right into it, with the SR-13 ENDS sign sharing a post with the BEGIN US-131 sign. How about that?

I pull over and take a picture at the Welcome to Michigan sign. (see photo) And then just a little bit further on, I take another at the first sign which makes mention of my home town. (see photo) And here I have another occasion to lament the color rendering of the Sony Mavica. That lake is really the most amazing shade of cobalt blue. But in the picture it is displayed as only a very mundane azure. And I must not forget to remark that it is very much warmer here. All my life I have heard of the lake effect which is said to vastly moderate Michigan’s weather. Having ridden on a bike up from Alabama through to Michigan, I can tell you that it is true. Only very recently have I seen other bikes on the road. All through Indiana I would have easily frozen into a solid, ice-blue corpse-cicle if not for my excessive layers of insulation. But here near the lake, which is slowly shedding the heat which it has absorbed all summer (cooling our summer in the process) the air is at least a good ten degrees higher in temp. I am now a major fan of the lake effect. Prior till now I had only berated it for all the snow that it dumps upon us in February.

And one furtehr item of note transspires, which I must not forget to mention. I had planned, on my way south, to catch the odometer when it would roll over first 18K, 19K, 20K, and 21K. But on each occasion I had missed it by two miles or more. A red light on US-131 at M-216 requires that I stop. And I just happen, all unplanned, to look down...and find the odometer at exactly 22,000. How about that? And in just a further 19 miles I pull up onto the sidewalk in front of my house. At the front window are two happy faces, Karen’s and Skajler’s, pressed up on the glass. And inside Karen already has dinner in the making, one of my favorites: rare roast beef which as sat in the fridge all night long with slivers of garlic pressed deeply into slits poked with a paring knife.

Inside the house I present my elf gifts. And in return I get two of the finest welcomes ever.

Ĝan Ŭesli Starling
Kalamazoo MI