Not having taken a vacation with the SO for 7 years, and having finally gotten the new business venture running smoothly, it was TIME.
Some friends of ours suggested renting a beach house in Folly Beach, SC (near Charleston), which sounded like a great plan. But instead of flying down with them, we were planning on driving, making the trip on the back highways, taking our time. "Driving" in this case meant using an old Porsche I'd picked up last winter and was nearly finished putting back together. But two weeks of pre-trip thrashing only led up to the realization that it wasn't getting done in time. >
Now what? :-\
Two days to go, and we either gotta take the wife's Jetta (not real exciting), or.... Honey Dearest, we could ride? I let her make the call, and imagine my surprise when she pretty much insisted that we take the Multi. We'd done several 3-5 hour trips, but this one was going to take 2 days... what a girl! She even posed for me... for you know, "motivation":
[img width=450 height=600]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/modelpose.jpg[/img]
The only thing the Multi needed was a new rear tire. The Dunlop 616 I had on there was getting almost 6500 miles on, and was pretty much down to the wear bars. Slapped a new one on, checked the oil, bolted the bag bracketry on, turned up the rear preload, and threw the stock muffler back on (the Remus race cans are a bit "bitey" after a couple hours), and off we went.
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/bikeloaded.jpg[/img]
We freeway blasted all the way to Marysville, OH, stopped for a quick bite at Applebee's (
very good service, and 3 posters of Valentino Rossi on the wall!), then turned south on OH 38. Little to no traffic, and lotsa nice sweepers thru Ohio farm country. Jumped on OH 35 and blasted down to Gallipolis, OH to catch a hotel for the night. Up the next morning, we followed 35 into WV, which isn't a bad ride, but heavy traffic sometimes limits the fun.
Side note: WV & VA both have spent copious amounts of taxpayer dollars on hundreds of signs warning of speed enforcement lurking around every corner and in the air... it's a smoke screen. In all our time traveling thru those states, I saw
one, that's right,
one cop.... and blasting by him 15mph over the posted limit got no response. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. ;D
From there we took WV 60, and that was a BIG mistake... it routed us thru downtown Charleston, WV.... argh.
Eventually we were able to get out of urban hell, and as 60 runs into the country, it turns into a beautiful ride along a big river I can't remember the name of.
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/multionbridge.jpg[/img]
The traffic thins out away from Charleston, and the road gets
really twisty... Deal's Gap Style. Even loaded up, the Multi flat railed thru here, and dropped a pair of sportbikes in the process.... dragging pegs & levers in every other corner. There are some passing lanes when going uphill, but you've gotta make your own going down. Not a big deal, as traffic is very light, even on a Saturday, and the Multi can brake wayyy deep into corners when loaded.
From after riding what seemed like 50 miles of really tight stuff, we jumped onto WV 311... which is yet another delicious ride. 40 miles later we popped out into Ronoake, VA, and took the "bypass" (OMG - that's an oxymoron if I've
ever heard one.... how about "stoplight friggin hell"?) around to jump on the fabled Blue Ridge Parkway.
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/multionblueridge.jpg[/img]
Not to dis the Parkway... but what a disappointment. The speed limit is 45 and the local we talked to said it is enforced, the vistas are few and far between, and the curves could be taken at 80 on a Hardley Ableson. :
We resorted to roosting the dirt access roads that parallel the Parkway to have a bit of fun.
Way behind schedule now, we jumped on I-26 and cruised at 85-90 to try to reach Charleston by early evening. Well, by the time we stopped for a nice dinner, early evening had turned into late evening. Took us a while to find the house, but we made it eventually. 841 miles, door-to-door.
Our home for the week on Folly beach:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/beachhouse.jpg[/img]
Our views for the week:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/ourview.jpg[/img]
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/ourviewtoo.jpg[/img]
Mr. & Mrs. sTD
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/awww.jpg[/img]
Standing in the ocean, drinking Palmetto Amber:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/whatbeer.jpg[/img]
Chris & I rescued a live starfish:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/livestarfish.jpg[/img]
The Folly lighthouse:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/lighthouse.jpg[/img]
The Folly blimp:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/gyblimp.jpg[/img]
Charleston turned out to be a great vacation spot, especially in mid-May, which is right before the tourist season starts. The carriage rides are highly recommended to get a lay of the city, and our horse peed right in front of a $4.8 million home for sale. The Calhoun Mansion tour is worth the money, and just strolling all over the city is interesting:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/statuemoon.jpg[/img]
And the famous "Circle Church":
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/circlechurch.jpg[/img]
And the equally famous R2D2 mailbox:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/r2d2mailbox.jpg[/img]
Hyman's seafood is worth the stop, and served the best crab cakes I've ever had. Here is the Cook's special: grouper, lobster tails, and crab cakes... and yes, I ate it all:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/eatathymans.jpg[/img]
Speaking of eating, the Charleston Crab House out on 17 was on the show "Extreme Makeover", and has very good food. Here's Chris getting ready to dive in and zone out... literally. While he was eating, he was completely unresponsive to everyone and everything:
[img width=450 height=600]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/cch.jpg[/img]
And you can't go to Charleston and not tour the Navy ships out at Patriot's Point. The bridge to get out there is an awesome architectural piece:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/bridge2.jpg[/img]
[img width=450 height=600]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/bridge.jpg[/img]
The Clamagore sub is a late WW2 diesel boat, and not for the claustrophobic. How 70 men toured on it in wartime is beyond me, although I suppose you do what you gotta do. The harbor is so shallow where she is moored that during low tide, the boat sits on the sea floor.
