2021-04-25
Sunday morning broke cool and foggy. Waiting for it to burn off, I felt no pressure to expedite my departure.
As Paul made breakfast I built my route sheets for the day.
They were daunting, covering almost 3 full pages of steno paper.
Sunday morning broke cool and foggy. Waiting for it to burn off, I felt no pressure to expedite my departure.
As Paul made breakfast I built my route sheets for the day.
They were daunting, covering almost 3 full pages of steno paper.
It would be quite a challenge to get it right, with many legs measured in fractions of a mile; most were less than 5 miles and very few were more than 10.
You might wonder why I just don’t use a Garmin GPS system and the answer is complicated.
In my day we didn’t need none of this gee-pee-ess.
We tried to focus on a compass needle bouncing around in the tank bag map pocket. The compass would always slide over the top of the map right where we were trying to look, and it would always point at the Swiss army knife inside the bag, anyway. We had to hold one finger on the map and gradually zoom in on the location where we thought we were, which was usually wrong, all the while stealing glances up to avoid rear-ending somebody or riding off the road. We couldn't read the map if it was raining or dark, and if we were heading south, the map had to be upside down. We figured out how far we'd ridden by forgetting to set the trip odometer at the last gas stop, and how much father it was to the destination depended on how bad our bladders hurt...
And we LIKED it!
To be accurate and timely, for this trip I really had planned to move into the 21st century. But I discovered too late I couldn’t use Google maps as expected.
I’d found my phone would recognize the destination when I clicked the link of a custom Google maps route. I could then start up a music playlist and while moving, Google Gal would gracefully mute the music when necessary to advise me, “In a quarter mile turn left.”
Perfect.
What I didn’t realize until too soon before departure was that Google Gal didn’t care about my carefully-crafted and utterly illogical route down the most obscure and difficult roads along the way.
She was going to send me to the nearest interstate highway.
So it was back to the hand-made route sheets in red Sharpie that work pretty well if things aren’t too complicated.
Paul and Kathy helped carry my gear down to Nada 3, which was wetter than I expected. Not only had the fog failed to dissipate, but something between drizzle and mist was falling out of what passed for a sky. Oh well; I couldn’t claim the weather forecast had suggested zero possibility of precipitation this day.
Kathy professed amazement at how all my stuff could be attached to a motorcycle. I replied with vague grumbles that riding a motorcycle is an utterly absurd mode of transportation, but that I’ve spent too long getting good at it and now I’m stuck wth it.
Finally I was off, and in a sense the real journey was only now beginning. As I’d quipped while packing up, making it to their apartment was comparable to having made it to Rivendell.
“Does that mean we’re elves?” she’d asked.
“Absolutely”, I’d replied, though I don’t think she heard me.
Getting out of Cinci was a cinch. A drive through a deserted industrial zone and past the main post office put me on I-75 southbound, which was light traffic moving fast. Quite in contrast to the northbound lanes, which were gridlocked.
I climbed the slopes away from the Ohio River and a couple miles from the bridge exited the freeway to begin my route along a series of ever smaller, twistier, more rural roads.
Early on it was difficult not to contrast this day most unfavorably with my last ride in Kentucky. In October of 2016 I’d arranged a business trip to three Plex customers in Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky such that it left me with a Saturday on which my only objective was to ride my K1300S Therese generally eastward across Kentucky until dark.
That October ride was a perfect day, the temperature ideal for riding, utterly cloudless. My route was a series of whims. At each intersection I made a decision based on which way had less traffic, or suggested the best chance of curves. The latter was informed by my rule of thumb that roads with more digits in the highway number tend to be smaller and twistier. There was virtually no traffic. The roads were perfectly suited to Therese’s incredibly well-balanced power and torque curves; I could basically just leave her in third gear and with either a twist of the wrist or a tap of her flawless antilock brakes she’d always respond in exactly the right way to whatever I wanted her to do. I’ve never ridden on better tires than the Michelin Pilot Power 2 CTs with which she was shod. They’re only good for about 6000 miles, but I pay that penalty without complaint.
Today the weather was for crap: mist continuously obscured my vision, the roads were wet and thus potentially treacherous, and I was rarely without traffic in front of me. Nada 3, with barely half the peak power Therese brings to the party, needs a lot more shifting to stay “on the pipe”. This was not made easier by new riding boots that aren’t broken in and are bulkier than my previous pair; getting my toe under the shift lever takes concentration and an unaccustomed muscle stretch when it should be a simple reflex requiring no active thought at all.
I think the right solution to this particular problem is to replace the original rubber-padded footpegs with smaller solid metal pegs, ideally machined from forged titanium. Yeah that would be way trick.
Eventually the weather began to improve. The mist let up, and what had been a thick and continuous overcast began to fracture; blue sky and sometimes even the sun itself became visible. The roadway gradually dried. Traffic thinned.
By the time I got to Gatz, I’d begun to enjoy extended stretches of nice curvy roads on which mine was the sole vehicle.
