Retirement Rides - Season 3

Hello all friends and any other curious folks out there in cyberspace.

Well, the planning, to the extent that I do any serious planning, is over; and so is the wait. Some will recall that two summers ago I went west, all the way to Victoria, then from there south to San Fransisco. Jane was with me from Calgary to Vancouver; and though she nearly froze on the stretch from Canmore to Kalowna, she didn't complain and I think actually enjoyed (note the lower case) herself. The return portion was through such places as Yosemite, Death Valley, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, through Colorado and a bunch of mid-west states to Chicago. I raced home via Kalamazoo, the Blue Water Bridge and the 401. O K, there were a lot of other interesting bits and they are listed in earlier posts.

In Season 2, the sequel so to speak, I rode to the eastern seaboard of the USA, through the northern parts of New Hampshire and Maine and up to New Brunswick. I rode around most of Nova Scotia, including the Cabot Rail, and then went from St Johns to the western end, and up to L'Anse aux Meadows, the northwesternmost tip of Newfoundland. I returned via PEI where I picked up my favourite passenger and together we rode around the Gaspé Peninsula. We stopped in Québec City to visit Michèle's parents and came home via the 138 along the north shore of le fleuve St Laurent and the 148 to Lachute.

So, having gone west, and east, it seemed to make sense that this year I would point the windscreen of the beemer south. I left home under cloudy skies at 9:00 this morning waved off by a tearful but brave-faced Jane and I think a happy phill. I hate to think what he gets into when I'm not around. The cats for their part were both nonchalant about the whole thing; we'll see what their tune is when they realize that the double-treats guy (Guy) isn't there for a while.

I crossed the border at Prescott after a quick snack on the Canadian side and rode to the Cortland Day's Inn via a number of beautiful secondary highways. The skies cleared and the temperature steadily rose throughout the day to reach 34 C by the time I pulled into the hotel parking lot. The roads are in really good shape, I suspect as a result of the billions which the federal government has poured into infrastructure projects since 2008, and the traffic is very light. is this a consequence of the state of the US economy and relatively high price of gas?

Dinner tonight is somewhere here in Cortland; details in the next post. Tomorrow I plan to cross into Pennsylvania south of Elmira N.Y. and make my way via routes 14 and 15 to somewhere around Harrisburg; but, that could change.

I'll try to add pictures to the next blog posts.