Day 10 - 3/14/14 Emporia, VA to Home

Temp is 23 at just past 8 AM departure. Suns out. Heres a pic of the bikes prior to leaving the hotel.

As we start our bikes to leave the hotel I feel simething on my left floorboard. My brand new heel shifter fell off again! I throw it in the tourpak and Harley will deal with it. I think it needs the shaft into the tranny replaced. Thats what extended warantees are for! We gas up and head up 95. For some reason my XM radio says I need to update radio. Of course I have the traffic & weather options that don't work either. Couldn't figure out what was happening. About 10 miles up Mark says to pull over as he thinks he forgot to plug in his pants & socks. Sure enough he plugs them in and warth returns. We stop for gas just prior to Washington and have coffee. Temps are about 30 but the sun is gone. We get north of Washington on 395 and we hit a backup due to an accident. We lose about 1\2 hr in stop-n-go traffic. We stop for lunch a little after 2 on the Jersey pike about 120 miles from the GW bridge. We leave aboyt 2:40 knowing we're probably dead into Friday rush hour! We need to chose GW or Tappan Zee and my XM is dead so we use 880am and hear the GW, Cross Bronx & 95 into CT are ugly so we go Tappan Zee. My gps was set GW and when it recalculated it was 66 miles longer! I later found out it was taking me up 87 instead of 287 so it should of been about 38 miles longer. Amazing traffic is heavy but moving well. We get over the Tappan Zee and go for the Merritt as the radio says 95 North up to exit 14 is bad. About 5 miles into CT the Merritt is backed up. We spent the next hour maybe going 10 miles and pull into a rest/gas area. We gas up and decide to have a coffee and hang out as traffic is going no where fast. Mark needs about 5 more miles to get to route 8 exit. We check things out on our phone and see that Tom & I can take an exit a couple hundred yards up the has a side road that will take us across to 95 in Stratford. A little after 7 the traffic is finally starting to move so we say our good byes and take off. Mark up the Merritt, Tom & I cut to 95. 95 traffic was heavy but moving along. Tom broke off at exit 73 and I continued on and got home at 8:45! It was a long 613 mile day. The overall trip was 3597 miles. All the bikes ran fairly well with no major issues.

Day 9. - 3/13/14 Cocoa to Emporia, VA

AOB was supposed to be 7 but we were a liitle late. We ssid our good bye's and got gassed up and were on the road at 7:30. The TV weather told us that yesterdays rain front still had to finish coming through so even though is was sunny the winds were blowing between 20 -30 mph. The temp in Cocoa was about 55 when we left but kept dropping quick all day. We all started with chaps but only Tom had his electric liner on but not plugged in. About 20 miles up the road I call out over the CB to pull over as I want yo put on my liner. Both Mark and I add a layer But Mark put on a fleece not his Gerbing and we continue. The wind is in our face and at the first gas stop we knew it would be a long day. We had only gone 130 miles and Toms bike was nearly empty.  Tom had only got 28 mpg and Mark & I, 34 mpg. Over coffee/tea we figure we'll lower our crusing speed to 72ish from 78ish to see if we get better mileage and also decide to get a couple of Edible Arrangements delivered to IZ & Pete and Brooke & Joe as a Thank you. This proved to be more difficult than it should as Mark was on the phone for at least a half hour to accomplish it. So between coffee, getting on more gear to plug in and ordering the baskets our stop is over 45 minutes. By now the temp is barely 40 but the sun is out. We start grinding the miles.  At one point we get passed by the biggest livestock trailer Ive ever seen. We all comment about how much this truck bliws us around as he's moving at a good clip and the rig is long, tall and very low to the ground so he creates a hugr wind vortex. We don't stop fo0r lunch til after 3 and were back on the road about 3:45. We have a discussion about whether we're going to make this the last tank or go one more. Mark & I are definite one more and Tom says fine. We pick our speed back up a bit. Temps now in the low 30's and we've been dialing the heat up all day. We pull out of the last gas stop a little before 6 and I had put on my helmet liner and advised Mark & Tom to do likewise. I say lets ride til 7:30 as I'm hoping to get into Virgina. The grind & cold is wearing on Tom so I take the lead. We also decide that we don't care about mileage and set the cruise at 80. We pull into Emporia, VA at 7:30 pm after a 700 mile day all pretty beat. Tom is pretty chilled and it takes a while for him to stop swaying and shivering! His shot of JD with a coffee at dinner is what got him back to normal!!!!) It doesnt take us long to settle in and go to sleep. Tomorrow we should make it home.