I racked up a lot of demerits this day – but they were all for navigation. I didn’t bother to keep close count; I’ll just round it up to 20 missed or wrong turns. That doesn’t include all the times I pulled over just to check when I was less than confident and couldn’t figure out where I was by looking at things going by.
Here again, a marked contrast from that October ride where having no destination meant it didn’t matter where I went. Getting lost that day would have been technically possible, I suppose, but I’m not sure “lost” is a term that could have been accurately applied to the circumstances.
Today it was important to hew as closely as possible to the planned itinerary. It was the first of a three-day sequence of comparable routes that would take me through what I hoped would be the most enjoyable roads. That said, it wasn’t really critical that I ended up at the exact destinations I’d established, or that every road had to be followed without deviation. Misplacements and subsequent adjustments were tolerable, to a degree, and if I ended up a bit short or wide of my target, any decent campsite in the general area would do.
But what was already a challenging task was complicated by a blizzard of intersections, many without road signs, and the overcast through which the position of the sun wasn’t even discernable.
The compass for which I’d fabricated a mount and attached to the dashboard really proved its worth. In the vicinity of Sherman I missed a turn and ended up on a series of roads with no idea where they were taking me. When I came to US-25 I checked Google maps and fixed my position, then zoomed off back toward my intended route. I glanced at the compass which suggested, contrary to my sense of direction, that I’d gone the wrong way. It took a while to convince myself the compass was right, especially given it’s rarely very close unless pointed in the quadrant between north and east. But it claimed I was going generally south and I should have been going generally north; I pulled a U-turn and ultimately got back to the right crossroad.
In New Haven I stopped for gas and a late lunch. I was the only diner in The Old Gringo’s A-Mex, which has a custom Triumph chopper mounted above the bar entrance.
You might wonder why I just don’t use a Garmin GPS system and the answer is complicated.
In my day we didn’t need none of this gee-pee-ess.
We tried to focus on a compass needle bouncing around in the tank bag map pocket. The compass would always slide over the top of the map right where we were trying to look, and it would always point at the Swiss army knife inside the bag, anyway. We had to hold one finger on the map and gradually zoom in on the location where we thought we were, which was usually wrong, all the while stealing glances up to avoid rear-ending somebody or riding off the road. We couldn't read the map if it was raining or dark, and if we were heading south, the map had to be upside down. We figured out how far we'd ridden by forgetting to set the trip odometer at the last gas stop, and how much father it was to the destination depended on how bad our bladders hurt...
And we LIKED it!
To be accurate and timely, for this trip I really had planned to move into the 21st century. But I discovered too late I couldn’t use Google maps as expected.
I’d found my phone would recognize the destination when I clicked the link of a custom Google maps route. I could then start up a music playlist and while moving, Google Gal would gracefully mute the music when necessary to advise me, “In a quarter mile turn left.”
Perfect.
What I didn’t realize until too soon before departure was that Google Gal didn’t care about my carefully-crafted and utterly illogical route down the most obscure and difficult roads along the way.
She was going to send me to the nearest interstate highway.
So it was back to the hand-made route sheets in red Sharpie that work pretty well if things aren’t too complicated.
Paul and Kathy helped carry my gear down to Nada 3, which was wetter than I expected. Not only had the fog failed to dissipate, but something between drizzle and mist was falling out of what passed for a sky. Oh well; I couldn’t claim the weather forecast had suggested zero possibility of precipitation this day.
Kathy professed amazement at how all my stuff could be attached to a motorcycle. I replied with vague grumbles that riding a motorcycle is an utterly absurd mode of transportation, but that I’ve spent too long getting good at it and now I’m stuck wth it.
Finally I was off, and in a sense the real journey was only now beginning. As I’d quipped while packing up, making it to their apartment was comparable to having made it to Rivendell.
“Does that mean we’re elves?” she’d asked.
“Absolutely”, I’d replied, though I don’t think she heard me.
Getting out of Cinci was a cinch. A drive through a deserted industrial zone and past the main post office put me on I-75 southbound, which was light traffic moving fast. Quite in contrast to the northbound lanes, which were gridlocked.
I climbed the slopes away from the Ohio River and a couple miles from the bridge exited the freeway to begin my route along a series of ever smaller, twistier, more rural roads.
Early on it was difficult not to contrast this day most unfavorably with my last ride in Kentucky. In October of 2016 I’d arranged a business trip to three Plex customers in Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky such that it left me with a Saturday on which my only objective was to ride my K1300S Therese generally eastward across Kentucky until dark.
That October ride was a perfect day, the temperature ideal for riding, utterly cloudless. My route was a series of whims. At each intersection I made a decision based on which way had less traffic, or suggested the best chance of curves. The latter was informed by my rule of thumb that roads with more digits in the highway number tend to be smaller and twistier. There was virtually no traffic. The roads were perfectly suited to Therese’s incredibly well-balanced power and torque curves; I could basically just leave her in third gear and with either a twist of the wrist or a tap of her flawless antilock brakes she’d always respond in exactly the right way to whatever I wanted her to do. I’ve never ridden on better tires than the Michelin Pilot Power 2 CTs with which she was shod. They’re only good for about 6000 miles, but I pay that penalty without complaint.
