DAY 1: Monday Oct 20th We headed out of Central Massachusetts on our ST1300 at around 7pm. If you're not sure what a Honda ST1300 looks like, Visit our ST1300 Page. It's a touring motorcycle, made for long distance, that we got in March 2003. So at this point it's about 7 months old. Temperatures were in the 30s to 50s during this part of the trip, and our aim was to get to mid-Pennsylvania before we called it a night. The whole trip was very loose. Our only set aim was to hit Ripley Tennessee at lunchtime on Saturday to meet up with relatives. Other than that, things were completely up in the air. I was watching closely for deer, and we counted 8 of them during just this short 5.5-hr ride on Monday night! Most were very tiny and cute. In just about NO case did I see any glowing eyes - they all had their heads down munching on grass. So if you're watching for the glowing eyes while you're driving, you're probably missing lots of deer!

There was also a groundhog and a strange UFO floating in the air, but they weren't nearly as cute as the big-eared deerlets. The night was very clear and there were stars everywhere. The whole trip was very star-rich as there was a new moon in the sky.

Our trip took us from Massachusetts through Connecticut, then New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We have a helmet intercom system and while we listened to Brother Cadfael stories at the beginning, we soon shut that off to just chat. The EZ-Pass system was great, getting us through all tolls the entire way down.

ST1300 Picture from its Acquisition in March

I was singing lots of "New York, Neeeeew Yoooooork!!" songs for Bob during the New York part of the ride. By the time we got into Pennsylvania and were passing towns like Bethlehem and Allentown I was on a roll and singing the classic Carols and Billy Joel tunes. I think Bob made a comment that the reason we went PAST Allentown to sleep was so that he didn't have to hear even more Allentown songs in the morning. I think that meant he really liked them a lot and didn't want me to lose my voice.

We pulled off at Bethlehem which was strangely situated next to Hellertown. Seemed like an odd combination to me! But the motel indicated on the exit sign was nowhere in sight and the town looked like a creaky, ancient steel mill town. Brings to mind those documentary films from the 40s of the grimy mill towns. So we turned around and went on a bit. We finally landed in Allentown at 12:30, got a spot and tucked in for the night.

Ripley 2003 Trip Page
Lisa's Travelogue Pages