Those are bunks between the torpedoes, yessir:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/clamagoretorpedoroom.jpg[/img]
the nicest digs on the boat, the Captain's Quarters:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/clamagorecaptainsq.jpg[/img]
The "Con" (Control Room), where 12 Sailors worked:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/clamagorecontrol.jpg[/img]
And a shot of the forward passageway:
[img width=450 height=600]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/clamagorepassage.jpg[/img]
In stark contrast to the sub, the Yorktown is a roomy luxury liner. I'm in the custom fabrication business, and I wander around these ships just amazed at how they were built. The sheer scope of a project like this just makes my head hurt.
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/yorktownwhole.jpg[/img]
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/yorktownconning.jpg[/img]
F-14 Tomcat on deck - my dad was an engineer on the swing-wing mechanism:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/yorktownf14.jpg[/img]
WW2 B-24 Bomber "hung" in the "hanger" deck, makes sense, no?
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/yorktownb24.jpg[/img]
The Infirmiry - complete with dead guy on the table:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/yorktowninfirmary.jpg[/img]
Recipe for one day's worth of cookies - 10,000 to be exact:
[img width=600 height=448]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/yorktown10krecipe.jpg[/img]
And the ingredients to make them:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/yorktown10kingred.jpg[/img]
It just so happened that the Tall Ships Festival was in town, so we toured the boats. I've been raised on sailboats, so this was a real treat for me. The Tarangini was an Officer's training ship for the Indian Navy, and the entire crew was quite professional and courteous.
[img width=450 height=600]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/tallships7.jpg[/img]
The Prince William hailed from Glasgow and was a youth training ship. The crew and ship were impeccable, and pretty entertaining to hear them telling tales about things that happened to them.
[img width=450 height=600]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/tallships2.jpg[/img]
And a sign I thought was hilarious:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/tallships4.jpg[/img]
Talk about contrasts:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/oldvnew.jpg[/img]
The Columbian vessel, although the largest there, was kind of an oceangoing commercial for the country and the people. Which isn't a bad thing, except everything belowdecks was off limits, or had tables setup to sell trinkets. I was far more interested in seeing how the ship worked.
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/tallships5.jpg[/img]
And as luck would have it, there was a race to Bermuda starting the same day, right between the Yorktown & the Tall Ships. Some sort of performance handicap race for sure, since there was a SORC racer in the mix, along with the usual cabin boats. Way cool....
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/bermudarace2.jpg[/img]
We met some Charleston friends for dinner one night... at Hyman's again. Some of the local restaurants give out cards to the locals, so that when tourist season hits, the locals get moved to the front of the line. so what would've been an hour wait was about 5 minutes... sweet!
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/grin.jpg[/img]
After dinner, we did a haunted jail tour, which really redlined my cheese-o-meter. Yeah, the place was old, and there were no lights on, and the tour guide did her best to tell the spooky tales... but it just didn't work on me. One thing that *did* work was when I took a picture of the pitch-black jail yard, I caught what they said was a light "orb", supposedly a ghost signature. Whatever. Look in the middle right hand of the pic:
[img width=450 height=600]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/hauntedjail.jpg[/img]
Chris doing his best ghost impression:
[img width=450 height=600]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/hauntedjailhiding.jpg[/img]
And Sara seriously considering her options:
[img width=600 height=450]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/stringhimup.jpg[/img]
It seemed like all too soon we had to head for home, only this time we avoided the Blue Ridge Parkway, and downtown Charleston (WV). Still took us two days to get home, since we hammered all the fun roads again... notice the edges of the tread blocks:
[img width=450 height=600]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/sailwa66/charleston%202007/rolledreartire.jpg[/img]
Final tally for the trip: 1920 miles, 43.5mpg, 51.0mph
[thumbsup] [thumbsup] [thumbsup]
Indiana to Charleston SC on the Strada....
Linear Mode
