Motorcycle Trip from San Diego to Philadelphia and Back:
August 5 - 17, 2004


Taking a taste with Zed in Ogalalla, Nebraska.
(Don't worry, I'd parked him for the night by then.)

After the dull ride across Nebraska, (and Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio),
Pennsylvania's hills and greenery are especially vivid, but the freeways there are called "turnpikes" and they aren't free.
AND if you get off this "Turnpike" for a little scenery, you will probably get lost.


The Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel cost a whopping $10 per bike, but it's a pretty neat experience.
There was a surfaced submarine heading out as I was riding across,
and it occurred to me that I can say I've had my bike deeper than even a submarine could go.


I averaged 550 miles per day and never got any tickets. My secret? I listened to books-on-tape most of the trip, and if I got above 75-80mph, I wasn't able to hear the book. So I saw lots and lots of constables' faces light up when they saw my sportbike passing through their little town, but they all went dejectedly back to their coffee and newspaper after the disappointing number on their radar gun.
Virginia and Tennessee have these bitchin' creeper vines that grow over and engulf entire sections of forest. Choked by the vines and starved of sunlight, the trees beneath die and their dead trunks serve as a host for the voracious creepers. I rode past some scenes that resembled a pine-gazelle desperately fleeing a vine-lion. If you stand still long enough, the creepers might take a hankerin' after ya.

08/13/04: [left] Waiting for the ticket that miraculously never came. 08/14/05 [right] Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on a morning in an Amish town in a dry county in Tennessee.


Unlike California, many states (like Colorado above and Texas below) you can pay for your gas after pumping it.
It's convenient AND each state has its own version of the stern-faced officer warning you:
Pay for your gas: Or lose your license!

Hell bent! Hell-bent-for-yeller!!:
Captain Cautious of the Safety Squadron Breaks Down in an Unfortunate Spot in the Mojave Desert.