In the glow of an early June morning, I warmed up my mighty green touring machine and met up with the guys. With our tanks brimmed and tires gorged of air we set off towards the Fort Eerie boarder crossing.
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Old Italian: You know this bike will catch fire right?
Alok: No sweat, I've wrapped my balls in a wet towel |
Predictably, there was some traffic at customs. What we had not expected though was a line that was quite literally a mile long (at least). What many don't know is that sport bike alternators don't
really work at idle. George's R1 for example only charged the battery when it was spinning above 4,000 RPMs!!! So to prevent our batteries from turning into lead bricks, we turned off our bikes and pushed! For a mile!
Once we got through customs we noticed that Alok was missing. As it turned out the only brown guy in our group was selected, at random, for a series of secondary inspection procedures. Never could have seen that coming...
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| Crossing the border: much easier if your not brown |
After an uncomfortably long time, Alok emerged from the secondary inspection hut. And with that nonsense out of the way we were Lock Haven bound.
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| Alok coming out of the secondary inspection hut |
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| Alok demonstrating the cavity search position |
We carried a brisk pace throughout the day. Rain was on and off as we crossed into Pennsilvania. It spanned from a light drizzle to golf ball sized droplets with the trajectory of a rifle bullet. You can see the massive changes in the amount of rain on the ground in the pictures below, as well as the the rain gear coming on and off.
Between showers, we had hot sausages at a place called Tidioute... Or as a hot blonde farm girl in a blacked out monster truck called it 'Tittyville'. I thought that was country speak for 'take me now' but I was too married to oblige and the rest of my crew was too dainty to try. If only they had been on Kawasaki's (the only bike for
real men), oh well.
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| Nine months later, the sign gave birth to a letter 'A' and a 12mm nut |
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| Alok enjoying the glorious peaks of 'Tittyville' |
By the time we arrived in Lock Haven it was nearly midnight. We found
food at Subway and vacancy at a Best Western which to our suprise had a
fantastic policy. They allowed sport bikes to park out front under the
veranda in plain view of the manager's office.
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| Last gas up before Lock Haven |
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| Arriving in Lock Haven |
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| Dead bugs from two states and a province |
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| Behold the glory of the Subway, the only restraunt open in all of Lock Haven at midnight |
We ate our fill of mediocrity and decided our bikes deserved a treat after the 12+ hour ride they took us through. Alok learned of a nearby coin wash and we squidded over in the most unholy of hours.
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| George rinsing off some of that multi-state bug collection on his wind shield |
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| Midnight carwash squids |
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| You missed a spot, chinaman (I'm allowed to use that word because I'm Chinese) |
And that concluded the first of our 5 day journey. Already, the strain of touring started to show on everyone but me thanks to my massive (ly expensive) Air Hawk R! I dismounted my bike for the final time that night and thought 'I have been on more uncomfortable Lazy Boys'. Riding on an Air Hawk is like sitting on a bike make entirely of Gianna Michaels.
Stay tuned for chapter 3 where I PROMISE something will explode.
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