Day 8 - 3/12/14 Rest & Hang out day

Today is a down day. It's raining in the AM and continues off and on til mid aftetnoon. I did some laundry. We check the bikes as Tom had the same issue of the bike shutting down again yesterday and he found what he suspects is the problem of a faulty 3 wire connector that wasn't making good contact. He mentioned he had played with this back in October once when the bike wouldn't start. I put on a new front fender skirt that I've torn up with hitting the orange cones during practice over the last couple years.  We went to lunch in Cocoa Beach at a place called Mad Jacks that Pete said has the best Brisket sandwich ever. He was right! After lunch we go just down the street to the original location of Ron Jon Surf shop to check it out.

On the way home we rode in Joe's different kind of open top.

When got back Joe had Mark & I take a test ride on his 2014 Ultra Limited. All we can say is WOW! The differences betwwen our 07/08 Ultras is like our bikes compared to Old Red it's that remarkable and the water cooled upgrade is not the most noticeable which is really great not to deal with the roasting leg syndrome. In my opinion the new vented fairing is remarkable. You no longer are buffeted with any wind in your face. Absolutely none! To me this makes a huge difference on long trips to be less tiring. Good thing we didn't take the test ride at the dealer the other day.

As you can see Tom is ready to go home!!!

The weather for the trip home is looking good to hopefully make it back in 2 days but we have an extra day if something comes up. AOB tomorrow morning is 7 am.

Day 7 - 3/11/14 Visit Daytona Bike Week

We head out for Daytona about 9:30 am. It's about an hour north of Joe & Petes. We split into 2 groups as Pete wants to get a trailer hitch on his Valkeryie, so Pete, Tom & IZ go one way and Joe, Nick, Mark & I go together. We go straight to Rossmeyers Daytona Harley that is next door to JP Cycles and lots of vendors set up around them.

We walk around for a while and get lunch at Houligans. After lunch we check out more vendors & JP cycles. As Mark & I have never been to Daytona we want to ride down Main St. to see and be part of the show. In actuality Main St. was anticlimactic in that it was maybe only about 1/2 mile long and not a lot happening. I guess if you go on Friday or Sat. Night it's probably rocking. According to Joe & Nick its a very slow year as the crowds are not big. Probably a sign of the current economic climate. Rossmeyer who has previously been a top selling dealer, had another location in Fort Lauderdale they closed and combined it with Daytona.





It would be fun to get to Main St. early enough to get a parking space and just hang out at one the restaurants/bars and watch the show go by for a while but you'd probably have to get there by 6 am  and that isn't going to happen. Daytona is pretty much like every other rally you've been to with
vendors, t-shirts, etc. but for us New Englanders it gives you a chance to ride in the nice weather when we don't have it. We head back to Cocoa and Brooke & Joe (mostly Brooke!) have prepared another magnificent dinner for the 10 of us again. I can't say Thank you enough to the hospitality shown to us by IZ, Pete, Brooke & Joe. We keep telling them we're not leaving if they keep this up! Tomorrow is supposed to have some rain showers and will be a day to recharge & pack up as we head North Thurs, AM.

Day 6 - 3/10/14 R&R day

We slept in today. Had a leisurely breakfast and than hung out on the sun porch. About noon we head over to Pete's. We take a ride to Melbourne and have lunch on the Indian River at a place called Grilles.

