Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway motorcycle trip (posted from home)

Friday, 26 May-
This morning I made a quick trip to the Farmer’s Market, then Labashi and I spent the afternoon shopping for a replacement ceiling light for our bathroom. While remodeling our kitchen, Labashi had found a light fixture designed to be added to a ceiling fan and turned it into a very nice kitchen light fixture. We’d like to do the same type of thing for the bath but we’ve thus far not been able to find just the right combination of fixture, shades, and bulbs to rescue us from the horrors of late-Seventies bath lighting (ok, yes, I’m being a little facetious here!).
Late in the day we dined on our favorite ribs at the Texas Road House, then came home to watch ‘Reel Paradise’, a very interesting reality-style film about indy-film guru John Pierson and family buying and running a movie theater in Fiji. Good one!

Thursday, 25 May-
I got an early start today, hoping to get ahead of the predicted thunderstorms due in late afternoon for home. I had asked for an 0700 wakeup call but was awake by six so had my shower and breakfast and was on the road by 0715. I had a great early-morning ride in going-to-work traffic up to Interstate 77 and then on to I-81 for the turn towards home. I buzzed up I-81 at a mostly-legal clip, generally riding between 65 and 70. I first hit some rain south of Harrisonburg but it was very light and had no impact on traffic. I pulled off under a bridge at the first few drops of rain and put on my rain gear so of course the rain seemed to end there. But it wasn’t long till I was in a steady, though light sprinkle to Harrisonburg, then a break, then again sprinkling from the Pennsylvania line to home. I was home by 1415, so that was a seven-hour, 400-mile day and a 60-mph average. The great scenery and roads of the Skyline Drive and the Virginia portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway (and, come to think of it, the Shenandoah Valley drive up I-81) made it well worth while.
That evening we watched “The New World”, a Terrence Malick film about the 1607 Jamestown colony but more specifically about the relationship between Capt John Smith and Pocahontas. We liked this movie a lot but be forewarned, it only earned a 51% ‘tomatometer’ rating at rottentomatoes.com and I don’t generally like movies under about a 60% rating. We were very glad to see several of the Native American actors who so impressed us in ‘Black Robe’ and 14-year-old newcomer Q’Orianka Kilcher is amazing. The visuals are impressive and fresh. And it’s easy to imagine what life would have been like in Jamestown, particularly after seeing the extra features. Critics pan the film for getting a little lost in its story line and there is something to that. But it’s still a good film to experience.

Wednesday, 24 May-
I had decided to continue south today and that put me on the Blue Ridge Parkway by 0900 or so. The road was still covered in early-morning shadows and that made for a wonderfully-cool ride through the curves. The Blue Ridge Parkway differs from the Skyline Drive in that the curves open up a bit so the speed limit is now 45. But with the smooth roads it’s motorcycle-touring heaven. My goal this morning was the Peaks of Otter lodge for lunch, a worth goal since it’s about 85 miles of twisty road south.
I loved the feel of the Parkway. Where the Skyline Drive was great, the Parkway feels less like a park. And the views are fantastic, particularly as you start seeing the clusters of steep-sided peaks as you ride across the narrow ridges—what a spectacular place this must have been before roads.
The deer along the Parkway are no longer are so docile as they were yesterday on Skyline Drive. I came upon a young buck at Apple Orchard mountain who was right along the road on my side, facing toward me and acting very skittish. I came to a near-stop to be sure I wouldn’t get a last-minute surprise and was amused as he turned and trotted the road-edge looking for a place to dive off into the bushes in this steep-sided area. This Apple Orchard area is the highest elevation on the Parkway in Virginia and had an above-treeline look. It was still early spring up there so the trees were just budding. It was a perfect place to see that buck.
At Peaks of Otter I ordered fried green tomatoes for lunch. Though it was in the appetizers section of the menu it turned out to be a full-size plate of thick, juicy (yes, green) tomatoes, lightly breaded and deep-fried. They were served on a bed of lettuce with two slices of red tomato and I had a small cup of a good salsa and sour cream to add to them as I wished. They were terrific.
After lunch I met a fellow motorcyclist in the parking lot. He was from North Carolina and was now headed south after five days aboard the bike in the mountains. He was riding a Honda 1300 ST so we spoke for awhile about the relative good and bad points on our particular choices of mounts. It turns out we both had each other’s bike on our short list of candidates for a sport touring bike when we were shopping. He was an interesting guy. He was wearing a hat emblazoned “Glory Bound” (I didn’t ask) and a full riding suit. As we spoke about his riding the twisty North Carolina road called ‘the Dragon’s Tail’, I could tell he was a common-sense rider, enjoying himself but riding responsibly. Good for him.
I spent the afternoon taking the Parkway another hundred-plus miles to the North Carolina line. I had picked the Blue Ridge Music Center as my turn-around point since I want to be home for the Memorial Day weekend.
I spent the evening in Galax, VA, again at a Super-8. Shortly after checking in, another bike pulled up and I spoke for a few minutes with a rider from Boston. He was on a Ducati Multistrada, was headed for Asheville (NC) and had grown up in the Gettysburg area.
I again ate at a locally-recommended restaurant but this one was only ok—filling but not that special.
Afterwards I walked to a local park, the New River Trail State Park, and walked four miles on the railroad bed along the pretty creek before returning to my motel.

