Day 7 Recap

Woke up late and were moving slow after a night at J's Corner in Gorham, NH. After dragging for a while, we managed to be the last people to check out, and barely made checkout time. From there it was a half mile down to the gas station, where we proceeded to kill another 40 minutes gassing and rehydrating and talking.

From there it was 8 miles to Mount Washington. I had entertained the idea of heading up, taking the motorbikes up the fabled treacherous road. But once we got close and saw that the top of the mountain was wrapped up in black storm clouds, I decided to pass on that, so we kept rolling.

I was in a funk all morning, and couldn't get my head into the ride for a while.  We took a different route across the white mountains, which wasn't nearly as good as the route we took 2 years ago. There were a couple stops along the way. One 30 minute stop to discuss a business venture led to a treacherous bathroom trip into the brush. No snakes, but some steep slopes.

We wound our way over to Vermont 102 after winding in kinda lost but generally ok circles. I liked the road a good bit, ECG was less enthused, but it turned out to be one of the most interesting little runs. About halfway in, we rounded a turn and came a cross a dead turkey, sprawled across our lane. The thing was recently killed (all of its feathers in place and ruffling in the breeze), and took up almost all of the lane. It was huge. ECG and i both managed to miss it, but i still wonder how that thing got there. In all of my years, including 17 on bikes, I've never seen a roadkill turkey. They just aren't "getting killed on the road" animals. My guess would be that a hunter had recently shot it and it fell off of his truck. But I don't think it was anywhere near turkey season. So it remains a mystery.

The other eventful thing about the road was that we saw our first real cop of the trip. We had gone days without seeing anything. No speed traps, no cruisers, no nothing. We got behind an Essex County sheriff's cruiser for a few miles. After a bit he turned off on some obscure road to some park. We thought nothing of it. Turns out he knew a shortcut, and was getting out ahead of us and looping back on us. 10 miles or so later, he came at us in the other lane. I was out in front and was doing 60 or so in a 50. He hit the rollers and i thought i was getting my first ticket. He just wagged his finger and made a sloe down notion, and kept on going. A rolling warning.

At the end of that road we hit Brunswick we made a pit stop to get our bearings, hit the head and drink a little gatorade. There was a Suzuki Boulevard there that we didn't even bother looking at. Turns out it belonged to Mike Cyr. I did a "people we like"post on him, so i won't go into detail. I will say that even though we were so far behind the day, and not nearly as far as we wanted to be, we were happy to spend an hour talking with him in the parking lot. Great guy, Mike Cyr.

From there we tried a couple more recommended roads, that turned out to be traffic clogged messes that wouldn't have been that great if there were no cars around. And then we hit the school buses. There were three of them, traveling in formation. Too tight to pass one at a time, but taking up too much length to pass them all at once. Moving slow enough to infuriate. And of course the road got tons more interesting after we got stuck behind them. ECG was in the number one spot, and was looking for a chance to pass at every passing zone and around every turn. After 15-20 miles, I figured out that we were 10 miles from a spilt where we could take whichever branch they didn't. That eased things a bit, but it was still painful. Inevitably, they turned off right before we came to the split where we could have lost them.

Some more misguided maneuvering and finally we hit VT 100 south. 100 is a pretty well known road in VT. It runs the entire state north to south, and goes through Stowe, has the Ben & Jerry HQ/factory and hits a bunch of other stuff you'd recognize. But it was awful. Traffic was thick, and all of the towns it rolled through were clogged messes. If you're in DC, it's like when you're rolling down the GW parkway and hit old town. Moving, moving, moving, stop lights, traffic, not moving, traffic, slow, traffic, stoplights, and then it opens up again. We were stuck behind a blue Chevy Impala for ages (VT tags: ELF 400). The impala driver was willing to tear up the road, but kept getting stuck behind other slower cars, and we were behind her. ECG did ages behind her, and we swapped positions, and i got to stare at the thing for forever. We were both sick of looking at that thing.

We made it as far south as Stowe, and then pulled off at a gas station to reassess. A couple gatorades, smokes and some map reviewing later, weT met a nice couple who were riding bicycles from Montreal to Boston. Super-nice, friendly people. The girl was riding this crazy folding bike that had a case which doubled as a trailer to tow. I would be leery of riding that thing down to the grocery store. We were amazed at what she was doing with it.

We decided to bail out of 100, and hit I-89 south. 89 is an incredibly gorgeous interstate. And not just by interstate standards. It's a joy to ride. We did 30-40 miles in what felt like 10 minutes (acclimated to road time) and saw maybe 5 cars the whole time. One was a VT state trooper I spotted about a mile behind us (straight roads with big rolling hills), and slowed down in plenty of time. We weren't even moving fast enough to bother pulling over, but ECG caught my cue from up ahead and adjusted his speed to "prudent" as well.

The hop from 89 over to Rutland was nice. Deserted little back roads in fine repair. The only battle was racing sunset with our tinted visors on. We were trying to figure out if we could power through and make it to rutland before it got too dark, or if we should take the time to switch out the gear.

Red Roof Inn for the night. It was surprisingly nice, even with the shirtless rednecks drinking beers in the parking lot. The only restaurant around was a Ponderosa. I won't go into the horrors of the ponderosa here. Rest assured it was a total nightmare. It's as if they are trying to drive the brand into the ground.

Picked up some beer at the Hannaford to take back to the room, grabbed a martini at 99 Horseshoes, and headed back to the RRInn. A little maintenance on the broken wire to my PIAA lights that caused them to go out. And then back to the room. Rain hit heavy that night, but the red roof turned out to be a tin roof, and the rain sounded great all night. Looking back, i think that hotel was the most unmolested of all the ones we stayed in come morning.

On a side note, Google maps are a mess. The distance calculations aren't even close. We've seen distances off by major amounts. Google says 300, turns out to be 350. Google says 275, turns out to be 225. Totally unreliable. We have to triple check against other mapping apps. Everybody else nails it. Google never does.