Michael Dennis Blom left us 21 September 2009 as a result of Mantle Cell Lymphoma. On the left is Simon Beglar, his old friend from New York and fellow moto ref. This was his last ride with Simon, Stefan Yencha, and Dirk (whose last name escapes me). This was a day of grace before the cancer overcame him.
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Some of you may remember that a few weeks back I solicited volunteers to have photos made to go on motorcycle safety advertisements. One chosen was of Cheryl and Josh, mother and son, as pictured here
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Larry Segeleon points out, correctly, that the Pittsburgh guys who ride in the rain have nothing on we bicycle race moto refs and marshals. The scene here is the moto pit prior to the 2007 US Open Bicycle Race. Yes, that's freezing rain on the trees. The weather was so bad, the TV helo couldn't take off. CRAB Steve Whetstone's bike is the yellow GS in the foreground. At least the bicycle riders had physical exertion to keep THEM warm.
The race was Williamsburg to Richmond, but they stayed in Richmond and transferred to W-burg that morning. During the ride from Richmond to W-burg, there were cars spun out on the interstate and into the median. Apparently the trip to W-burg on the motos was very interesting. They all made it just fine, thanks, because they're hard men and skilled. The race went on.
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We pulled into our driveway in Leonardtown this afternoon after 3,598 miles and 17 days of adventure.
Mark and Betsy
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We are at 3,363 miles now. It's day 16 and we're in Trexlertown, PA near the bicycle Velodrome.
We survived St. John, Armpit of Fundy. We crossed back into the US without incident at Calais, ME. The guy took our passports, looked at our bike, said "You can't have much to declare in there" and sent us on our way. We went to the Easternmost point of the United States, the lighthouse at Quoddy Head, Maine. It was fogged in and the marine layer that obscured the lighthouse was so cool that Betsy needed a jacket. Temperature swings have been dramatic: as much as 30 degrees in 20 miles or so.
From Quoddy Head, we went to Skowhegan, ME for the night at a family-owned motel suggested by Kim, the supernaturally clairvoyant guy at the Maine Rest Stop and Tourist Info Center. We went through New Hampshire past the Mount Washington Auto Road, but didn't make a return visit since the wind was bad enough down at the bottom to blow us around and there were clouds around the top of the mountain. No way I want to handle that dirt road in the fog and wind with vanloads of Japanese tourists coming the other way.
We stopped at Whitehorse Press in East Conway, NH to see Jeff Adams, a friend from our previous trip. Jeff was great, as was his dog Riley and the other office dog, Hudson, a cross between a Newfoundland and a standard poodle that the owner called a "Noodle." Animals and people at Whitehorse Press, a firm specializing in motorcycle books and apparrel, were all just as wonderful as we remembered.
Then it was off to the Kancamagus highway (NH Route 112) to Vermont and our old haunt of Brandon. It's said you can't go home again, and Brandon was a little like that: some of the places we knew were closed and some of the ones that were open were less nice than we remembered. Some of it was the group of rednecks on the deck at Sully's restaurant who didn't know how to behave in public. Anyway, it was still as scenic as we remembered and the hot tub at the motor lodge still overlooked a valley farm and the Green Mountains, so it was all good. It killed us not to go back to the Gray Ghost, but that would have been an extremely long day.
Brian and Shira, the fantastic folks from Backroads, told us a neat place to stay on the Delaware River in New York: the Carriage House Inn and Restaurant in the little town of Barryville. The Inn was old, but the tonic was cold and the room was perfectly fine. We met Alan, the groundskeeper with the Samurai Mohawk Topknot haircut, and Muntzy the German Shepherd dog who lives there. Both were very friendly and Alan gave us some postcards of the place in its heyday, which was a couple decades ago, but they have big plans if the Delaware River will stop flooding the place.
I have a picture of Betsy giving the Peace Sign at the monument on Yasgur's Farm in Bethel, NY where they held the Woodstock festival in 1969! The only problem is that they've turned the place into "Bethel Woods" a big concert facility complete with big white tents and fancy schmantzy parking areas and shuttle busses, solar lighting, et al. Backroads Brian says it's a fantastic place to see and hear a concert and that he saw Chicago and The Doobies there, but I still think a little amphitheatre on the hillside would be better. It is no longer, as Billy Crystal once said, the place "where 100,000 people got together and created a strain of VD that would kill penicillin." According to a guy we met in Prince Edward Island who was a rock band drummer in the 70's, Woodstock doesn't even surpass the current Canada Day celebration in Old Quebec City for sheer drunkenness, debauchery, and drug use.
We had a great visit with the Backroads folks at Backroads Central. They were doing the next issue in anticipation of going to Norway (NOT Norway, Maine - the real thing). They graciously gave us some of their time. On the way there, we saw a female wild turkey and her six offspring. Last time we went down Jersy 521 we saw a black bear: so why is it that we see the best wild game in New Jersey?
We didn't get far before I checked in at the Velodrome to find racing going on. That pretty much snuffed the day right there. So here we are, in a...chain motel...in Trexlertown, PA blogging you up on the penultimate day of the trip. We're to have a nice dinner at a fantastic Italian place called Paese Mio (My Neighborhood) tonight with my track racing teacher, then home tomorrow via PA backroads and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Hopefully we'll arrive in time to collect our dog, whom we miss a lot...er...I mean whom MRS. BYERS misses a lot.
Mark and Betsy
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