And on our final morning in Vermont we drive the courtesy Grey Ghost lodge VW to Sticky Fingers bakery for Hazelnut coffee and homemade cinnamon buns. The surprisingly warm weather threw us all for a curve. By the time we reached New Hampshire it was 78 degrees. The Harley and other bikes were all out in force. No helmet and t-shirts are now the norm for the others.
Lunch was at Harts Turkey farm. A must stop for bikers local or passing through. Locally owned and operated by the Hart family since 1954, offering delicious, home-style food. The real reason it didn’t rain is because I donned all my rain gear.
All my memorable rides are a lot like life itself, they contain a little bit of everything like a near tragedy (me) foul weather (expected), new friendships (John, Teri and Kip) help from others (Spencer at MotoVermont) joy, sadness (riding a Super Tenere) and challenges yet to overcome.
Today on the ride I tried a little to understand why that deer that made it to adulthood chose that particular time and place to cross the road at a gallup when there’s an entire sea of trees and roads where she could have also crossed.
I’ll also bet that’s what the Captain on the titanic also thinking when they hit that iceberg field. And on a tragic thought that’s maybe a little of how the parents of school shootings are left; just totally dumbfounded by something that just doesn’t seem logical in the universe of life that we live in.
So what’s the point about riding motorcycles vast distances and in a far away state that you may never, ever visit before your riding days are all over?
Well, if I were pinned down and forced to answer at gunpoint, I’d say the “point” is to just experience it—to feel it, to be totally moved by it like we were, when we first arrived and saw the changing colors of the leaves on the trees.
That’s all there is to living life, keeping it simple and not worrying about all the other minutia going on all around you – and trying to understand it all or think that you have that much control.
Some people like me aren’t going to stop living life because the universe in all its infinite wisdom all of a sudden decides to throw you a curve ball are you? Your outcome now has slowed you down a bit but, you will come out the other end both wiser, smarter and more enlightened. Possibly more appreciative of life also.
We so far have ridden roads that look fun and challenging yet they are beginning to look all alike. Picture a two lane country road with a double yellow line down the middle, no shoulders, and the road does everything but, disappear; now add a solid line of trees two both sides and you get the picture. That’s Vermont, New York, New Hampshire and now Maine riding. We have a destination and a route in either our Garmin, Zillow or my iphone Gaia application that keeps us from getting lost.
When this ride group is hungry that’s when the gunk works gets all jammed up. Welcome to my present riding world when it comes to food. To keep the blog from airing out any dirty laundry I’ll just leave you with Anthony Bourdain quotes about traveling and eating. Enjoy!
“It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn.”
“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you.” Anthony Bourdain
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.”
“Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.”
Trawlercat Personal Blog Chronicles 