Road King Blog

Having been blessed with clear signals all the way up the coast, we had arrived an hour early in Lorton, VA at the Amtrak terminal.  We disembarked the rail cars, and moved in herd-like formation to the vehicle pickup area.  The eight of us on two-wheeled vehicles walked across the lot to the ramp where the bikes would be off-loaded.  Soon enough, we saw the train of bike sleds being pulled off the transport car.

The Road King was on the second set of sleds to be off-loaded, so I went over and began to stow the bags on the bike for the trip up.  This was when I noticed that somehow, Amtrak has managed to break the antenna for my APRS beacon.  I asked one of the Amtrak staff to call over a manager, and he made quick work of completing a claim form and giving me the info I would need to get reimbursed for the damaged antenna and mount.

I then called Sean, who was already checked into the hotel we were planning to use as a base of operations in Gaithersburg.  He proposed meeting me in Tyson’s corner at the Silver Diner (Sean has a diner fetish, as you’ll see in subsequent entries).  I was more than happy to agree, and I headed out to meet him.  Fortunately, it is an easy routing from the station to I-95 - their driveway comes out right at the on-ramps.  So up onto I-95 I went, and as quickly re-introduced to the joys of DC area traffic.  After navigating one of the most complex, confusing highway interchanges known to man (the perpetually under construction I-95 / 395 / 495 interchange), I was on the Inner loop of the capitol beltway and headed north.  Directly into a huge construction backup from roadwork at the I-495 / Route 50 interchange.  For once, I can’t really blame the ensuing CF on the drivers on the road - the VDOT folks had cleverly put up “left lane closed ahead” signage, but had failed to cover up the pre-existing “stay in lane” signs between the lane closure signs.  So many of the drivers stayed in their lane all the way to the barricades closing it off.  Complete mess.

After escaping that disaster, I slipped off 495 onto Route 7 and looped around the mall to the Diner.  There in the lot was Sean’s ‘07 Softtail Heritage Classic - a welcome sight indeed!

A quick snack and drink later, we were off up the beltway to Gaithersburg to get checked into the hotel.

After check-in, we did a little riding in the immediate area, revisiting the neighborhoods where we and our comrades used to live.  We even dropped in on an old friend, who at first didn’t recognize either of us. Good times.

After some general catching up, we rolled back to the hotel, ordered some ‘za, and relaxed for the remainder.  Caught up on some much needed sleep.