"Life is the great adventure ride. Twist the throttle hard."

July 30^th

After a great breakfast in Henlock Creek with Karen and Penny, Sam played a few rounds of pool ping-pong with Karen, abused their charming Pit Bull (Ryley), and then we headed north.

Again, we took all back-roads, so we covered 300 miles in 9 hours on the bikes. Northern PA and Eastern new York state had some very nice riding, good roads and lots of scenery. But for some reason, I felt guilty roaring through those quite Amish villages on the 1450cc Hogs 🙂

Â

We beat it into Niagra

Falls just as the sun went down. Cruising 60mph down the highway about a mile or two from the falls we could see the water rushing, the mist rising, and the sun was setting just to the north. A dream of a sight — that myself and 4 other cars were rudely awakened from as knucklehead in front of all of us decided to come to a stop on the divided 4-lane highway and make an illegal U-turn. I found out the Road King has great breaks, so no worries. But I did give him the international hand signal reserved for people with his driving skills. (not something I normally would do)

I missed one turn today, and while we were making a very slow U-turn on a small dirt road, one of us tipped over their 650lb bike. I promised not to say who did it, but you’ll probably guess when you see the dirt on the black bike.

We were tired and going to stay on the US side. But when Sam found out that Canada had a lower drinking age than the USA, we charged toward the boarder at 9pm. We got a cheap motel, in

Niagra Falls Canada, and headed out to see the town. It is one big tourist trap (with a very cool and HUGE Ferris wheel), but the drinking age in all of

Canada is 19. ):

July 31

Rode up north through Toronto this morning, and both of us agree, Canadian drivers are by far the worst we have seen so far. The Garmin GPS does not seem to speak French very well, as it had lots of trouble with the off-ramps. A number of times it insisted we take one ramp, when it was either the wrong one, a non-existing one, or a needless on-off-on maneuver. Must be a software bug.

Once out of Toronto, the riding was good. Very fast road, mostly strait, but great scenery, lots of lakes, hills, and forests. Its nice to be back in the pine forests “ I love the smell. We covered a lot of miles, so we packed it in early and decided to camp at

Grundy

Lake. 1 minute after we checked in, a rain storm blew in soaking us and the camp-site for 20 minutes.

Once thing dried out, we set up, unthawed a couple frozen steaks from the camp store by setting them on the engine, and made a fire. It took us over an hour to get the fire going, as the wood was wet and we didn’t have our usual douse of race gas to get it going.

August 1

We rode Canada along northern Lake Huron to Sault St. Marie where we crossed back into the USA. Another fine day of fast riding and great scenery.

We ran down to the Mackinaw bridge (the largest suspension bridge in the world), and rode across it twice. At 200 feet above the water, it is very strange looking down through the steel-grate deck and seeing water as we drove over it.

We’re 200 miles from Appleton, WI and will be at my parents tomorrow.

July 26

Fallon came out to DC to spend a couple days with Sam seeing the sights and giving him a break from 24/7 dad.

At the Air and Space Museum, we saw the Gemini space capsule that the Harley rider we met says he recovered.

Â

We took two days off in DC and did lots of the classic DC sights. Atlington, Smithsonian, Thw Wall, Jefferson Memorial, National Archives, Hard Rock Cafe…

 

{Sam} fallon has some crazy notion that she is the princess of the world and we had to stop and see the ruby slippers which without suprise she has a set of her own.

July 28

We got Fallon off to the airport at 5:30am, and then headed north towards Atlantic City. We changed our trip plan to get in a little sailing with Aunt Karen. She keeps her boat in NJ right in Atlantic city.  When we started this Harley trip, I never would have guessed that our biggest challenge would be running aground at low tide  🙂

Leaving DC with the sun rising, and riding through the hills around  Annapolis in the morning was very nice. Once the heat and humidity hit, we were glad to get on the Ferry to NJ. We made it to the boat 9 minutes before is sailed for the 1-hour crossing of the Delewar Bay to NJ.

{Sam} the 1 hour crossing was really boring

when we got to atlantic city aunt karen took us for a ride on her sail boat. and at first appearance you would assume that she knows what she is doing behind the helm of a sail boat…her 1st mistake for the day was putting me behind the wheel.

but having some punk 18yr old kid behind the wheel was not the problem, just like with cars its the woman behind the wheel. just kidding but despite what aunt karen might say she did get the boat stuck on a sand and we did get to meet a really helpful man driving a yellow boat with flashing lights

i even managed to get evidence of aunt Karen threatening me while i take photos of her with her new best friend. aunt penny and i also came up with the notion that once atlantic city found out Karen would be sailing here they specially build the coastguard and sea tow buildings…

July 29

We got a late start, leaving for Mark Myers’ house (Chris Myers’ brother) about 120 miles from Atlantic City around 11am. Its nice to be heading West for the first time! After running into horrible traffic in Philadelphia, and a number of thunder showers, we got to his place around 3:15. He had lunch waiting for us when we got there. What service! We took a break and watched his son Kevin play in a water-polo match.

We headed for Aunt Karen’s house in Northern PA around 5:00, and ran into a couple storms and one lightning storm with more flashes than I think I’ve ever seen. We had to pull over for 45 minutes to let this one pass.

We got into Hemlock Creek at 8:30 as the sun went down, and Penny and Karen had dinner waiting for us. We sure like this Pennsylvania hospitality!