frozenpoet
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I didn't take a lot of pics on this trip, I'll have to make sure to do that on the next go around.
After a stressful week we found ourselves with a kid free weekend. What better way to blow some steam and relax than to take an overnight trip on the bike? The weather forecast was calling for cool to pleasant weather, slight chance of rain, but otherwise nice. Discussing the general idea with the Misses, and a quick check of the budget all was set to go.
The sun poked its glow over the mountain tops of the Shenandoah Valley signaling the start to the day, as we peacefully dozed right through it. The early start time, to the surprise of no one, was missed. This was to be a relaxing journey, so why start out in a panic? I was the first to stir from my slumber, trudging up the stairs to the kitchen to fire up the beast that provided the fuel to the people. After several minutes the desirable sound of bubbles and the infectious smell of “the best part of waking up” was drifting down the hall. To ask me, nothing makes better coffee than a percolator. The Womans senses alert her to the readiness as she rises looking for coffee as the Tin Man was looking for oil. After a cup or so, were dressed and loaded on the bike, ready for another adventure.
The plan was simple enough, head west from our home down RT55 into West (by God) Virginia, connect that to corridor H until it ends. After the corridor ends we would make our way to RT50 and follow that to as far as we made it. Corridor H, is West Virginia’s highway to nowhere, a four lane highway through the north part of the state. It’s a long and somewhat dull ride, the views are nice and the traffic is nice, but it’s an area I’ve been on many times before.
Now every trip has its fair share of problems. Some big, some minor, some you don’t even notice until you look back at them. Everything was running smooth; we were now gliding down RT50, made it past West Virginia and were now into Ohio. During the start of the adventure, I was keeping track of our “where” with the GPS on my phone. I had the phone mounted to my handlebars using the Ram mounting system and their X-mount. Never really had a problem with this setup, could see the screen just fine and everything. My love for this setup quickly changed when I hit a massive bump in the road. That mountain of a bump flung my phone from the x-grip. I was quick to snap it out of the air, might have even caught it too, but before I could get my hand on it the charging cable ran out of real estate swinging my phone like the pendulum of a clock in the opposite direction. Once at the apex of the swing, simply returning the way it came would have brought it safely back to my hand…Instead the charging cable separates from the phone and is goes careening out of my view. I quickly found my phone in the mirror, watched it skid across the pavement, spinning like the teapots at Disneyworld, then promptly swallowed by the front tire of an ambulance…CRAP! A quick judgement saw multiple cars with no easy way to pull off to the side…I didn’t even bother to stop and pick up the remains. I could hear the Womans cussing and laughing behind me, and then the beep of our headsets connecting to further console and laugh at me. A quarter of the way into our trip and I no longer had a phone, GPS, or music… Fun times.
A quick stop for lunch and off we went, heading to Cincinnati.
We rolled into Cincinnati on the later side of the day, we had been on the road for about 10 hours at this point. Or goal was to find a hotel in a better part of the city, get settled then figure out what we were going to do. Nice plan in theory. Never been to or around Cincinnati before, had no idea what to expect. Only thing I really knew was that they like chilly and their football team sucks. (Go Ravens!) I follow I71 that I’m now on into the heart of the city. As I approach some big building I figure that the next exit was as good enough as any to get off. I take the exit, and with a little luck, I don’t get too lost and end up near the baseball stadium. My spider sense starts to tingle…something is not right. It’s kind of like a party atmosphere. I cruise on down the street and it hits me like a homerun derby ball. This is the MLB All-star weekend…In Cincinnati…CRAP. Two problems. 1. Finding a decent a hotel room available (we did mange that) 2. Finding one that wasn’t $300 (not so much). After a brief talk with the Misses we decided to head out of the city. I manage to wind my way back onto I71s and enter Kentucky. No banjos were heard. The problem with Kentucky is there is really nothing out there. We rode for a while and came to a point that I could either get onto I75 towards Lexington or stay on I71 to Louisville. If I had my GPS or if I had paid more attention when I ever looked at a map, I would have headed towards Lexington as it was further east and the way we would be returning but I chose Louisville. Not that big of a deal really, we were just going to stop when we came to a decent hotel anyways. Fact, Kentucky has a NASCAR track. Fact, it is located on I71 between Cincinnati and Louisville. Fact, they run at night…on a Saturday…that very Saturday. What in the #$@^%. I didn’t bother to check for a hotel for a while…and when I did it was pointless. We just kept rolling, getting more tired, and getting more cold into Louisville. Finally, on the east side of Louisville near the airport we found a Holliday Inn with a room. After I was finished checking in and finally in our room it was well past midnight. A quick shower and we were out.
