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The Ride Part Two

The Ride Part Two

There did not seem to be much else close by the motel…... a gas station with a convenience store attached and that was about it. Tired after a long day on the bike, after I checked into the motel, I walked over to the convince store, bought a few items and went back to check on the bike. Everything seemed to be well until I checked the tire pressure on the rear tire. It was only reading 28lbs when it should have been at 40....uh oh!. Checking the tire, I could not find anything but the tire is hard to get to with the fender and saddlebags. I added some air, brought the pressure in the tire back up to 40 psi, went into the motel room and had a meal of prepared sandwich, chips and a bottle of Gatorade while I watched some mindless stuff on the motel TV.....and worried about the tire.

Waking early, I took a quick shower, put on my shorts and a t-shirt and went outside to check on the bike. Sure enough, the air pressure in the rear tire was back down to 24psi just over night. Not good at all. Again I got out my air pump and put the air pressure back up to 40lbs. After changing into my riding gear and packing up I was on the highway again heading north, looking for Harley Davidson sign as they seem to have shops near exits on the interstate highways. I took the exit to Lebanon to get some gas and pulled into a Shell station. While filling up the tank another bike rider rode in to a pump nearby. I walked on over, explained my dilemma and he told me about a bike shop down the road just a few miles outside of the town of Lebanon, PA.

As I rode into the parking lot of Lebanon Cycles, I was glad to have found a motorcycle dealer but dismayed at all of the activity. It was a Saturday morning and the place was hopping! Bikes and people were everywhere. I figured I would probably be lucky to get mine looked at on Monday. Parking the bike as close as I could get to the service area I walked in and talked to Dale, the service manager. What a pleasant surprise! After explaining the slow air leak on the tire and telling him about my ride from Florida to New York, He took care of things. Offering me a cup of coffee and a place to sit, Dale had another bike taken off of its stand and replaced with mine, took a mechanic off of another job to work on my bike. “We need to get this guy back on the road” he said to another of his people. It turned out that somewhere along the way I had picked up a pretty good sized nail right in the center of the rear tire. With another 2000 miles to go on the TRIP, I did not want to do it on a patch so had them replace the rear tire. While they were putting on the new tire I walked around the shop and talked with some of the folks there. Nice place, nice people. I lucked out! The tire could have gone flat in the middle of the mountains and I’d be sitting beside the road. As it was, within hours, I was back on the highway riding into a drizzling, misty rain that continued most all of the way to Scranton, Pa where my GPS finally decided to send me in the wrong direction.

Now the GPS is a great tool but it is only as good as the maps that have been downloaded into it. Reaching into Scranton, Pa., There seemed to be all kinds of construction going on along the interstate, rerouting the original interstate, so the GPS just got very confused. This also just happened to be where I wanted to finally get off and start taking the back roads towards New York.

The GPS kept routing me thru the city, someplace I did not want to go. I needed to get on US6 which heads north east out of Scranton. Frustrated, I was not lost, I knew where I was and where I wanted to go, I just did not know how the heck to get there! So, after making several poor attempts at finding my way off of I-81 and onto US6, I finally stopped and asked for directions. A nice gal at the gas station told me where I was and what to do, “two exits north on I-81, stay right, merge onto US6” simple. Soon I was on my way to Carbondale. Still on a 4 lane highway but all of that was about to change. I spent the night at the Knights Inn in Carbondale in North Eastern Pennsylvania. The motel room smelled of stale smoke but I was too tired after the crazy day on the bike to complain about it. I got a light dinner at a small restaurant nearby and back in the room, read a bit before falling asleep.

"The open road is a beckoning, strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself." William least Heat Moon

I’m in Honesdale, Pa. sitting at a gas station, looking a paper map of Pennsylvania and trying to figure the best way to get into New York State when a guy and his lady ride up behind me on their big Harley. We chatted for a bit and it turns out that this fellow was the manager for the local Harley Dealership. When I explained where I was going and trying to get into New York. He says, “There is only one way to go, take RT191 right straight north out of Honesdale. It is one of the prettiest rides in the state and will take you right where you need to be.” I topped off the gas tank, found 191and he was right about one thing; it was an absolutely gorgeous ride through the hills of northern PA. There was very little traffic. I had no idea that Pennsylvania had such nice countryside. Nearing New York, the Delaware River separates the two states, with 191 running along the Pennsylvania side. The river was wide and full from recent rains. Eventually the highway crosses the Delaware into New York and the town of Hancock where I got to watch a parade.

There was some sort of local thing going on: Right through the center of town…… A couple of high school bands, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, People riding horses and some antique automobiles. Everyone was out having a good time. I was stopped by the local police at the junction of Main Street and 1st Ave. so sat there on my bike as the parade of people passed by. It seemed that the whole town had turned out for whatever it was that was happening.

After the Parade I rode on alongside the Delaware River to the town of Walton where I stopped at a diner for a late breakfast/early lunch and had some great biscuits and gravy. From Walton I rode on over to thru Sidney Center, across I-80 and picked up RT7 to Unadilla. I passed by the house where my grandparents used live, except the house is no longer there. Washed away by one of the floods from the Susquehanna River that runs behind the property. I rode into Oneonta. You can see Hartwick College up on the hill above the city. My dad went to college there and, for a while, we all lived in a small trailer below the college. Oneonta now is a big city but Main Street remains pretty much the same.

