When I left Bath, Maine at 9:30 AM on Thursday 3/8/01 it was 27 degrees. The hard part was over; I had gotten the bike out of my driveway and up to route 1 without dumping it on the ice. We had just gotten two feet of snow two days before I left. The roads were pretty clear but I did have a moment crossing a slushy overpass in Brunswick to get to I-95.
By the time I got to Massachusetts it had warmed up to 41 degrees but it wouldn’t break 50 until I got to Georgia. It got dark at around 4:30 in Delaware but the temperature held steady in the low 40’s due to my southern trajectory. My only source of heat came from a cheap set of under the grip heating elements and my hands had started to cramp due to the death grip I held on them. I just tucked in as much as I could and tried to empty the tank.
By 1:30 AM I had made it to North Carolina. I was cold and tired and started to have trouble maintaining my speed and focus on the road ahead of me, or the cars around me. I started to see the white lines on either side of the highway coming together. I knew it wasn’t good. Shortly after the hallucinations started I saw a deer kill with an exit to a rest stop right behind it. Avoiding the deer I pulled into the rest area and laid out my sleeping matt next to the bike on the tar. I crawled into my sleeping bag without removing a stitch of gear. When I woke up three hours later in a sweat and with a clearing head I determined that I had probably gone into hypothermia. If it had not been for the dead deer that spooked me I may not have had the good sense given my state of mind to pull off the road. Note to self: You don’t recognize the signs of hypothermia when you have it.
After a Coke from a vending machine I got back onto the highway. I had 4 hours to do another 200 plus miles. After two more gas stops and a quick breakfast sandwich I pulled into a gas station with 1,050 miles and about 10 minutes to spare. I was feeling pretty good that I had got my 1000-mile day though. I met up with a guy on a new RT at a gas station in North Carolina and rode with him the rest of the way into Daytona.
I rolled into Daytona that day, Friday 3/9/01. It was toward the end of Bike week and I was alarmed and a little disappointed by the number of Harley's being trailered north. I mainly went for the race anyway so I guess I wasn't bothered that the Main street crowd thinned out a little.
I rode past the Iron Horse and that whole scene first. The cops had a roadblock set up already and were handing out citations left and right for loud pipes (I was so sick of hearing straight pipes.) I never went back that way, no interest.
Daytona was bigger than I expected and the traffic was horrible. A guy on a 35 Flathead pulled up next to me in traffic. I asked him how to get to the beach. He told me to follow him. Turns out he was a local and only pulled the antique out for bike week. We skirted down a bunch of side roads and he had me at the beach in no time.
I stopped at a little pub on the beach and had a burger and a Fosters. Man did I need that, and a nap. By the time I finished my meal the beach had been closed for high tide. The water comes right up to the hotels. To bad, I really wanted to go for a cruise on the beach. I braved the traffic one more time before I left Daytona Saturday night after the moto-x race but it was high tide again, oh well.
I met a lot of really great people. Most of them were on BMW's. I swear I could have had a place to stay every night on my trip back from all of the offers I got. I was sitting at a gas station having a cup of coffee after spending 3 hours looking for a room along the strip. This guy rides up on a Suzuki cruiser and asked if I really rode all the way from Maine. Cool guy. His wife was also on a bike. They ended up offering to let me stay in their hotel room. I was thankful but had to decline. By this time it was about 6 and I needed to find a room. I only got about 3 hours of rest the night before, on the tar in a rest stop in North Carolina. I ended up getting on the highway and went 50 miles south to a town I can't remember the name of. Got a room next to three brothers with Beamers. Cool guys.
I reserved the room for Saturday night as well so I wouldn't have to worry about sleeping on a park bench. They did the moto-x on Saturday. I headed back toward Daytona along what I thought of as the outer bank. Nice scenery but a bit straight. Met another cool guy from Massachusetts on an RT while sitting in traffic. We ended up hanging out all day.
After the moto-x races, on my way out I asked some sport bike guys where all the hooligans were hanging out. They had an extra pass to the Rice Paddy and gave it to me. The Rice Paddy is a little park not far from the big Harley dealership. There were a group of guys called the Starboyz doing their thing. 100 mph wheelies with their feet over the windshield and that sort of thing. It was pretty outrageous. Complete disregard for their own safety and that of the crowd. The girl standing next to me got hit in the face with a piece of burning tire. By the end of it you couldn't see your hand in front of your face through the smoke. Burnouts through six gears! When the smoke cleared there were five bikes lying on their sides in the middle of the parking lot. All of the rear tires had been burnt until they popped. As I was getting ready to leave I met Steven Meredith whom introduced me to the VFR list.
After that I cruised the strip and all of a sudden it was spring break and not bike week anymore so I went back to my hotel and enjoyed a cold one.
