Since I've had my Suzi I've always wanted to go on a bigger scale road trip with lots of nice scenery and a lot of motorcycle riding too. I finally got to do that, and to add in more fun, we would be camping, swimming, boating, and fishing. All of the things that I haven't done since I was a kid, a nice little tribute to when going outside and playing with rocks and water was a favorite pastime.
My friends and I all got our bikes together and met up close to Interstate 70 and headed North to 81, then 88 and Rt. 10 and BAM! We were in upstate New York at Caroga Lake. The cabin was pretty small and very simple. Just the bare essentials and all the plumbing is run off of the lake, which is an arduous 50 feet from the back door of the cabin (I know, all that riding and then... dammit, now I gotta walk?!)
The first thing we did after we threw our bags into our rooms was get changed into or shorts and jump into the lake, which was kinda of surprising when I thought about how sore we all were. The lake was a little colder than normal, but the air temperature in Maryland had been between 100-120 ish degrees with the heat index, so cold lake water and a breeze of 75 degree air was more than welcome.
Over the next week there were plenty of things to be done. David, Ben, and myself took out the rowboat on a few occasions and went fishing. We caught mostly Sunfish and a few smaller White Perch (the perch was thrown back, too small, I kept the Sun Fish though), and one Small Mouth Bass. None of the fish were record setters, but Dave filleted them and put them in the fridge for later. There was a Wal-Mart nearby, a nice 20 minute or so ride through the woods and the small neighborhoods would get us there for camping supplies and B-rate 80s movies (Super Mario Bros. if you want to know)
During our downtime we were all pretty quiet and did our own thing. Ben would usually be on the computer facebooking people, Dave would sleep, and Mark would go out to run up and down Cain Mountain. I decided to be a lazy beast and read a book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". It was a philosophical book about finding small pleasures in road tripping with the bikes, but also had a very large amount of diving into psychological issues in abnormal behavior and thought, with a little bit of ethical and moral editorial thrown in. All in all, I liked it, and it was relevant to what I was doing, so I kept reading it :)
Our camping excursion was hilarious. The day before I had gone out onto a SunFish sail boat with Ben. I figured he was the one to go with since the year before he had placed second in a zig-zag sort of race around Caroga Lake, this was an excellent choice. Ben had started out nice and easy getting out of the dock area and we were sailing, he then asked me if I wanted to try and go a little faster and of course I said "HELL YES!"
He let out the slack in the rope and the sail yanked outward and the boat went from being nice and level to being at about a 40 degree angle off kilter and there was this instant burst of speed. That boat without the mast probably doesn't weigh more than a long surfboard. We spotted John, Ben's brother, off in the distance on a jet ski taking their little cousin out for a ride. We yelled at John until he finally started doing doughnuts around the boat and rocking us back and forth. This was great fun for us because we wanted to go through some treacherous waters and see if we could jump through waves on the little thing. We ended up taunting John a little too much and one good wave had knocked me off the boat, and I lost my nerdy hipster glasses. So we packed it in and said goodbye to the fun boat lol
John felt horrible, but it wasn't his fault. I told him it was cool since Ben and I were yelling at him to make waves and I probably shouldn't have brought the specs with me in the first place. So the next day, Mark, Ben and I drove out to Rotterdam... or Schenectady, one of those two, and bought a new pair of glasses (with a warranty) from a very nice, extremely cute girl (who if she reads this should know that her boyfriend from Maryland sucks and that if she wants a different boyfriend from Maryland, I'm willing to submit an application :)
So we get back and pack our things for camping at Nine Corner. Dave had gone ahead of us and set up the tent already, so when we got to the campsite, we unpacked and got into our shorts again. We set up a few things to cook while we went swimming and climbed up onto a rock wall where a few trees had grown over and someone with a brain and very long arms had ties a rope swing to one of the branches. The rock wall had been maybe ten or so feet above the waterline, but if you fly out onto the rope and let go at the peak height of your swing you'll drop about 15 feet, which is always good fun when you can't see the bottom. After we jump off the rope, we took turns swimming out a little further and climbing another rock, pyramid shaped and pretty smooth, but with a few small cracks that were just enough to get a good grip climbing up. The we would dive, flip, and cannonball off of it into the murky water.
