Sometimes from the back of my scooter, sometimes not.
Please also check out my main blog: Humour of the Situation
Welcome & Thank you!
In a world of things to do, I find myself lacking the motivation to finish the the ride story about this trip, which is sad because it was a great experience…but it was one I would have liked to write about as I was experiencing it, rather than just after the fact. I will still intermittently finish that story, under the tag #EBSJ for East Bound Scooter Journey, but I will also move on with how I’m using this space.
I’ve decided to change this tumblog from a “scooter only” space to a “scooter and travel” space. I haven’t been on my bike nearly enough this spring, but hope to get out on some jaunts and share some pictures here. I am also getting away from home in various forms more and more, and I would like a place to tell those stories.
This will be where I share small trips and large ones, in my continued quest to not leave seeing the world until after retirement. I’m not sure what this space will ultimately become, but I’m interested to find out.
Re-reading my facebook posts from the road, my friend Misty left this on my
wall (now timeline…which is why I can read all this stuff over) after
getting caught in the huge thunderstorm in Indiana:
“Adventure starts when everything goes wrong. If everything goes perfectly,
well, then it’s just a vacation.”
Shenandoah National Park was beautiful, and if I’d been smart I would have
snagged lodging at the south end of the park for the night. But my time was
begining to run out, and I got it into my head that I could make Kentucky
that night.
I couldn’t, and I didn’t. Instead I had an “adventure”.
This adventure started in a gas station.
Some of the images from my day in Shenandoah National Park.
I slept in, and spent a lazy morning with a new friend enjoying a fantastic breakfast that he made for me. I debated taking a day to ride around DC, but I worried about trying to sight see with my scooter laden down. The tent theft in NY had me twitchy. Instead, I decided to spend the day on Skyline Drive.
I hit the interstates to escape the gravitational pull of DC, pausing for a moment to wait out a shower under a random overpass.
I reached the northern end of Skyline Drive and paid my $10 for the privilege of riding through Shenandoah National Park. It was worth every last penny.
I of course did NOT take this shot while riding my scooter down the road:
More images of my day riding 35mph for 100+ miles to come…
After disembarking the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, I started my roundabout route into Maryland.
Once again, Rte 1 led me astray.
It looks so lovely on the map, like exactly the sort of road I want to ride down. I imagined riding with ocean water on either side.
Look at it, doesn’t it look like fun?
But it wasn’t.
What it was, was several hours of riding in the sun at a speed of roughly 20 mph, sweltering in my mesh jacket (because I wasn’t moving fast enough to create a breeze). College age kids wearing only bathing suits and often no shoes zipped by me on rented scooters. I felt like the scooter-rider equivalent of the old man with the hose grumbling about Those Damn Kids on My Lawn.
Yet, I had no hose. It would have been a much more satisfying experience if I’d had a hose.
I couldn’t see the water with the tourist traps and sand dunes in my way, but eventually I made it to Ocean City. Since I’d spent so much time traveling on Rte 50, I had wanted to hit the place where it starts on the East Coast. I’d been hoping to snap a shot much like this photo (but too much traffic prevented me from getting my own):
(image liberated from http://brianandisabel.com/2008/09/west-sacramento-to-san-bruno-calif/)
It took me another couple hours to reach my destination at my friend Darci’s abode in Maryland (due to yet another tragic mis-calculation of the potential scenic-ness of another road), but despite my lateness there was a tasty super and a cold beer waiting for me upon arrival. I spent a lovely evening with a new friend and an old friend, and slept a blissful night in the spare room.
Out of order…from a night on the beach with friends in NJ.
After a lovely couple days in Asbury Park, I travelled south to Cape May where I hopped the ferry to Delaware. It was a good to be on the water, however shortly.
I spent one whole day just sitting on the beach looking at the Atlantic, reading. I went in the water once, and the lifeguards yelled at me for breaking some unknown beach rule. I was mortified. I was also somewhat surprised that I had to pay to sit on the beach, but it was a good day regardless among the few I spent with friends in NJ
My uncle gave me directions when I left his house, but somehow I got turned around…and ended up on this unexpected and lovely road in Goshen, NY.
I spent an hour or so indulging in a breve and reading a book, before spending a little while longer riding some twisty NY backroads on my way to the Northway, and onward further south the Garden State Parkway.
When I left the east coast, tolls on the Parkway were 35 cents. In preparation for traversing it on my scooter I stockpiled dimes and quarters…only to find the toll was up to $1.00, and that I was now juggling change for no good reason.
My gracious hosts in Jersey laughed at me good and properly, and I laughed at myself since it had never crossed my brain that the tolls would have increased in my 10 year absence.
I will say this; the Garden State Parkway is a dauntingly large piece of pavement. I love being on the scooter, and there’s a reason that skeptical riders call people in cars “cagers”…but that was huge expanse of flat asphalt to contemplate from my little rugged scoot. There were a few moments especially crossing some of the bridges, 6 lanes or wider, that I seriously questioned what the hell I was doing. It felt like riding on the moon, more open than prairie, but I kept focused and made it through fine…dimes and quarters and all.
Above: Random cell phone shot from the shoulder of the Garden State Parkway
