Sunday, July 18, 2010


Wow.. what a day. I woke up late this morning. 7 am. I went down and had some breakfast and then packed up my stuff to go. I did end up having to ditch a saddle bag at the hotel for safety reasons. Boy does my bike look silly with one bag! Anyway, I put my rain gear on because I could hear thunder in the mountains and I was sure it was going to rain. So I boogied up the highway with a few other riders and lo and behold... No rain. The groups I was riding with got off about an hour later and I continued on. About 70 miles up I caught up with Rolland (the guy who dropped his gold wing on the ride) and Steve. We rode for a few hundred miles up 81. We stopped and had lunch at Subway and talked about the routes we wanted to take. Google had told me that I should take 66 E to Washington and then up to Allegras that way... I should NEVER EVER trust Google again!!! Not only is the route completely wrong, but there were accidents EVERYWHERE. If only I had known. So Rolland and Steve went up through 340 past Mona's neck of the woods (I should have followed). About 9 miles in to 66 the highway was stopped.. and not a good sign when you don't see any cars going the other direction either. As the law abiding person I am, I diligently wait in my lane of stopped traffic which resembled a parking lot. At one point I did move up in my lane and I was parked next to a tractor trailer. I put my bike on it's stand and got off. I went up the steps of the tractor trailer and asked the driver if he knew what was going on and he told me there was a very nasty accident about 1 mile ahead and the highway is going to be closed for at least 5 hours for medfield and accident reconstruction. So I hopped down and got back on my bike. At that point I decided I had to break the law or turn into beef jerky in the hot hot sun. So I pull up and into the emergency lane and rode it to the exit that was coming up. Looks like I had the same idea as 6 other bikers. We all converged at the exit ramp and I met believe it or not Two other Road runner riders there!!! And they were from Middleburg, VA so they told me to follow them. We rode the back roads through the lower plains of VA. How absolutely beautiful. What a great detour. Sharon rides a trike and her husband Ken rides a water cooled victory. The reason I know it's water cooled is that he had to get off the highway or his bike was going to over heat. It was running around 350F in traffic.

We stopped for gas, pulled out the maps and they got me back on 66 further up and it was smooth sailling from there.....

Well not really! 495 was a complete construction mess so once again I sat in hot traffic for a while but nothing like I 66.

So I'm here at Allegras. the pool is calling me.... See ya!

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