Maybe an hour after we had gotten to camp and met up with Dave, the food we left on the grill had finally finished cooking. At least we were hungry enough to where we didn't care if it was done anyways, but it was the best food we'd had all day. Quite the conversation starter too as the group of campers (ranging in age from 17-25) next to us hadn't brought anything except for two tents not big enough to fit everyone, and a cooler full of beer. This group had excellent planning skills and were clearly Eagle Scouts... or not.
They were nice enough though and after talking with them for a few minutes had revealed that they thought Dave was an explorer since he was alone before the rest of us had shown up, and he had been video recording conversations with himself while he was cooking. We had a good laugh about that and they offered to trade us beer for food, which we agreed to since the four of us had brought too much food to begin with. We all sat down on logs and rocks and listened to Jack Johnson and BB King while we talked about various things. Music, where everyone was from, what schools we went to and where we worked, how the stars looked better here than in Maryland. Anything we could think of, we would talk about, and with everyone too, a million little discussions happened that night. Did you know that from where we were sitting, you can see the Milky Way?
We drank the beer and our little stash of whiskey, ate all the chili and hotdogs and biscuits and Ben and I kept the fire going. We made a few trips out to the woods to get more kindling and branches until I leaned on a rotten tree stump that was maybe 10 inches wide and as tall as me. It gave a little when I leaned on it so I just wiggled it until it cracked and lugged it over my shoulder and back to camp. Ben was laughing at the pile of twigs he had collected and then I show up with a tree :) We put it on the ground and used it as a bench until we ran out of normal wood, then we just fed one end into the fire and kept feeding more in until it was done too and called it a night.
Breakfast in the morning consisted of eggs and green peppers, and the fried versions of the fish Dave and I had collected earlier in the week. I'm not much for eggs, but they were really good. Apparently I'm also not much for Sun Fish, they taste like eggs... but they were really good too lol
Just watch out for the little bones. They're small, flexible, and pretty sharp so they are kind of a pain in the ass in you get one stuck in your gum like I did a few times.
We said goodbye to our camping friends, whose names I can't remember now, and hiked back down the trail. We had a nice long dinner with the parents and grandparents and watched movies and played trivia games until our minds were as sore as sore as the rest of our bodies.
The next day would be our road trip inside a road trip. We were going to Niagara Falls.
We all woke up and stretched, taking turns getting showered and geared up for the ride, and then we all walked outside to find a nice, pleasant, torrential downpour. Excellent. High Five weather man, I didn't have anything against you until then, but oh the wrath you will see when I find you...
This little bit of imminent doom didn't stop us though. We thought "We're strong, we're smart, we're good riders, and we're 20 something!"
So off to the Grandma's house we went. She had already made coffee and cinnamon buns for us and had some soft towels so we could cover up while waiting for our clothes to get run through the dryer. Grandma's are good like that, they know you're going to do something, most likely something stupid, and they love you anyway and give you cinnamon buns to boot. :)
The rain stopped, so I guess I'll not perform wrathful things to the local weather guy, I still don't like him though. We got gas around the corner from Grandma's house and checked our tires and set off. I can't remember what road we were on, but it was 200-250 miles until Niagara. Not bad considering the ride to NY was 450, so 200 ish would be nothin'.
Wrong.
Cousin Dan, who met up with us at the Grandma's house before we left, had just bought a 1993 Katana and somehow had gone through quite a bit of fuel about 100 miles away from Niagara. Enough to where he ran out completely and since we're all dumber than a box of rocks, decided that it had to be something like a leak, petcock, points fried, no spark, blah blah blah... So maybe four hours later after getting a tow to a gas station, refueling, getting to a shop that was closed, then going 20 miles in the wrong direction to a shop that was open, they told us, "get gas" and we all kicked ourselves in the ass for that one. We had left at 7am and arrived in Niagara Falls State Park at 7pm. We were hurting, we were hungry, we were a bunch of whiny little bikers that wanted to find some pizza. Until we got our tickets to get on the Maid of the Mist, a boat that tours you around the bottom part of the US and Canadian parts of Niagara Falls. Which was amazing, the cliffs and the water, all the noise, the mist and just the sheer tonnage that river throws over is amazing. At some point the tourist recording playing over the boat's PA system said that the amount of power the falls produces is somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 million horsepower, which gave me an idea. But then I figured that a motorcycle that was powered by Niagara Falls would probably be bulky, hard to steer, limited in where it could go, and would be pretty ugly... still probably feasible though ;)
The ride back was a whole 'nother story. We had Mark's Dad type "pizza" into the GPS and it immediately took us past all the nice hotels and casinos and straight into the GHETTO-OH-OH. We pulled over and Mark's Dad said, "Well I think the pizza place is closed."
