Hmmmm…. my little experiment of hanging yesterday's washed clothes in the room failed - as they were still wet this morning. They were washed as I showered in the stall last night. So I headed to the motel laundry dryer. Had a good run in the area, and then had some breakfast before packing up. It's always fun having the MacBook on while working around the motel room - I can listen to music on Itunes and hear if any incoming emails arrive. It's always good hearing from folks on the road - and a number have been writing.I hit the road at ten, and immediately tooled over to the nearby shopping center. I struck out twice there - couldn't find earplugs in Dick's sporting goods place (they usually have them in the gun section), and couldn't find the battery charger I had been hunting for in Best Buy. And at Best Buy, where I got there before they opened, I had to wait in the hot morning sun for 15 minutes before they'd even let me in the store. I just KNEW the day would get better!
In fact, a few times today - while tooling down the highway - I broke out into a spontaneous unexpected, wonderfully broad grin. Pure joy. Pure joy at the doing this - at the green trees streaming past me right and left - and at the moving. Being in motion is a wonderful thing. The landscape was a-blur around me and the future coming up fast. (As I lay at the end of the day in the comfy motel room bed and think of these last few days of being on the road - and all the happy planning that has made it happen, I feel that smile coming upon me again….)
An untold number of times this afternoon pleasant drops splashed against that smile. And blue skies ahead and down the highway always kept me going.
While zipping happily along today, it was like the road kept comin' me - like a video game where the action is an endless loop of never-ending variation. And it was big highway all day - perhaps as my uncle suggested it's that I'm just taken with the dog-lolling-tongue-out-the-car-window effect. But it was sure wonderful today.
One dark car zoomed past me today and flashed up the highway. I thought, “Man, is that guy ever going too fast for his own good!” Sure enough, I saw him pulled over by the police a bit further down the road. Something just didn't seem quite right about him, and I was glad he got stopped. That guy got greedy and stupid with his speed. I never let that happen to me.
Only a few other motorcyclists I've seen on this trip have had the bright yellow on like what I wear. I know the trend and “cool” thing is for wearing black and leather. But I LIKE being SEEN. (And I like not having animals killed for my clothing.) One of the things that motorcyclists do is give a friendly low wave to each other when passing in the other direction - well the non-snooty motorcyclists anyway… (A little like VW owners use to do in this country before there were so many of the little bugs.) But I noticed when being waved at from across the wide highway, it was even difficult sometimes seeing that wave unless the guy was in a visible color!
There's always quite a little drama show going on out on the highway - the guys who won't move over to let someone pass, the guys who move over right away. There are all kinds of little vignettes. At one point today a police car pulled out abruptly from the trees on the left. Everyone who had been zipping along at 90mph came to a big slowdown. (The speed limit on the highway was 70mph.) I put my feet up on the highway pegs, leaned back, and watched the fun scene as no one would pass the policeman. Cars zoomed past me - and then came to a quick crawl when they saw the reason for the long line. Finally, the officer pulled off at an exit, and life continued as before.
I'm very perceptive of the cars coming toward me on the other side of the road from the other direction. When they have their lights on, I always know that rain is not usually far away… And that's especially true when it's a long line of cars with lights on.
The rain played cat and mouse with me today in the afternoon. First it seemed like the day would be forever bright and blue. But then the road turned and I'd be heading into darkness and lightning and wet roadways and then big drops turning to downpour. Then the storm eased and/or the highway turned, and it would be bright sunny happy warm skies again. When one rides big miles like this, fifty miles at a clip, one moves from weather system to weather system!
I have my little tape recorder in a left pocket of the tank bag. It's easy to get to, and by now I can reach it with no problem without even looking when I have a thought worth recording. Had a scare this afternoon as I had put it by accident in a different pocket, and when I reached for it in it's regular place, it wasn't there!!! Thought it might have popped out or something out onto the highway. But no, it was just in the adjacent pocket.
My sister wrote to me, “Man, how lucky can you get, not getting a ticket!” And I wonder about that, too. I'm sure there's some luck involved but when you think it has been over 20,000 miles in every part of the country, perhaps it's how smart I ride, and that there's a little more than luck involved. (Hey, if I get one, you guys will be the first to know.)
As usual, wonderful smells inundate the senses on the scoot (another term for motorcycle) much more than when one is in a car. The freshly cut grass smell from the tall weeds begin mowed by the highway crews along the way, the occasional beds of wildflowers, the oxygenated air from passing storms, the flour in granaries out west, the smell of down drafts of cool air off the mountains. And smells have long histories: I can still remember like it was yesterday the grand fresh smell of that laundry on the line as I crested a hill in Shamokin,PA on my 1980 cross-country bicycle ride.
Along Interstate 75 I had something get into my contact lens. An eyelash or road grit, who knows? Anyway, it happens most days to a greater or lesser degree, but today it was more worrisome. Today the discomfort was great, and the eye teared up and shut with no warning. One-eyed, I had to pull over a couple lanes to the shoulder where I had to take the lens out and splash water on it before I could pop it back in and be on my way.
At 250 miles I was in Tallahassee and it was only 2:45!!! I looked around the little part of the capital of Florida that was before me, and considered staying for the night. After all, it was drizzling, there were some things I needed, and lodging was plentiful. But it was early in the day, and the sky now looked clear to the west, and I just had not had enough riding for the day!
Got another 50 miles or so to Marianna,FL, somewhat between Tallahassee and Pensacola. It really was like riding around the block and very enjoyable.
I hit the trifecta of places to stay: the motel was near the interstate, there was a restaurant nearby, and there was a Wal-Mart in which to get anything I might need.
I checked into a Microtel Motel, and after leaving some gear there got my butt to the local Wal-Mart. Now, I've been in Wal-marts before, but after being on the road for so long, it's tough dealing with immensities. I was staggered at the huge gargantuan size of the place! They didn't have my needed charger, but I did find everything else for which I was searching - something like a grease pencil (the little crayon Connie gave me didn't quite make it), the earplugs, and some food stuff. (By-the-way, the grease pencil is for writing little notes on the windshield like mileages, etc. It rubs right off later, and is very handy for remembering things.)
After that I tried a Radio Shack again for the charger but to no avail. But there was a SuperCuts haircut place down a few stores and I went in and got clipped. Really shorn. It was like the trip haircuts I used to get before a trip. But without the middle part of the hair on my scalp, you know, it just doesn't look the same. I joked to Meecha, who wouldn't let me get a picture of her giving me the haircut, “Put it back, put it back.” She laughed. I sighed.
In one of today's emails Mary Black wrote me - Mary from trip day 4 - saying that she liked the pelican picture… She reported it brought back old memories of her father telling her a 'silly little ditty' about pelicans…. She wrote, “Thanks for the reminder. You never know what will mean something to someone else. So don't leave anything out.' This was the poem as I found it on the net:
A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill will hold more that his belican.
He can take in his beak Food enough for a week,
But I'm danmed if i can see how the helican
(Dixon Lanire Merrith - "The Pelican"(1910)
Note:
(Although there are no new ones today, to view many of the photos from the trip, you can check out
http://www.photostockplus.com/home.php?tmpl=45&user_id=42473&event=196141. Some folks have reported trouble with this link, but most find that it works. Sometimes it takes two tries… Also, you can check out the past day's journal entries by going to joelperlish.com, and clicking on the appropriate trip on the left hand corner.)
