Pennsylvania road trip! Hey ooooh!
This weekend, D. and I took a loooong bike ride on the DynaGlide. Doesn't DynaGlide sound like a sex toy? I assure you it is not.
We loaded up our travel bag and strapped it to the sissy bar. (this is "biker talk." I'm totally learning new vocab.) And rode up to the Poconos to spend the night with friends.
As soon as you leave the Lehigh Valley, no surprise, the air is clearer and cooler and the rolling hills and small mountains are just gorgeous. From a motorcycle, you smell all the great smells of summer - vineyards, honeysuckle, cornfields, the giant garbage truck in front of you - and you get pelted with dozens of bugs. Luckily, D. blocked most bugs for me.
It was the perfect riding weekend and I'm just getting used to riding longer distances. Although, I insist on avoiding highways, especially the interstates. I don't trust the other drivers. So many people are distracted, and so many trucks drive recklessly, and every other day there's a motorcycle death written about in the news. I'm a bit of a scaredycat.
I should add that Salty D. has no qualms about highway driving so he gets a little irritated at my insistence.
We climbed out of the valley through the cement belt starting with Nazareth (home of the now dead Nazareth Speedway where it was rumored that Tom Cruise and Paul Newman hung out and raced cars with the Andrettis), Bangor, (Bang-er? I don't even know-er!), and then as we approached Blue Mountain (where there's an entrance to the Appalachian Trail) our route was blocked by road closures. So we followed this crazy-ass detour on narrow bumpy roads with hairpin turns, up over the mountain to Stroudsburg. Now there's a weird little town. Part university town, part hicksville, part NYC commuters, still lots of "9/11 Never Forget" banners all around, a Starbucks next to a deer processing shoppe. Then we headed up to Hawley, near Lake Wallenpaupack (on The Office, Michael Scott takes his employees on a cruise on the lake.)
Our friends have what my Adirondack cousins would call a "camp" but the friends call it a cabin. It's a house in the woods in a big community which is filled with mostly New York City transplants or summer city commuters. And yet, you can't get good food up there... it's odd. But they have a huge fireworks display every "4th of July"...
Yesterday we took a different route home, through the Delaware Water Gap where I haven't been in, like, forever, and it's so freakin' gorgeous I could kick myself for ignoring that corner of the state for so long. And basically what should have been a 2.5 hour round trip was a 6 hour round trip.
Lots of bikers say that riding is better than psychotherapy. I would partially agree, because you're basically alone with your thoughts, and the only thing you need to do as a passenger is be a good passenger. It's not the most comfortable way to get around when you're on the back, but the cool experience eclipses the sensation of hot numb feet (from the foot peg vibrations and heat of the pipes.)
We got home and Salty D. washed the bugs out of his beard, and I passed out from all the fresh air. Yet another weekend goes by without doing any yard and garden maintenance. I will be lucky to get the spring mulching done by August, again.
Could this possibly be the calmest, most mundane post I've ever written? Perhaps that bike-riding thing is good for the mental health.
SHE'S A "DYNA SUPER GLIDE CUSTOM" THANK YOU
Posted by: SALTY D | 09 July 2007 at 06:51 PM
Custom Schmustom. Stop yelling.
Posted by: blaugra | 10 July 2007 at 10:11 AM