Mark and I turned, looked at each other, and just started shaking our heads.
"I think the pizza place burned down, dude." I said.
"Yeah, let's go before one of us becomes a chalk outline." replies Mark.
After some discussion, we headed for the highway and decided to just pull off at the nearest rest stop with a McDonalds. McDonalds somehow turned into Cracker Barrel and we had an epic dinner that left us all stuffed and tired. But we are 20-something! Sleep can wait!
We ended up at the cabin around 4am and Ben and I stripped down to our boxers and sat on the wood stove. Discussed how angry we were and asking each other why our butts were so itchy. Sitting on the wood stove was that highlight of being at the cabin that day lol
Mark and I left at 7pm the next night and had to do so in kind of a hurry. Some things had come up at Mark's work and I had family coming in that I wanted to see. We got our bags packed and got our gear back on and said goodbye and gave a few hugs out and we were off.
It didn't take long for the sun to go down unfortunately. We pulled off to get some bungees and some dinner (our first and last meal of that day). We talked about the map, the trip, friends, how glad we were to be making the trip back with each other and how we were going to be happy to see our own beds. After dinner we got back on the bikes, whined a little bit and then let out the unmistakable war cry of a Harley Night Rod and a Suzuki SV650S pulling carefully and unclimatically out of a parking lot. The trip back was filled with maybe four stops. Three for gas and conversation, and once because I felt my bag coming loose and having to retie it to my tail.
Coming back down Rt. 81 from Pennsylvania into Maryland, we could see the sun coming up. The clouds were turning from a navy blue to a hazy gray and there were pinks and greens on the horizon. Getting back to Interstate 70 was probably one of the best feelings ever since that's the home stretch for us. We had maybe 35 miles to do on 70 before we would exit, and then it was only a 5 minute ride back to Mark's house. This was a pretty short lived feeling though, once the light came back on and it was definitely morning, we could see mountains up ahead that had black clouds looming over the peaks. As we got closer, the clouds got lower until the tops of the mountains were gone and enveloped in what appeared to be the rapture. After we passed Frederick, about 18 miles to go before we got home, Mark and I let loose and decided that this time we refused to get rained on at all. We did the Ton and kept it there! I felt a drop of water hit my wrist and we only gave it more. Our cycles were screaming, his at 5,000 rpms and mine at 8,000. We were racing Mother Nature and we were winning. If we had wings we would've flown. Coming off the exit ramp was fun to adjust to, we dropped down to 50 and kept rolling, no traffic this early on a Saturday, so straight down the road we went. Another raindrop hit my visor. We cracked open the throttles again and happily did the Ton, letting our bikes actually have a good War Cry this time, and I think Mother Nature heard us.
Getting back to our road is fun, there are a few longer curves where you don't need to adjust your speed, and a few nice S-curves too where you can get a good lean in. We slowed down and turned down Mark's road, I think I almost lost it here. We round the turn and I come up from my lean my bike is still turned, but I'm going in a straight line... No, wiggle from the rear though, so I thought it would be super hot and sliding, which it was. I drifted a motorcycle and was so delirious from riding and no sleep that it didn't even phase me.
That's a lie actually, first I was worried, then I was methodical thinking about what was happening, adjusted for the situation (this all occurred in a two or three second time period, mind you) and then laughed maniacally about it all the way up Mark's driveway.
We pushed our bikes in the garage, checked the time, 7 am. It took 12 hours to get back. We were in hysterics, and also extremely pleased with ourselves being able to say that we have ridden "from dusk 'til dawn." haha
We went inside that house, got some water and something to eat, then laid on the couches and watched all of maybe 5 minutes of Top Gear before passing out from exhaustion. Somehow I woke up three hours later and went home, which I don't remember much of, so I'm guessing I was still a little loopy.
Altogether it was a good trip. Something to tell the Grandkids about (in the event that there should be any... maybe if the girl calls me that I bought those new glasses from?) We took some pictures, laughed at each other, nobody got killed or killed anybody, and we rode our motorcycles 1400 miles. Suzi is slowly wearing the back tire in again to recover from all the highway, and I'm pretty sure she needs some attention given to her forks, but she's a good little trooper, maybe I'll keep her :)
Soon after that, Mark and I went back to work and a few days later Ben and Dave got home. We're all back in school, except Mark who graduated already, and back to normal.
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