September 26 Friday.
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| My whole route. Took about 12 hours start to finish. |
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| The best part of the ride, 555, 78, and 37 |
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| Lucy liked it here but she got knocked off when I was shifting gears and got drug along 555 until I could get stopped. She took it like a trooper and escaped with minor damage and none to the screen. |
I got a late start
around ten, dropped into Mt. Victory and bought a Mt. Dew at the drive through
and then headed south on 31 to 47. I took 47 east almost to US 23. I dropped
down to 202 on a back road and crossed over US 23 onto Ohio 229. I took 229 to
Mt. Vernon where I got lost looking for 586 South not realizing that it ran
with 13 out of town. I gassed up and filled up a one gallon spare fuel can that
I was carrying in case I ran out some place because I only get 100 miles out of
a tank of gas. That equals about 28 mpg. I found 586 and dropped south enjoying
the scenery of a beautiful fall day in the high seventies and bright sunshine
of crisp green hay fields and old leaves putting on their fall colors. The
ground had started to roll and undulate under me instead of the dead flat of NW
Ohio. A nice change of pace.
As I approached
146, I reached over to slap the gear shifter down a few gears and found that it
wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Back on 202, I noticed that the U-bolt was
starting to slip over the lip at the end of the shifter and I had adjusted my
shifting for it. But I hadn’t kept an eye on the shifter in the last few miles
and the top jam nut had worked its way lose and now the shifter was twisted
backwards and dragging on the ground. The bottom jam nut had ground off at an
angle and I had lost the top jam nut. I pulled over in a conveniently placed pull off and turned the shifter and got it back on
the bike shifter and tightened the top nut. Fortunately the threads had burred
and the nut lacked down tight enough to get it to stay but I needed to find a
permanent fix for the situation.
I headed off again and could never resist the
urge to look at water and turned in to look at the dam and lake at Dillon Lake
state park. After the obligatory dam picture, I was off for Zanesville.
I
figured that I would see a hardware store on my way through town and by the
time I got to the other side and was at the start of 555, I hadn’t seen one. I
hit up the GPS and I ended up having to cruise all the way back through town
and took a wrong turn because the GPS doesn’t tell you that the two lane road
is about to become a turn only lane. But I saw a beautiful mural on the side of
St. Nicolas Church of St. Christopher that I had missed earlier. We loved to
decorate our houses of God.
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| Borrowed from Wikipedia |
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| Borrowed from Tiles of New York |
I routed back to a
little hardware store that I had passed coming into town on 146. It was an independent
store and the first thing I saw when I went inside was a large set of
bookshelves and was loaded with old books. I found a couple of jam nuts and
some zip ties. The old guy said that he had been in that location for forty
years and he was trying to get rid of some of the large library of books that
he had. If what he had at the store was any indication, he had a large and
varied assortment at his home. I put on new jam nuts and then put a zip tie on
the end of the shift peg so that the shifter wouldn’t slide off and then used a
zip tie to loop through the u-bolt and around the foot shifter so that it wouldn’t
slide off the end of the shift nub. That took a few minutes and then I was back
on the bike with a quick stop at Wendy’s for the new BBQ sandwich and some
petrol at the Marathon. Then I was off on 555 to ride the road.
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| That bar just in front of the shifter is part of my foot rest. My toe sits on there. |
Back in my pervious
walking life, I lived in TN and had the opportunity to ride the Tail of the
Dragon on an old Suzuki GS400. Old Dickie Fry, who worked at Alcoa Good Times with me, had turned it into a café racer
with drag bars and mag wheels. I had bought it from him and rambled around the
Smokies Mtns on it. Looking back I didn’t do nearly enough riding on that
thing. But here I was hanging off the right side of the CB900C looking to find that
Ohio Tail of the Dragon. 555 is a special road that I connected well with. Most
of the time I was in third gear on and off the gas pressing the right side to
keep the side car from flying and trying to turn the corners as fast as I
could. A hack will never be a sport bike and I will never be able to ride it
like one but that doesn’t keep me from trying and accepting the limitations.
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| I love this picture, the road sweeping away into left hander. |
When I had the GS
and then the 929RR, I found those moments of zen when the mind and body and m/c
were connected and all in tune with each other. A place where nothing else existed
except that connection, the road and the ride. I missed that connection and
haven’t ever really felt in on the hack. It had a third wheel to keep it pinned
to the ground. But on this ride, as the road dropped away in sharp lefts and
rose into hard rights and raced over rising hills, I found that special place
where nothing else exists except that connection.
555 isn’t the Tail
of the Dragon and never will be but it is a special road that I yearn to ride
again with its hard turns, soft shoulders, alleys of tree tunnels and long
vistas over rolling hills. By the end I was tired and thirsty. It had been a
long day already and I still had a long way to go to get home. I wanted to go
up to Marietta and take 26. It has always appealed to me. When the road looks
like someone spilled their guts on the map and poked them around with a stick,
it excites me and makes my blood pressure rise. Little doses of adrenaline kick
off in the brain and I yearn for the feel of the bike moving between my legs.