Sunday I hit the road around 8:00 so I could get to the track to get a new Givi windshield installed (much better protection than the smoked Targa.) I had bought an infield pass so I headed in there to park. The infield pass was $10 more then the grandstands and is useless unless you spend the extra $15 to get the paddock pass. Even then you don't have access to see much. While I was wandering around trying to figure out where I could go, I found myself in the paddock grandstands by turn one. It seems the security guard that should have stopped me went to take a leak or something. When I went to do the same I got kicked out but that wasn't until the second red flag. I had a pretty good view of everything from there including the horrible Scott Russell crash on pit road during one of the restarts.
Since I was kicked out and couldn't see the race at all, I decided to walk out to the grandstands to see the final 30 or so laps. I met back up with the guy on the RT from the day before. We watched the end of the race from there and he invited me to head south with him the next day.
I politely declined his invitation because I was starting to get worried about the weather to the north of Florida. I was also being reminded of my mortality by the shooting pains in my neck. 1400 miles in 29 hours on a VFR will do that to you.
So after Matt Miladin smoked the field and Little Nikki showed everyone how much heart he has, I hit the road. By the time I got out of the infield and stopped across the street to get some gas it was 8:30 pm.
Aside: on your way out of the infield they have you cross the track just before the tri-oval. I was so tempted to take a left turn and bust out a fast lap, well, a lap anyway. Needless to say, I thought better of it.
I filled up next to a guy that was a tire changer for Dunlop during the race. He worked in Matt Miladins pit. He was on a sweet bike. He bought a 2001 GSXR 750 and proceeded to put 47 miles on it before completely stripping and polishing it. He replaced the body work with Sharkskin's racing panels and rigged up a headlight from a fog lamp and his break light wasn't much more than a reflector from a bicycle. I asked him how he got away with it like that. He said he didn't and had the tickets to prove it.
Aside: Man! They'll let you register anything in Florida. I saw a YSR 50 with a plate on it.
He was headed to Tennessee that night. Hey me too! I rode with him for a while but broke off after about an hour and 100 miles. I like to make time but decided I wouldn't make much time sitting in a jail cell. According to the weather channel the night before I was really in for it. I rode all night to a Honda shop just outside of Athens Georgia. I took a three-hour nap in the parking lot before I was woken up by raindrops on my face. Here it comes. The shop opened thirty minutes later, and guess what, they didn't have their filter that I thought I needed.
By this time it was really coming down. There were severe thunderstorm warnings for the entire southeast. After 45 minutes on the road I was getting soaked through my Aerostitch. I pulled into a nice little hotel at about 9:30. They were nice enough to let me have that day's continental breakfast in addition to the next mornings. I parked under the second floor walkway, unloaded, locked up, took my suit off and proceeded to breakfast, wet crotch and all. I think my skinny build must have fooled them because I cleaned out the breakfast bar.
By the time I got back on the road in the morning the sun was out and the temperature was up to 64 already. With a full belly and five inches of rain behind me I headed for Deals Gap. I was pretty excited to leave the super slab behind for a while and hit some mountain roads. They really know how to build them down there in North Carolina and Tennessee. I got to the gap and was surprised to see that the speed limit on the NC side was 55 mph. Even after it drops to 40 in Tennessee it was still plenty fast. I never had so much fun trying to do the speed limit. I had to check the bags on the far end to make sure I wasn't wearing holes in them. On my way out I took rte 28 which I think I may have enjoyed even more.
From Deals Gap I headed over to Asheville NC and M.R. Honda…. Where I had an air filter waiting. $50 plus $25 more to have it their when I needed it. Hello MR K&N!! I threw it in the bike in the parking lot and determined that the plugs were fouled. To late, they closed.
For the next two days all I could stand was 725 miles a day, due to the brutal cross winds. Next time you drive past a convenience store, keep your eye out for one of those semi-portable signs out front that points to the store and has the little plastic letter inserts. Now imagine one of those blowing out of the back of a pick-up truck because of the 30 to 50 mph crosswinds. Now imagine trying to avoid it by maneuvering quickly against the same cross wind and keeping it on the road. Holy heart attack Batman. Five more minutes down the road, a big scary truck ran over some sort of critter and sent it flying past me about two feet from my head, followed by a big puff of fur. Yup, time to find a hotel.
According to the weather channel I had to get from outside Roanoke VA to Connecticut the following day. I continued on 81 north to Scranton PA. Route 81 pretty much rides along the top of the Appalachian Mountains, which does not make for ideal motorcycling conditions, especially in early March. Out like a lamb my ass. It didn't get above 39 degrees all day. I was stopping for gas and coffee about every 150 miles. At the first gas stop of the day I had to power away from the pump because I couldn’t put my legs down. After a loop around the pumps I managed to get my knees working. I decided I should test my knees ahead of time from then on to make sure they still worked. I made it into Massachusetts that night just as the puddles from the melting snow were freezing over.
The next morning was beautiful sunny and fifty degrees. Three hours and I was home.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
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