Around 6am I was awoken to a bunch of loud bangs. What was that? The blinds were pulled shut, the room was dark. I didn’t care enough to get up and figure it out, I just assumed it was thunder and went back to sleep. Finally around 9am I woke up and got out of bed. Lumbered over to the window, half stiff, and looked out… “ummm, honey, I don’t remember parking in a river last night.” That was indeed thunder I heard, and it had rained a lot. The hotel was in a low spot, and the water had nowhere to go. The parking lot was flooded. Water came up to my mid-thigh in spots. (I’m 6 foot tall) I waded out to the bike, pushing the marooned vessel to higher ground. The Misses and I surveyed the current situation and best possible plan of action.
We walked into the lobby and I found the manager, who was not in the best of moods. The manager was in the middle of getting her but chewed by an unhappy guest that rental car was going to need at the very least an expensive cleaning. I waited my turn, when she turned to me she prepared herself for yet another angry person. I just smiled at her and asked if we could have a later check out time. I think she could have kissed me. After our request was granted I waded over gas station next door and got breakfast, came back, ate it and took a nap.
After the nap, the water had not receded any. I decided to push the bike through the water to higher ground next door where we could gear up and head out avoiding the rest of the water. After pushing the bike out of the parking lot onto dry land a cop rolls up to check out the new lake. I talk to him for a minute telling him that I had just pushed the bike out. He responds that he watched me, gee thanks for the help there buddy. Not that I blame him or anything, I’ve probably would have done the same thing. Gear on, back on the superslab making our way back home, nothing left exciting right?
Wrong. To get home from Louisville I had to take I64 back across West Virginia. It is a very mountainous area. It was also cold, and switched from raining to a fine mist. We had rain gear on but it only does so much for so long. At this point we tried not to stop unless we had to. I did get yelled at to turn my headlight on…I was confused for a moment. During the day I run with my high beam on, at some point it had burnt out. Nice and dangerous in the less than stellar weather. No worries, I flipped the switch to low beam and kept rolling. We did stop for one break where the Misses got called “the cutest little biker ever!” by some random woman…interesting.
I love my bike; it’s a 2012 Honda NC700x. The storage is awesome, and so is the gas mileage. On average It gets around 63 MPG with my best coming in at 79MPG. The interstate is what really hurts, running 80 MPH really hurts. With only a 3.6 gallon fuel tank range can be a problem sometimes. Most of the time I’ll stop and get gas when the low fuel light starts blinking, that gives me about half a gallon of fuel left. The problem is that in West Virginia, a lot like Kentucky, there isn’t much out there. I was running around 80 MPH when the light started flashing. I didn’t know it at the time but the next town with a gas station was over 30 miles away. It was a good ten minutes after the light started flashing that I passed a sign stating the next town was 22 miles away. A quick glance at the trip meter and a little math convinced me to slow down…This was going to be close. It’s dark now, around 10 O’clock with the weather not the greatest. We were on the cold side as we’ve been in and out of rain for half of the day. The section of road was hilly, at first this wasn’t a problem, then I could feel the bike starting to surge as the gas would shift causing the fuel pump from being able to pick up the nature of the motor gods. I knew at any moment the engine would die. A glimmer of hope came when we passed the sign stating 1 mile to the exit. I coasted as much as I could, slowed down more, and kept the current situation to myself. If we happen to make it, she doesn’t need to know about it. Cresting a hill the motor died. Didn’t sputter, just died. I pulled the clutch and hit the start button where it sputtered back to life for a few mere seconds and died again, I was officially out of gas. From behind me I hear the muffled yell from the Misses, “You have got to be kidding me!” I kicked the gears down till I hit neutral and just let it coast as far as it would go, finally coming to a stop around a half mile from the exit with a long and somewhat steep hill between us.