I knew I was going
to ride home in the dark. So instead of heading west, I headed back east taking
50 around to Athens. I gassed up, got a sandwich at the gas station and chugged
a bottle of water. I also got to see the volleyball team from a small college.
They were all tall, lean girls, fit and trim, gorgeous. I felt like a old man sitting
in the parking lot eating my sandwich and watching them. Well, time to
suit back up.
I took 13 up to Glouster
and found 78. Some guy once pondered if this was Ohio’s TotD. I don’t think so.
It was nice and curved up and down but it wasn’t even 555. It was a beautiful
road and I got stuck behind some nobs on bikes going 25. I had to just grin and
bear it because passing aint easy with a chair hanging off the side of my bike.
I bidded my time and lost some of the best curves due to their slowness. I
enjoyed the scenery. I have a theory about this. When slow cars or bikes get in front of me, I find it is God's way of telling me to slow down and enjoy the ride. That curve I just blew through might have been the one I botched really bad. Eventually they turned back on 555 because I was making a
big loop headed for McConnelsville. I was going to hop on 60 N back to
Zanesville when I remembered the big road closed signs I had seen on 60 as I
headed south on 555. Then I saw the sign for 37 W. I hooked a right and blasted
off on 37. 37 is a road that I know well north and west of US 23 as it runs
right by mom and dad’s house. I have driven a lot of miles on 37 but I had
never been on this part of is below 70. It dipped and rose and twisted all over
the place and the curves were wide open sweepers that I could take at speed and
I was ready to be home but I still had three hours to go. My arms were already
starting to hurt and my back was sore. But still I was having fun.
37 took me back to
Lancaster and I briefly hopped on 22 and got turned around and headed east out
of town again. I saw some new stuff and was chasing a guy on a Harley trike
when it dawned on me that I was headed the wrong way. I got turned around and
going the right way on 188. I caught a little side road off 188 realized it was
wrong and then found the right one. The sun was low in the western sky and was
making a beautiful sunset but it was right in my eyes. This little road eventually
dumped me off on 752 and I blasted along West on a nice two lane. The roads
were getting straighter and my throttle hand was getting heavier. The bike
wanted to run at 65. The GPS was telling me that at 65 on the bike speedo, I was
actually doing 67-68mph on the GPS. I let it eat, ignorance is a good claim. 752 lead to
US 23 and I jogged north a few miles and found 762 west. I was finally on the
home side of Columbus as the sun finally faded into darkness.
When I bought the
bike, it had a Vetter Windjammer fairing on it and I tore it off to get rid of
the ugliness. I wanted a double light set up and built a beautiful custom piece
but it drained my battery and overloaded the charging system so I ended up
going back to a standard single lens light. I don’t really do much night
riding and always suspected that the high and low beams were backwards and in
the darkness, I found out that I was right.(It doesn't matter which way I wire it, its still backwards). The two little KC lights on the
sidecar helped light the way in the corners but I couldn’t leave them on long
either because the charging system sucks on the CB. On 762, I passed a Ural
with a sidecar and we waved and tooted horns as we blasted by. I like the Ural
and looks of it but my right wrist doesn’t like to cruise that slow.
762 dropped me into
Orient and I caught little 3 north to 665. I past my turn to the west and
stopped at a little place to get water and a candy bar. I chugged the water and
should have had more. The Snickers gave me a shot of energy and I finished the
sandwich that I had started while gaping at the volleyball players. Some guys
came over to ogle the bike and then it was back on and charging off into the
dark to find London. Not London on the Thames and all that bloody rubbish but
London in the middle of BFE Ohio. The GPS kept routing me further west towards
Mechanicsville and kept yelling at me to turn around as I ignored her blatant
pleas for acceptance. I found 38 N and blasted along with the throttle open and
steady at 65. By now my helmet was sticking to my three day stubble, my ear plugs itched and my
fingers ached from clutching and braking. I wanted to be home without the work,
hello teleporter!
North of 29, Lucy,
finally got the route right and I was able to count down miles and minutes to
the home front. One last fill up in Marysville where I dumped the gallon of
spare gas in the tank and topped it off with Marathon’s finest 93 octane. Then
onto the house. In Mt. Victory, I stopped at the light and shut off the bike
and let my arms drop and hang like giant weights from my
shoulders. They ached but it was a great feeling. The one that only comes with
riding at speed on a bike. The wife had the garage door open and the lights on waiting for me and twelve hours later, I was finally home.
Anti-hero once
theorized that it was the limbic brain and the stimulus that we received from
riding a motorcycle that became our comfort and formed the bond between man and
machine. My wife waved the BS flag and said, that’s just an excuse to ride your
motorcycle more. One needs more excuses than the feeling of riding a motorcycle
at speed? I can’t wait to go again, when do my new tires come in?
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