The GPS finally led me north out of the city on State Rd 23 to the small town of Laurens. Actually I never went into Laurens. But off of 23 on a back road off of a back road I found the “camp” built by my dad and Grandfather way back when. Thing is though, the “camp” is no longer there. It was a small cabin along a creek on a couple of acres of land. Our Family, Aunt, Uncle, Cousins, Grandparents spent quite a few summers there, the whole Clan. I think it was really the only time that we were all together…..over half a century ago. Anyway, the cabin at the “camp” has long since been replaced with a much nicer house built by my cousin Kathy and her Husband Joe. Kathy had no idea I was coming by to visit so wondered who was rumbling up to their house out in the woods, on a motorcycle. Of course, she did not recognize me as we had not seen each other since she showed up at my doorstep one winter back when she was a good deal younger. So here I was doing the same thing to her some 30+ years later. After she figured out who the biker at her door was, I met her husband and she called her twin sister Ruth who came over to the house. We all had a good visit for a few hours before I got back on the bike and headed off to Cooperstown, NY.

“I don’t take checks or credit cards, cash only”, the proprietor of the Cooperstown Motel told me. “Don’t believe in ‘em, they only cause grief and expense that I don’t need”. Well I had never heard of a motel that did not take a credit card for payment before. Seems like most everyone takes credit cards these days, which is why I carry very little cash with me on my rides. “I can keep my rates lower, just because I don’t take plastic” He told me. The room rate sure was good and it looked like a nice place. Located on the outskirts of Cooperstown. So I handed over almost all of the cash in my wallet for two nights at the Cooperstown Motel, l unpacked my bike and took all of my stuff into a corner room on the first floor. It was a pretty nice room, well used as most of them are in your typical mom and pop motels. It was clean and smelled faintly of cigar smoke and disinfectant. No air conditioning though and probably not needed for 90% of the year in foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. I just happened to be riding through during the other 10%. I opened all the windows and with a breeze coming through it was at least tolerable and most likely would cool down pretty dramatically as soon as the sun went down.

Getting settled into the motel, I planned on staying for a couple of days. I could use a bit of downtime after 1100 miles on the road. There was still a bit of light left and as I had not had anything to eat since Walton, I changed clothes, and rode into Cooperstown proper to find a place to eat. I parked the bike down on the main street and enjoyed walking along the sidewalk there. Cooperstown has one claim to fame and it is a pretty big one….. Cooperstown is home to the Baseball Hall of Fame. And everything about the town revolves around it. There is a baseball field right downtown; the streets have baseball related names, the stores and restaurants the same: “Babes Brew”, “The Bat barn”, “Mickeys”, etc. I grabbed a quick bite to eat at a small restaurant, walked on back to the bike and rode back to the motel where I filled out a few post cards, called the wife and read a bit about the adventures of Travis Mcgee from an old John D Macdonald paperback that I had picked up at used bookstore downtown.

When I got up early the next morning there was a fellow working on his Harley parked right next to my bike. We introduced ourselves and I asked him if he would like to go to breakfast with me. We rode on over to a small restaurant where we had a fine meal and some great conversation. It turns out Joe worked security at the big hotel down at Lake Otsego, he stays at the motel during the week before riding home to his family on weekends. Getting back to the motel, Joe went off to bed as he works the graveyard shift at the hotel. I gathered some dirty clothes together stuck them into a pillowcase and into the pannier on the bike and went off to find a Laundromat. A few blocks off of the downtown area there was a sign for the laundry. I parked the bike in the public parking lot near the baseball field and went off to wash some clothes. At the laundry I asked the owner if she had a room where I could change my clothes and, she directed me to a small washroom in the back. I got out of my dirty riding clothes and donned a pair of shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt, now I looked every part the tourist that I was. I went back out handed her my riding clothes along with another sack of dirty clothes and after locking my boots and helmet back in the bike, headed out to see the town while my clothes got cleaned. First stop, the Baseball Hall of fame which was just around the corner. It was somewhat of a disappointment, I guess I expected a little more, I’m not really a huge baseball fan so I’m not sure what I was looking for, sure there was lots of baseball history there, lots of famous bats and jerseys on display. But I had more fun just walking around the town and watching the people. Lots of families all dressed up in baseball uniforms of their favorite teams, small children carrying bats over their shoulders in absolute awe of just being there.

The temperature was climbing and I was glad to be in shorts and a t-shirt while walking around. I paid for a snow cone and walked over to the beach. Cooperstown sits at the very southern end of Lake Otsego.it is a long narrow lake some 9 miles long and about a mile wide at it widest., surrounded by low lying hills. Lake Otsego is the source of the Susquehanna River which runs all the way to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Anyway, I found this nice small beach down by the lake side. Took off my sandals and walked in the cool water. I sat by the water’s edge thinking about the ride so far. Seemed funny how it had really only been a few days since leaving Florida yet it also seemed like a long time with all the miles and all the things that I had done so far. Tomorrow I would be heading into Adirondack Mountains, Lake George and my semi destination, The Americade Motorcycle Rally. I wandered back over to the laundry picked up my stuff which had all been cleaned, neatly folded and wrapped into a nice brown paper package, which, of course, would not fit into the panniers on my bike. So I unpacked everything took my riding clothes back out and put them on and then repacked all the clean clothes back into the bike. Rode on back of to the motel and had a nice conversation with the motel owner about growing up here and taking a canoe trip down the Susquehanna River all the way to the Chesapeake Bay when he was just a teenager. I was packing up my gear when I heard another bike ride in. I went outside and met David. Well, I thought I had been on a long ride; David was traveling from Sacramento, CA. To Edison, NJ before heading south to New Orleans then back home. We chatted for a while about his bike and ride before heading off to our rooms. I finished getting all my stuff packed up so that all I would have to do was shower and dress, in the morning.

Make sure you read Part 3, if you have missed part one then catch up here: Part 1

This article is placed on site by kind permission of, Phil Hughes, Jacksonville, FL June 2011

Catch up with Phil on his site: http://motorcyclejourney.weebly.com/