I throw the kickstand down and we climb off and removing our helmets. We have a quick stare down as nothing needed to be said at that point. I throw my helmet into the trunk and start pushing, it’s dark, late, and was the best option as far as I was concerned. The NC700x isn’t the lightest bike in the world, but it’s not a pig either. Fully loaded at that point was around 500 lbs give or take. Easy to push on level ground, even easy to push in two feet of water, still not the easiest to push up an incline. With me at the side of the bike both pushing and making sure it stayed standing and the Misses pushing on the rear we slowing pushed the bike up the hill. I’m not really in the best shape in the world and we needed to take a break several times for the fact that I was sucking wind like a Hover vacuumed. My legs were starting to burn and sweat was pouring off of me like I was standing in the shower, but we were no longer cold. We finally made it to the top of the hill where it flattened out, it only took us about half an hour and was passed by a cop, a rollback, and some guy pulling a flatbed trailer…I don’t like people. Pushed another 100 yards or so rounding a corner and witnessed the Holy Grail, 3 gas stations and it was downhill to them. As the road slowly started downhill we mounted the beast without fire once again and started to slowly drift. As we started to meander down the hill I was dispatching our speed to the co-pilot. 5, 15, 20…all the way to right around 35MPH. Our speed carried us up the off ramp, running the red light, and nearly all the way to the gas station. We ended up having to push the bike the final 50 feet. I filled the tank, and then loitered for a bit before we set off again. We still had over 100 miles to go, but it was in familiar territory. We arrived back at our house well after midnight again; we fell into bed, so glad to be there. Only problem that was left was I had to wake up way too soon to go to work…CRAP!!!
After a stressful week we found ourselves with a kid free weekend. What better way to blow some steam and relax than to take an overnight trip on the bike? The weather forecast was calling for cool to pleasant weather, slight chance of rain, but otherwise nice. Discussing the general idea with the Misses, and a quick check of the budget all was set to go.
The sun poked its glow over the mountain tops of the Shenandoah Valley signaling the start to the day, as we peacefully dozed right through it. The early start time, to the surprise of no one, was missed. This was to be a relaxing journey, so why start out in a panic? I was the first to stir from my slumber, trudging up the stairs to the kitchen to fire up the beast that provided the fuel to the people. After several minutes the desirable sound of bubbles and the infectious smell of “the best part of waking up” was drifting down the hall. To ask me, nothing makes better coffee than a percolator. The Womans senses alert her to the readiness as she rises looking for coffee as the Tin Man was looking for oil. After a cup or so, were dressed and loaded on the bike, ready for another adventure.
The plan was simple enough, head west from our home down RT55 into West (by God) Virginia, connect that to corridor H until it ends. After the corridor ends we would make our way to RT50 and follow that to as far as we made it. Corridor H, is West Virginia’s highway to nowhere, a four lane highway through the north part of the state. It’s a long and somewhat dull ride, the views are nice and the traffic is nice, but it’s an area I’ve been on many times before.