 After lunch we head back to Space Coast Harley to get my heel shifter and Mark needs to get a new headset cable. I get my parts but they are out of the headsets. This is a huge dealer and is currently the #1 dealer in sales. They have an aggressive sales team and supposedly pricing.  Mark & I had been looking at Ultra Limiteds yesterday afternoon when the parts & service were closed and had been approached by a salesman who "would run some numbers" for us. We told him that there's 7 of us together on the way back from Key West and we had to come back tomorrow anyway to get some parts. He gave us his card and said come see me. Joe & his friend Nick had each recently bought new Ultra Limiteds from this dealer and used the same salesman but a different guy than we talked to the day before. Joe introduces us to his guy and then the other guy comes over. Mark & I tell him we don't need a dog & pony show all we want to know is our existing bikes and how much for a new
Limited out the door. They tell us they have a process and it takes between 45 - 90 minutes to do a quote and work up a trade in value. So we tell them we'll do an hour. Each salesman took one of us and had us pick a color and tell us we'll be riding our new bikes home today. They need our license & reg. then they start with what do you think your bikes worth? I say just tell me "my bike & how much" is all I want to know. I'm not interested in playing games. We'll after nearly 2 hours Mark & I leave with our existing bikes. They had aggressive pricing on the bike but the trade value was low and kept getting higher to try an sweeten the deal. They also have a huge processing/document fee of over $1500 that they use to sweeten the deal by duscounting it. In the end Mark & I had got about an identical deal with his bike a year newer but around 25k more miles. Probably the best thing we did was not take the test ride as Joe & Nick told us you'll buy it if you ride it. We'll take a test ride on Joe's bike tomorrow. After the dealer we head back to IZ & Pete's who are making a BBQ for dinner. Of course this part of the trip gives us a Tom adventure/misadventure story. We are about 4 miles from Pete & Joe's exit and my gas light comes on. Mark & I had been doing better than Tom on gas consumption at the higher speeds so I ask Tom about stopping fir gas as we get off as thete is a gas ststion right off the exit as you go to Petes. Tom answers back that we'll get gas in the am on the way to Daytona. We pull up to Petes complex and Pete has to open the gate to let us go through. You can go left or right after the gate to Petes so everyone except Tom goes right. The two roads come together a little ways down but Tom's not there and as we look back down the road we see Tom is pulled over on the side. Mark & I go over and assume he's out of gas. He trys to start the bike and no luck. He statts to push it Petes and I go to Petes to get a gas can. As I'm pulling out to bring the can Tom rides in as he got it started again. I follow him to the gas station and the bike only takes 4.2 gallons. So now we are unsure why the bike shutdow. Tom thinks maybe the ignition module got hot but not conclusive.
We also after nearly 6 years finally got to see some of the video Pete took from our Alaska trip especially the "off-road" episode! We had a good time reminiscing about Alaska and sharing some stories with our new riding friends Dick & Nick as well as Dicks wife Bernadette and Joes new special partner Brooke. Tomorrow we're going to Daytona.

3/9/14 Day 5 Key West to Cocoa

AOB was 8 am to go get the attached official pic with the club flag at the Southernmost buoy.

After the pucture we gassed up and started heading north. Friends of mine work at a campground on Sugarloaf  about 16 miles north of Key West and they had made breakfast reservations at a place called Mangrove Mamas for all of us. We met at 10 and ate at a leisurely pace. About 11:45 we left headed back to Cocoa. Just before we left Pete who now rides a Honda Valkeryie had to show Tom & I how smooth his bike runs compared to a Harley. See the attached video to be amazed.

By now the sun has warmed things up and its beautiful riding weather so sunscreen was needed. Going north we were pretty much able to maintain the speed limit as traffic kept moving and we were ahead of the mass exodus that probably occurs Sunday afternoon. I forgot to mention that after lunch on Friday when we left the restaurant for the last few miles to Pete's that when he put my heel down to shift into 2nd that my heel shifter was missing. I had noticed it was loose just before lunch but it obviously fell off just before lunch somewhere on 95! This happened once before but I was able to find it when I went back. The vibration wears a flat spot on the bolt enough to allow the shifter to slide off the shaft. So on the way back from Key West we planned to stop at Space Coast Harley in Melbourne which happens to be the top selling dealer in the country. The pic is they're showroom.

