ChuckDoherty.com

Trip Summary, courtesy in part to Garmin:

Miles: 744.2

Average moving speed: 42.7mph

Max speed: 81.1

Moving Time: 17:24

Encounters with law enforcement: 0

Bike problems / mishaps / brushes with death: 0

Most expensive gas: $4.29/gal., on Long Island

Large insects crushed against my face: 1

Favorite spot: A tie between the breathtaking vista along The Bear Mountain Parkway overlooking the Hudson near West Point, and Tweed’s Restaurant in Riverhead where Friday’s lunch at the bar with the great folks who work and hang out there mysteriously lasted from 11:30AM to sometime after five.  And that even after enduring a gut-wrenching acapella rendition of Midnight Train to Georgia by a patron once several adult sodas convinced her (erroneously) that simply resembling Gladys Knight carried with it the same musical talent.  We at the bar made a yeoman effort to Pip along as best we could, but even our echoey refrains could not save this midnight train wreck.

This morning we went into the spa here at the hotel with a plan to book some treatments since we are basically trapped here with this weather. I was thinking a nice facial, or perhaps the Pomegranate Martini Manicure & Pedicure special that they were promoting on a poster near the front desk. I wanted to feel pretty, damn it, and was willing to pay whatever it cost to be wrapped in seaweed like a giant spicy tuna roll and immersed in a tub of the finest imported muds with cucumber slices on my eyes. But it was not to be. I was to be denied pampering.

Notwithstanding flyers spread liberally through the hotel promoting the services and specials the spa offered for men, the pedantic and humorless woman at the spa’s front desk was having none of it, at first assuming - nay, insisting - that the only possible reason the likes of we three would dare to befoul her establishment was to purchase gift cards. When I finally convinced her that I did indeed want to take advantage of their services myself, she continued to look and talk to us as though we were a pack of Neanderthals, unworthy of her time, much less the spa’s services.

I asked about the manicure / pedicure special, and was informed that was not available (all booked up, you see. And it takes far, far too long.) I grudgingly booked a massage but regretted doing so the moment I walked out the door. So, after stewing on this for a few minutes, I came back and canceled the appointment making it clear that her pissy attitude was the reason. I even went as far as to dime her bitch ass out to the very accomodating and helpful (really) hotel manager.

The upside is that the $90 I would have spent on the massage could go instead toward the surprise $100 rate increase on the room for a Friday night stay*.

More from this same soapbox later; right now I am heading down to piss in the pool.

*Update: The aforementioned hotel manager adjusted the increase to $50 more rather than $100 more. This guy was great.

Yesterday at breakfast, Mike (one of the crew members) stated that he thought it best that we abandon the trip and head home in advance of the terrible weather that was closing in. I can’t really blame him; riding in the rain is no fun. Tom and I wanted to press on but also wanted to stick together and not have Mike ride back alone.

So, after a bit of negotiation we compromised and altered the route so that we were now heading in the general direction of home but taking our time to get there. We still planned to proceed via Long Island and the Cross Isand ferry from Orient Point to New London.

Off we went, through the heart of PA Dutch country where horse-drawn buggies share the road with cars, their only compromise with modern times being a triangular reflector on the rear and a set of flashing taillights that they use at night and in foul weather.

Our revised course along PA’s scenic RT 30 took us through the town of Paradise which, not surprisingly, is in the general Intercourse area. Having made the one-way trip from Virgintown to Reamsville the day before, I am now quite familiar with many towns whose names would cause either Bevis or Butthead to shoot milk out their noses.

It’s worth noting that some of the smells one encounters in this part of the country are more breath-preventing than breath-taking. Sure, I know that farms use plenty of good old fashioned manure to get their crops off to a flying start, but there are some spots (like the intersection where we were stuck Wednesday for a good twenty minutes) where the smell is akin to the inside of a cow’s rectum. On a motorcycle, you do not have the option of rolling up the windows and hoping that the cabin air lasts until the toxic cloud has passed. Oh no; you are in it for the duration.

The return route took us through tiny towns in rural PA, on into NJ, and along the NJ turnpike to exit 13, then across a never-ending series of bridges until we were ushered into the underbelly of New York City. For whatever reason (probably because I had inadvertently selected the “avoid highways” option on the GPS), dear Garmen got it in her little electronic head that the best route to Long Island was via the heart of Brooklyn, and took us on a Flatbush and Park Slope adventure ride.

Getting further into Long Island, we came to the realization that married couples in this area can sleep soundly knowing that their partners were not off at some motel, seeing as there are none of them to be found anywhere. We did eventually find the lovely East Wind Inn and Spa, where we are staying until the rain passes. I am going to head down to see about a pedicure shortly; more later.

It is indeed raining here in Lancaster, which means that I get to try out my new fluorescent-orange, Nelson-Rigg raingear that I suspect doubles as a sauna suit in this muggy weather. 

It is 6:30AM, and as I await Tom and Mike to join me at breakfast, I am using the hotel’s public computer located adjacent to the breakfast area. The room is rapidly filling with chreerful Canadians on a bus tour of the PA Dutch area. Each new person to join the pack sends a wave of (x+1) good morning’s through the room, followed by yet another observation (and acknowledgement by all) that it is, indeed, raining.  Two ladies seated not far from me are discussing the coming rapture and arrival on the scene of Jesus, and how so much depends on what “The Jew” (sic) does next.  There is not a great deal of lox consumed on this particular tour.