Now every trip has its fair share of problems. Some big, some minor, some you don’t even notice until you look back at them. Everything was running smooth; we were now gliding down RT50, made it past West Virginia and were now into Ohio. During the start of the adventure, I was keeping track of our “where” with the GPS on my phone. I had the phone mounted to my handlebars using the Ram mounting system and their X-mount. Never really had a problem with this setup, could see the screen just fine and everything. My love for this setup quickly changed when I hit a massive bump in the road. That mountain of a bump flung my phone from the x-grip. I was quick to snap it out of the air, might have even caught it too, but before I could get my hand on it the charging cable ran out of real estate swinging my phone like the pendulum of a clock in the opposite direction. Once at the apex of the swing, simply returning the way it came would have brought it safely back to my hand…Instead the charging cable separates from the phone and is goes careening out of my view. I quickly found my phone in the mirror, watched it skid across the pavement, spinning like the teapots at Disneyworld, then promptly swallowed by the front tire of an ambulance…CRAP! A quick judgement saw multiple cars with no easy way to pull off to the side…I didn’t even bother to stop and pick up the remains. I could hear the Womans cussing and laughing behind me, and then the beep of our headsets connecting to further console and laugh at me. A quarter of the way into our trip and I no longer had a phone, GPS, or music… Fun times.
A quick stop for lunch and off we went, heading to Cincinnati.
We rolled into Cincinnati on the later side of the day, we had been on the road for about 10 hours at this point. Or goal was to find a hotel in a better part of the city, get settled then figure out what we were going to do. Nice plan in theory. Never been to or around Cincinnati before, had no idea what to expect. Only thing I really knew was that they like chilly and their football team sucks. (Go Ravens!) I follow I71 that I’m now on into the heart of the city. As I approach some big building I figure that the next exit was as good enough as any to get off. I take the exit, and with a little luck, I don’t get too lost and end up near the baseball stadium. My spider sense starts to tingle…something is not right. It’s kind of like a party atmosphere. I cruise on down the street and it hits me like a homerun derby ball. This is the MLB All-star weekend…In Cincinnati…CRAP. Two problems. 1. Finding a decent a hotel room available (we did mange that) 2. Finding one that wasn’t $300 (not so much). After a brief talk with the Misses we decided to head out of the city. I manage to wind my way back onto I71s and enter Kentucky. No banjos were heard. The problem with Kentucky is there is really nothing out there. We rode for a while and came to a point that I could either get onto I75 towards Lexington or stay on I71 to Louisville. If I had my GPS or if I had paid more attention when I ever looked at a map, I would have headed towards Lexington as it was further east and the way we would be returning but I chose Louisville. Not that big of a deal really, we were just going to stop when we came to a decent hotel anyways. Fact, Kentucky has a NASCAR track. Fact, it is located on I71 between Cincinnati and Louisville. Fact, they run at night…on a Saturday…that very Saturday. What in the #$@^%. I didn’t bother to check for a hotel for a while…and when I did it was pointless. We just kept rolling, getting more tired, and getting more cold into Louisville. Finally, on the east side of Louisville near the airport we found a Holliday Inn with a room. After I was finished checking in and finally in our room it was well past midnight. A quick shower and we were out.
Around 6am I was awoken to a bunch of loud bangs. What was that? The blinds were pulled shut, the room was dark. I didn’t care enough to get up and figure it out, I just assumed it was thunder and went back to sleep. Finally around 9am I woke up and got out of bed. Lumbered over to the window, half stiff, and looked out… “ummm, honey, I don’t remember parking in a river last night.” That was indeed thunder I heard, and it had rained a lot. The hotel was in a low spot, and the water had nowhere to go. The parking lot was flooded. Water came up to my mid-thigh in spots. (I’m 6 foot tall) I waded out to the bike, pushing the marooned vessel to higher ground. The Misses and I surveyed the current situation and best possible plan of action.
We walked into the lobby and I found the manager, who was not in the best of moods. The manager was in the middle of getting her but chewed by an unhappy guest that rental car was going to need at the very least an expensive cleaning. I waited my turn, when she turned to me she prepared herself for yet another angry person. I just smiled at her and asked if we could have a later check out time. I think she could have kissed me. After our request was granted I waded over gas station next door and got breakfast, came back, ate it and took a nap.
After the nap, the water had not receded any. I decided to push the bike through the water to higher ground next door where we could gear up and head out avoiding the rest of the water. After pushing the bike out of the parking lot onto dry land a cop rolls up to check out the new lake. I talk to him for a minute telling him that I had just pushed the bike out. He responds that he watched me, gee thanks for the help there buddy. Not that I blame him or anything, I’ve probably would have done the same thing. Gear on, back on the superslab making our way back home, nothing left exciting right?