Today the weather was for crap: mist continuously obscured my vision, the roads were wet and thus potentially treacherous, and I was rarely without traffic in front of me. Nada 3, with barely half the peak power Therese brings to the party, needs a lot more shifting to stay “on the pipe”. This was not made easier by new riding boots that aren’t broken in and are bulkier than my previous pair; getting my toe under the shift lever takes concentration and an unaccustomed muscle stretch when it should be a simple reflex requiring no active thought at all.
I think the right solution to this particular problem is to replace the original rubber-padded footpegs with smaller solid metal pegs, ideally machined from forged titanium. Yeah that would be way trick.
Eventually the weather began to improve. The mist let up, and what had been a thick and continuous overcast began to fracture; blue sky and sometimes even the sun itself became visible. The roadway gradually dried. Traffic thinned.
By the time I got to Gatz, I’d begun to enjoy extended stretches of nice curvy roads on which mine was the sole vehicle.
I racked up a lot of demerits this day – but they were all for navigation. I didn’t bother to keep close count; I’ll just round it up to 20 missed or wrong turns. That doesn’t include all the times I pulled over just to check when I was less than confident and couldn’t figure out where I was by looking at things going by.
Here again, a marked contrast from that October ride where having no destination meant it didn’t matter where I went. Getting lost that day would have been technically possible, I suppose, but I’m not sure “lost” is a term that could have been accurately applied to the circumstances.
Today it was important to hew as closely as possible to the planned itinerary. It was the first of a three-day sequence of comparable routes that would take me through what I hoped would be the most enjoyable roads. That said, it wasn’t really critical that I ended up at the exact destinations I’d established, or that every road had to be followed without deviation. Misplacements and subsequent adjustments were tolerable, to a degree, and if I ended up a bit short or wide of my target, any decent campsite in the general area would do.
But what was already a challenging task was complicated by a blizzard of intersections, many without road signs, and the overcast through which the position of the sun wasn’t even discernable.
The compass for which I’d fabricated a mount and attached to the dashboard really proved its worth. In the vicinity of Sherman I missed a turn and ended up on a series of roads with no idea where they were taking me. When I came to US-25 I checked Google maps and fixed my position, then zoomed off back toward my intended route. I glanced at the compass which suggested, contrary to my sense of direction, that I’d gone the wrong way. It took a while to convince myself the compass was right, especially given it’s rarely very close unless pointed in the quadrant between north and east. But it claimed I was going generally south and I should have been going generally north; I pulled a U-turn and ultimately got back to the right crossroad.
In New Haven I stopped for gas and a late lunch. I was the only diner in The Old Gringo’s A-Mex, which has a custom Triumph chopper mounted above the bar entrance.
Turns out “the Old Gringo” is Phillip Benningfield, builder of that bike and others.
He pulled into the parking lot just as I was leaving, and we had a nice conversation about bikes.
The afternoon continued to get more pleasant. The clouds evaporated as did much of the traffic, and I made fewer navigation mistakes. I arrived at Dog Creek campground with plenty of daylight to spare.
Unfortunately the campground wouldn’t open until May 1st.
But the campground host directed me a few miles further on to Nolin River Lake State Park, where the primitive tent camping sites are situated right on the water. It reminded me a lot of the last place I’d backpacked with my son, right down to the pleasant afternoon nap in my hammock.
The afternoon continued to get more pleasant. The clouds evaporated as did much of the traffic, and I made fewer navigation mistakes. I arrived at Dog Creek campground with plenty of daylight to spare.
Unfortunately the campground wouldn’t open until May 1st.
But the campground host directed me a few miles further on to Nolin River Lake State Park, where the primitive tent camping sites are situated right on the water. It reminded me a lot of the last place I’d backpacked with my son, right down to the pleasant afternoon nap in my hammock.
I thought I’d have the place completely to myself. For quite a while after the last boater pulled out I was the only person and Nada 3 the only vehicle within view. But at some point I awoke from my second nap to see someone with a Grand Cherokee had set up a dome tent a couple sites over.
I introduced myself and we had a brief chat. They were a young couple from Chicago with a rescued bulldog named Buddy. Buddy would accept a dog snack from me but otherwise was very protective of his humans.
In the common lobby of the rest rooms and the closed ranger’s office, I took advantage of every outlet I could to charge up devices. I wrote this blog, finished off my flask of Crown Royal, and still didn’t come close to getting everything fully charged.
I ran out of steam before publishing, not knowing it would be several days before I'd have another chance.
I introduced myself and we had a brief chat. They were a young couple from Chicago with a rescued bulldog named Buddy. Buddy would accept a dog snack from me but otherwise was very protective of his humans.
In the common lobby of the rest rooms and the closed ranger’s office, I took advantage of every outlet I could to charge up devices. I wrote this blog, finished off my flask of Crown Royal, and still didn’t come close to getting everything fully charged.
I ran out of steam before publishing, not knowing it would be several days before I'd have another chance.
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