Today’s plan is for less actual than yesterday and more time visiting the World’s-Largest-Ball-of-Yarn’s along the way.  More to follow.

Made it all the way to Lancaster PA (430 miles), where I am in a Holiday Inn Express, freshly showered, and in need of dinner and cocktails.  A typo-filled post to follow in a few hours.

I picked up a tiny (really) Asus Eee laptop computer to take on the Big Motorcycle Trip(tm) next week, and this post it just to make sure I can update the blog along the way. Expect thrilling you-are-there posts all through the journey, at least until the Mayberry police toss us into the cell next to Otis Campbell for exceeding the speed limit by 2mph.

Yesterday afternoon, awakening from a refreshing nap on my living room couch, I opened my eyes to find a black cat staring back at me from across the room.  A cat very different than my own. 

The thought that this creature was comfortable enough to stroll in and help himself to a kitty snack while I was snoozing just a few feet away makes me wonder what sort of cat shenanigans go on in my absence. This much is clear; my theory that untrained cats could not possibly master the intricate mysteries of cat-door operation does not hold water, and it appears that the concept of a hinged flap is not a difficult one to grasp after all.

Even for a beast with a brain the size of a persimmon.

I have been having a great time over the Winter months preparing my motorcycle for the upcoming riding season. 

So far, I have bolted on a set of PIAA 1100X high-intensity driving lamps, added a Garmin Zumo 550 GPS,  a nice little Cortech Super Mini tank bag, and have had my butt measured for a Rick Mayer custom saddle, which is scheduled to arrive sometime next week.

All this equipment will be put to the acid test when two friends and I hit the road in early May for a whirlwind road trip. 

We will begin with a journey up to the Catskills, and continue down along Delaware River to the Delaware Water Gap at the NJ/PA border. 

From there, we plan to trek across Pennsylvania and Maryland to the top of Skyline Drive in Virgina which winds through the beautiful Shenandoah National Park,  and then travel the back roads of VA until we arrive at my long-lost cousin Ricky’s restaurant The Raven* in Virginia Beach.

On the way back, we plan to follow the East Coast and fit in a trip on the ferry from Delaware to Cape May NJ, and another ferry from the tip of Long Island to New London CT.

The trip will entail about 1,500 miles of butt-numbing riding, but should not be too daunting taken in small segments with the right equipment, rather than as one big test of endurance. 

* Be forewarned; this website will blare music at you.

Pity, poor Anne Rice.

After raking in a fortune marketing her vampire-themed fiction to angst-ridden Goth chicks, Anne recently found God and has shifted to writing about a different fictional subject: Jesus. And now poor, dear Anne is crying and praying all the way to the bank because reviewers - and even her readers -aren’t taking her anywhere near as seriously as she is taking herself.

Two days ago, NPR’s Tom Ashbrook endured this excruciating interview with Rice on his show OnPoint, where she was pitching her latest offering; “The Road to Cana.”  Their callers included the dean of the Divinity School at Lake Forest University, which to me is like being an expert on Harry Potter. Just because someone sucessfully memorizes the schedule of the train to Hogwarts doesn’t mean they are going to be riding on it anytime soon

You want irony? Rice dismisses the very idea of gay vampires, the protagonists of her earlier work,  as “patently ridiculous” before turning one again to the subject of the water-walking, dead-raisin’, fig tree-cursin’ magical Jesus.  But I am not convinced she has changed her characters all that much. For example, she describes Jesus as “a man over 30 who refuses to get married” and you can all but hear Depeche Mode in the background as she writes:

 ”[Is it possible that] Christ the Lord sleeps in a worn woolen robe, in a room with other men, beside a smoking brazier? Is it possible that in that room, asleep, he dreams? Yes. I know it’s possible. I am Christ the Lord. I know. What I must know, I know. And what I must learn, I learn. And in this skin, I live and sweat and breathe and groan.”

Notwithstanding any sweating and groaning, Rice was emphatic that no one should be reading between the lines and imagining any bodice-ripping or lustful carryings-on either.  In her new books, anyone down on their knees is there to pray and nothing more. You got that Buster?

Managing somehow to cram her ego into the studio long enough to opine on her rightful place in history, Anne suggested that her work is part of “a long tradition of Christian art” and seemed receptive to the suggestion that people may very well adopt her writings over time as part of some future biblical canon.  But for someone who sure talks as an expert in all things religious, she is woefully ignorant even to the origin of the deritive and contradictory Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the current version.  For the record, all of those writings came along a century or more after the time in which the Jesus story was set, and were given those names not as attributions but as simple titles.

Who knows? Perhaps in a few hundred years people will be quoting what she is writing today as they slaughter a village full of non-Riceans in the name of God, and wearing t-shirts emblazoned with “Lestat 3:16” to space-football games.

Professional salvage diver Colin Trepte could very well be a kind and sensitive man.  He might just be someone who bakes cookies for his co-workers every Friday, and would take the time to knit a little tea-cozy for his mum on her birthday. 

If this photo from the latest issue of Wired magazine is any indication, I could also picture Colin as the sort who would clamp a pair of vicegrips to your nuts without a second thought if you accidently spilled some of his lager in the local pub. 

But then again, picures can be deceiving. And if you are reading this, Colin, no hard feelings. Colin? Right?