Tuesday, 23 May-
Today I departed on my first longish motorcycle trip. Until now the longest trip I had done was a five-hour ride to my brother’s home near Rochester, NY and then the trip back the next day. My goal today was to do some of the Skyline Drive.
I had some last-minute things to take care of at home so did not depart until after ten so didn’t get onto the Skyline Drive (Shenandoah National Park) until 1415.
I had beautiful weather—sunny and 70—so was surprised to find most of the visitor’s centers and the Mathews Arm campground had not opened for the season yet. I stopped at the first few overlooks and marveled at the view across the Shenandoah Valley. Along the way I would see a deer here and there, browsing on a hillside or along the grassy roadside. I could see they had no sense of fear or nervousness at all so that lent a Garden-of-Eden feeling to it. At Elkwallow, I found the visitor’s center closed but behind it were a dozen painters at their easels spread throughout the field, each concentrating on a nearly-finished painting of the wonderful view from there. There were few cars in the parking lot but one of them was a van from Northern Virginia Community College so I assume that’s where the group was from.
Shortly after leaving Elkwallow I came upon a large wild turkey crossing the road with eight tiny little chicks (‘poults’) scrambling behind. The poults were smaller than I’ve ever seen. They didn’t yet have the longer legs I associate with young turkeys so it looked like a turkey with chicken peeps following, and what a comical sight it was.
At the Big Meadow visitor’s center I spoke with a young ranger lady and mentioned I was having a good day, having seen the deer and turkey poults and some spectacularly-plumed barn swallows. She said all I needed yet was to see a bear—which is exactly what happened a few hours later.
Near the end of the Drive, around mile marker 92, a bear cub came out of the woods on my right and loped across the road. To give you an idea of the cub’s size, let me try this: if I had been standing beside the cub, its back (as it stands on all four feet) would only have come up to a little above my knee. It was indescribably cute and that encounter alone was well worth the trip.
I spent that evening in Waynesboro, VA just off the south end of the Skyline Drive. The Drive is 105 miles long and it took me more than four hours to complete it. The speed limit is 35 on the Drive and I had no traffic.
In Waynesboro, I stopped at an auto-parts store to pick up some windshield cleaner wipes and asked if there was a cheaper motel around. They directed me to a nearby mall area where I found a Super-8 tucked in an odd corner. At the Super-8, I learned the best restaurant nearby was the South River Grill. I tried the North-Carolina-style (vinegar-based) bar-be-que platter and afterwards stopped at Starbucks for a coffee and to read the papers while sitting on the verandah and occasionally looking up at the sunset-shadows climbing the nearby mountain ridge. On the way back to the motel I stopped at the Wal-Mart and bought a Lisa Scottolini paperback to start this evening. Talk about living the easy life!

Monday, 22 May-
This morning I went to a dental appointment near my old workplace and because my appointment ended just before lunch time, I called up a friend and former workmate, hoping he’d be able to meet for lunch. We met at a nearby Thai restaurant which had been a favorite. We had a great time catching up on what’s been happening since we last talked at my retirement party nine months ago.
On the way home, I stopped at Pinchot Park for a jog. I slow-jogged the Lakeshore Trail from the Conewago Day-Use Area parking lot to the dam and back, about four miles. I thought I might have problems with it because the last time had been very exhausting but it went well.

Sunday, 21 May-
I spent most of the morning working on the blog and email. Because of our talk with the Mohawk re-enactor at Dill Tavern yesterday, I surfed the web looking for more info. That led to an interesting afternoon of reading about the Caughnawaga Mohawks and about the history of Mercersburg, PA, particularly here: http://apps.libraries.psu.edu/digitalbookshelf/bookindex.cfm?oclc=28055678.
That evening we watched “The Beat that My Heart Skipped”, a French film about a man who is working in shady and sometimes violent real-estate schemes (like something you’d see in a Sopranos episode) but all is not well; he’s unfulfilled. When he has a chance encounter with his former piano teacher, we learn that his mother had been a concert pianist (managed by the piano teacher) and he himself had been very good as a teenager. Would he be interested in an audition to become a concert pianist?
The film is a remake of a 1978 film called “Fingers” with Harvey Keitel. IMDB summarizes ‘Fingers’ as follows: “Keitel plays the lead in this schizophrenic movie in which he is continually pulled by the two conflicting sides of his personality, on the one hand that of a quiet piano virtuoso and on the other a ruthless debt collector for his mobster father. Keitel is introspective as only Keitel can be, really making the audience feel for him and his pained existence.”
“The Beat That My Heart Skipped” is similarly worthwhile for the intensity of its acting, this time by Romain Duris.