Wrong. To get home from Louisville I had to take I64 back across West Virginia. It is a very mountainous area. It was also cold, and switched from raining to a fine mist. We had rain gear on but it only does so much for so long. At this point we tried not to stop unless we had to. I did get yelled at to turn my headlight on…I was confused for a moment. During the day I run with my high beam on, at some point it had burnt out. Nice and dangerous in the less than stellar weather. No worries, I flipped the switch to low beam and kept rolling. We did stop for one break where the Misses got called “the cutest little biker ever!” by some random woman…interesting.
I love my bike; it’s a 2012 Honda NC700x. The storage is awesome, and so is the gas mileage. On average It gets around 63 MPG with my best coming in at 79MPG. The interstate is what really hurts, running 80 MPH really hurts. With only a 3.6 gallon fuel tank range can be a problem sometimes. Most of the time I’ll stop and get gas when the low fuel light starts blinking, that gives me about half a gallon of fuel left. The problem is that in West Virginia, a lot like Kentucky, there isn’t much out there. I was running around 80 MPH when the light started flashing. I didn’t know it at the time but the next town with a gas station was over 30 miles away. It was a good ten minutes after the light started flashing that I passed a sign stating the next town was 22 miles away. A quick glance at the trip meter and a little math convinced me to slow down…This was going to be close. It’s dark now, around 10 O’clock with the weather not the greatest. We were on the cold side as we’ve been in and out of rain for half of the day. The section of road was hilly, at first this wasn’t a problem, then I could feel the bike starting to surge as the gas would shift causing the fuel pump from being able to pick up the nature of the motor gods. I knew at any moment the engine would die. A glimmer of hope came when we passed the sign stating 1 mile to the exit. I coasted as much as I could, slowed down more, and kept the current situation to myself. If we happen to make it, she doesn’t need to know about it. Cresting a hill the motor died. Didn’t sputter, just died. I pulled the clutch and hit the start button where it sputtered back to life for a few mere seconds and died again, I was officially out of gas. From behind me I hear the muffled yell from the Misses, “You have got to be kidding me!” I kicked the gears down till I hit neutral and just let it coast as far as it would go, finally coming to a stop around a half mile from the exit with a long and somewhat steep hill between us.
I throw the kickstand down and we climb off and removing our helmets. We have a quick stare down as nothing needed to be said at that point. I throw my helmet into the trunk and start pushing, it’s dark, late, and was the best option as far as I was concerned. The NC700x isn’t the lightest bike in the world, but it’s not a pig either. Fully loaded at that point was around 500 lbs give or take. Easy to push on level ground, even easy to push in two feet of water, still not the easiest to push up an incline. With me at the side of the bike both pushing and making sure it stayed standing and the Misses pushing on the rear we slowing pushed the bike up the hill. I’m not really in the best shape in the world and we needed to take a break several times for the fact that I was sucking wind like a Hover vacuumed. My legs were starting to burn and sweat was pouring off of me like I was standing in the shower, but we were no longer cold. We finally made it to the top of the hill where it flattened out, it only took us about half an hour and was passed by a cop, a rollback, and some guy pulling a flatbed trailer…I don’t like people. Pushed another 100 yards or so rounding a corner and witnessed the Holy Grail, 3 gas stations and it was downhill to them. As the road slowly started downhill we mounted the beast without fire once again and started to slowly drift. As we started to meander down the hill I was dispatching our speed to the co-pilot. 5, 15, 20…all the way to right around 35MPH. Our speed carried us up the off ramp, running the red light, and nearly all the way to the gas station. We ended up having to push the bike the final 50 feet. I filled the tank, and then loitered for a bit before we set off again. We still had over 100 miles to go, but it was in familiar territory. We arrived back at our house well after midnight again; we fell into bed, so glad to be there. Only problem that was left was I had to wake up way too soon to go to work…CRAP!!!
