February 26, 2004

"The Great Escape"

Any of you East Coasters know that if it's late February, it must be time for Daytona - and equally means it must be time for nasty weather. I've hit maybe the last dozen Daytona's in a row and can remember only one where I enjoyed good weather. Last year it was miserable cold rain all the way to the Georgia border. This year, the night before I was to leave mid-NC, they're predicting another awful snowstorm, our fifth of the winter... unusual in itself. Back and forth for hours, glued to the Weather Channel, local news and Weather.com, I'm figuring I'm going, I'm not going, I'm trailering, I'm riding. By 8pm last night, I'm loaded on the trailer with Lil' Mut in the back seat of the car - looks like a killer storm again (for us southerners anyway).

By 7:30am I'm easing out of the driveway, Huck looking miserable all strapped down in the 32 degree chill, grey skys settling in and the predictions of a foor of snow bantered about by near-hysterical weathergirls on the local channels. I got several rules about riding, and heading into a snowstorm is near the top of my list of don'ts.

All was looking well, til I rounded the southern edges of Raleigh and headed for I-95 Southbound. What started out as swirling dusty eddies of white on the highway rapidly turned into a scary fuckin' ride. By Fayetteville, I'd counted 6 SUV's off into the ditches, teenaged drivers frantically calling someone on their cell phones (presumably NOT their parents), and traffic slowing down to 40mph. The center slush was piling up to about 4 inches and an increasingly white pair of tire ruts getting more difficult to see in the blowing storm.

By Lumberton, my off-road count was north of 30, speed south of 20 and traffic reduced to one lane. All along I am well aware that my weekend of fun in the sun could easily turn into an insurance nightmare with the slightest mistake. Damned glad I was, too, of being in the car, as the in-dash thermometer hovered at 30 degrees for the next 50 miles. Then, short of Pedro's place at the SC border, it turned to rain, the roads simply got wet and traffic resumed it's usual 70mph race to sunshine. I estimated 10% of the vehicles southbound were trailering bikes and, as expected, none were being ridden on the road. Wonder how many were stuck in Virginia, afraid to head south into the storm?

By Mid-South Carolina, the roads were damned near dry and, while the sun wasn't shining by any stretch of the imagination, the temperatures were near 40...as far as I was concerned I could pull over anytime now and start riding. By Savannah, mid day, thats just what I did. Grabbing a room at the Super 8, trailer/car rig safely tucked away, out of sight, in the back lot, I loaded up the bike, and ventured out to explore Savannah. I wasn't in any rush to keep going - escaping the storm was my only plan today. I didn't have far to go tomorrow (to Tifton, GA) so I figured I may as well find something to do in Savannah.

For the past several years, I've always run through Savannah, often stopping to visit friends here, and always seeing the Savannah Harley-Davidson dealership on the side of the road, but never stopped. Today, I had several hours to kill, and stopped by to pick up a gift for the daughter of a friend I was going to visit in Florida. The lady who runs the Griffin Ranch just had a baby, and her (hmmmmm guessing) 10yr old daughter by now must be feeling a little sibling jealousy, so I wanted to come bearing gifts. And lo and behold.... (just what the hell does lo and behold mean anyway?)... sitting right next door is a Hooters. Always in for some wings and a beer, I manage to kill an hour or so, before riding though downtown Savannah and grabbing a BBQ sandwich at Dr.B.S.Muthers Old Timey BBQ. I ate here a couple years ago and when I rode past and saw it out of the blue, I had to turn around and grab another sammich.

By 6pm it was getting cold and drizzly, so I gassed up, grabbed some room snacks and headed back to the motel. There I find an email from Cuz, saying he was deep snowed in and won't be on two wheels til Saturday morning, likely. We'd have to plan to hook up in Tally. I knew that was coming and damned glad I got out in time. So the trip is changing, gonna head straight south into Florida and warmer weather, although I am gonna get off the Interstate and do Hwy 301 down to Hwy 90, and head west to Tally on that. Both roads parallel the Interstates, but I plan to avoid them from here out.

TECHNOLOGY Note for you pocket protector types... I found a program a few months ago that really helps on these road trips. Used to be I'd get in to a motel at the end of the day and sign on to Outlook to read emails and find 3-400 junk mails that had to be downloaded, and deleted (My email address is a business address I can't change and has been out there for nearly 8 yrs now, and I have to run my business from the road.) Now, I keep my Outlook on at home, snagging mail every 5 minutes, and a SPAM washer called SpamNet cleans all known crap out and into the deleted folder. Then from the road, I use GoToMyPC to see my home monitor and control my home PC version of Outlook from the laptop, deleting the few remaining junk mails and responding to the real ones...saves a ton of time! It's a bit slower than realtime sitting in front of my home system, but works great. Plus, I leave a Word Document on my home Screen that I update from the road, leaving messages for my wife and vice versa. All she has to do is look at my monitor at home to see what I've written... OK...tomorrow I just wander around northern Florida til I get tired...no real plans.

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