Off We Go
Tomorrow morning, after I finish teaching tech to old folks — which is its own kind of motorcycle maintenance — I'm pointing the BMW north and not looking back for a couple of days. Up to St. Marys, PA. Winding route, mountain roads, small towns north of Route 80 where nobody's in a hurry and the roads belong to you.
Bed and breakfasts and inns in towns with one traffic light and a diner that closes at two. I'll be looking for Trump signs — are they still out there? — and farm stands with ripe tomatoes and fresh corn. Peaches, too, in parts of PA where the orchards come right up to the road and the air turns sweet before you even see the trees.
But mostly I'm going for the feel of the road and the wind. The way the smell changes as you move through different kinds of forest — pine to hardwood to hemlock — and how the air gets cooler when you drop into a valley and warmer when you climb out. You feel all of it on a motorcycle. Every degree, every scent, every shift in the landscape comes through. A car seals you off from the world. A bike puts you in it.
It's a clear-your-head trip. I've been busy. Working on Lenny, working on an AI education application, working on the house, walking the dog, the band is playing again soon, and some things just need attention that they haven't been getting. Including me.
Am I Lenny? Sure, in many ways. But I never had a brother — just one sister. And I've never wrenched on a bike. Tried that once. Not good. Lenny would be embarrassed.
At rehearsal the other night, someone brought up flat tires, and one of the guys said, "Don't use that Fix-a-Flat stuff — you'll be cleaning it out for hours." And another guy — the astute one — said, "Well, you won't be, but someone will." He nailed it with that. Didn't bother him at all. Great story. Great attitude. And a trip like this tends to acquire a story or two of its own.
People always talk to an old man on a motorcycle at any stop. It seems to be a rule. They want to know where you're going, where you've been, how long you've been riding. And of course they admire the bike. BMW S1000XR — not the fast one, but the nice one. The one that says I'm going somewhere interesting, not somewhere quickly.
Uncrowded roads, ripe tomatoes, the smell of pine, and nobody expecting anything from me for forty-eight hours. That's the plan. Off we go.