 We got there about 5:40 and parts & service were closed but sales were going strong. We hung out for a short while admiring the new bikes except for Tom who doesn't believe in bikes that aren't simple that he can work on. Mark & I have noticed that he likes the cruise control and we have averaged 75 mph plus. "Old Red" couldn't do those things!!! We opted to come back tomorrow to get
my parts and Mark's headset cable needs replacement. We leave for the last 30 miles back to Cocoa
and stop for dinner on the way back. We get to Pete & Joe's about 9:30. It about a 375 mile day and I'm over 2000k for the trip. Tomorrow will be a rest day. We're keeping and eye on the weather at home as we hear there may be a storm brewing!

3/8/14 Day 4 Cocoa to Key West

AOB was 8 AM at IZ & Pete's. Mark & I had stayed at Joe's house while Tom was at Pete's. There are 7 of us going as Joe & Pete's neighbors Nick & Dick are coming along. We pull out a touch after 8 am. The temp is 59 and part sun so no one needs heat but we have chaps on for the start. We head south on 95 about 60 or 70 miles to Ft. Pierce and get on the FL Turnpike. FL has there own SunPass as EZ-Pass is not accepted but supposedly FL uses plate recognition and mails you a bill and only charges you an extra 8 cents! So only Joe has the SunPass and the rest of us go through the SunPass lanes as well instead of getting a ticket and expect to be billed. At the gas stop a few of us comment that we had noticed signs around the Sunpass lanes saying there is a $100 penalty for illegal use and discussion ensues about our understanding of how it works. We proceed with the understanding that you get a bill in the mail for the toll plus 8 cents. We get back on the road and notice that most exits are SunPass only so we feel better that our ASSumption is correct. We go further down the road and we find the road divides and has 2 choices, SunPass or standard toll booth but no exit! We go through the SunPass lanes and again we see the large $100 penalty signs! When we get to the next similar toll all of us but Joe go to the pay lanes. We then get on the Turnpike extension and the signs now specifically say that this part uses plate recognition for an extra 8 cents or you can stop and pay. I think most of us will get a bill for the toll cost on the previous section, maybe for the entire length of the Turnpike plus a $100! I had my EZPass with me and I'll plead ignorance saying I thought it was acceptable!!!!!!! I don't understand why in this day and age it's not one system. We stop again about 11:30 and decide to grab a quick lunch. By this time the chaps & heavy jackets are off as the weather is sunny and 70's. We come to the end of the turnpike and the road is packed with traffic moving at a snails pace trying to merge into 1 lane. This continues for a while with an occasional turn lane to mess things up. A woman coming out of a side road trying to cut into traffic mentions to us that there's a parallel local road to avoid the traffic so we decide we have nothing to lose and try it out. Sure enough we are moving along and can occasionally see the backed up traffic on the main road at the connecting side streets. We probably leap frog 3-4 miles before we have to get back on the main road. After that merge the traffic finally keeps moving but we've lost nearly 1-1/2 hrs! We still have about 100 miles to go. The road through the Keys is generally one lane each direction except through some of the bigger Islands where it's developed you'll have 2 lanes but more congestion. There are numerous bridges obviously and one that's 7 miles long. We get to our hotel about 5:30 and have happy hour around the pool.

After happy hour we start what the locals call the Duvall Crawl! Duvall is the main Key West street with tons of bars, restaurants & sovenier shops. It happens to be spring break time as well. Surprisingly for a Sat. night its not that busy. Its crowded but not jammed. Most bars & restaurants have imediate seating except for The Hogs Breath which had a half hour wait. We're trying to get to Mallory docks for the sunset where they have free street acts that are performing with the sunset as the backdrop!! Unfortunately we spent to much time at Happy hour and by the time we got to the docks things were wrapping up. We walked some more and ended of having dinner on a pier. After dinner we crawled Duvall some more and Dick says we should go see the Drag Queen show!! So
everyone except Tom goes to the show as he decides to go back to the hotel. As we all know Tom just wants to ride to the destination turn around and go back! The rest of us like to smell the roses along
the way!!! After the show we crawl Duvall some more, stop for ice cream and then turn in for the night.