Trip days: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8-9 | 10-12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
I rolled out of bed at 10 pm. What the hell?! How can I always sleep in so late? Maybe it has something to do with the extremely comfortable bed and guest room the Donnegan's provided me. In any case, I packed up my gear, said my goodbyes, and worked my way out of town through a throng of traffic finally leaving at 11:15 pm. Onto I-95 I decided to follow it all the way up into Connecticut and then jog up to I-87 east to the I-90 Massachussets Turnpike and then north on I-495 to Methuen. I generally like to stay on the back roads and away from the glut of traffic, but it's a bit hard in the New York City area of the east coast because there are no backroads. I would have had to double the distance I was travelling by heading north into central Pennsylvania, and central New York and then over into Connecticut and Massachussets to bypass all the metropolitan areas. The trip would have been okay, but due to the late start I made from D.C. I hit ALL of the rush hour traffic from Philadelphia up to southwestern Connecticut, and on top of that I hit a bunch of road construction in Massachussets. It wasn't so bad, and it was interesting to ride through a bunch of big east coast cities and across Manhatten Island and the George Washington Bridge. But hell, I can't believe all the toll roads on the east coast. In all I had to pay $22.55 in tolls to ride my motorcycle from D.C. to north of Boston. Hasn't anybody around here heard of cheaper tolls for motorcycles. I don't damage the roads like cars, I take up less room, and I'm more efficient. Why should I get tolled the same $6 to cross the George Washington Bridge that everybody else does? What a bunch of blood thirsy pirates. I finally arrived at Ron Haverkamp's apartment at 10:30 pm, unloaded my gear, cleaned up a little bit and Ron and I headed down to the Claddagh irish bar (pronounce "Clattah" as in "Clatter" with a Boston accent). A couple beers later and I was tiiiirrred.
Total Mileage for Day: 543 |
©2003 John Meloy <jam@nas.com>