Road King Blog

We set out this morning for Eustis, Florida for a short-notice honor mission with the Patriot Guard.

We arrived at the staging area at the funeral home, and joined about a dozen other bikes from the PGR.  This mission was remarkable because the announcement of the mission went out about 12 hours before hand.  As the email arrived, members across the state changed / abandoned their plans for the day and got set to roll out the next morning to stand for an American Hero.

The spirit of the PGR never ceases to AMAZE me.  It is an absolute honor to stand the flag line with these fine Americans.

As we were milling about the staging area before the service, we were keeping a weather eye out.  Although it was pretty when we arrived, storms were moving ashore from the Gulf, and the radar images on the iPhone looked impressive.

Sure enough, as we stood down from the flag line at the end of the mission, the skies opened up with an intense downpour.  Perfect.  I hate riding in the rain, it makes me quite nervous, and I’ve got Lisa on the back….

We donned our raingear, and headed out.  Fortunately, about 1/2 a mile down the road we rode out from under the storm and onto dry pavement.  With the sun shining on us again, the rain gear was miserably hot, so after we gained some separation from the storm, we puled off and stowed the gear.

We kept just ahead of the storm all the way home, rolling into the garage about 5 minutes before an absolute downpour began.

I had the bike in for it’s 5,000 mile service today, and in the course of doing the service, the dealer noticed that the clutch pack was due for replacement. Unfortunately for me, this is a wear item, and not covered under warranty. It’s also quite expensive. I was a bit off-put because I’ve only had the bike 6 months and put 4,000 miles on it, and I felt this was a bit early for the clutch to be done.

Because it is a wear item, and not covered under warranty, the service department couldn’t do a lot to help.  Which is perfectly understandable to me.  I contacted the sales manager, Ken, and explained my situation to him.  He said he understood my concern, and he would talk to the service folks and see what he could arrange.  Within a couple of hours, they had worked out a solution.  I’m not going to specify exactly what they came up with, but I was a happy customer at the end of the day.  The 5,000 mile service was completed and the clutch pack replaced, and the bike was still ready to roll at the end of the business day.  I rolled off the lot and scooted down 417 for home, noticing the reduced clutch effort on the bike and a touch more refinement in all the controls.

I see a lot of folks getting upset and going off on various bike boards when they have a problem.  It seems to me that 90% of them would have had a different outcome altogether if they approached their dealer in a reasonable manner, and talked to the staff rather than ranting at them.

Of course, it helps to have a dealer like Seminole Harley-Davidson.  They’ve always been helpful and customer-driven, and they’ve certainly won a customer for life in this rider.

Well, all good things must eventually come to an end, and this trip was no exception.  We got up, and rode out for some breakfast, and to FedEx for Sean to repeat my shipping evolution of the previous day.  Darn those Harley shops - they always manage to separate one from one’s money.

The skies looked threatening, but so far had refrained from releasing any of the moisture they were threatening to unleash.  We checked out of the hotel, packed up the bikes and headed over to Starbucks to feed Sean’s Espresso jones and plan out our trips.  I was headed down to Lorton, to meet up with the Auto Train for the trip home, and Sean was headed out to Annapolis for another series of business meetings before riding back into DC for the night.  Our routes would run together down I-270 (part-time freeway, part-time parking lot depending on the time of day) to Route 495, where he would take the Inner Loop to the east, headed for Route 50, and I would take the Outer Loop to the south, headed for I-95 south.  The intersection of 270 and 495 is known to the locals as “the split”, which was apropos for our travel plans, as we would be parting company there.  On other words, we would split at the split.
And with that, we were off onto I-270, to mix with the lovely morning commute traffic - replete with drivers in cages talking on their phones, reading and even sending text messages on their phones while performing what they call driving. It’s always an amusing experience sharing the road with these folks. The skies overhead were laden with water, and threatened to unload on us at any moment. A distant rumble of thunder punctuated the threat. With time, we made our way down the road to the split where, with the traditional biker two-finger down salute, Sean went his way and I went mine. A unit of two no more, we returned to solo riding mode, traveling down the road avoiding hazards of the fixed and mobile varieties.
The skies could hold out no more as I rode south on the beltway past Fairfax, and began to spit a fine rain down. Hoping that the light rain would satisfy the sky’s need for relief, I pressed on down the beltway to the I-95 interchange, and south on I-95 to Lorton.
The fine rain dissipated as I arrived at the train station, and I parked in the lot and waited for the opportunity to load the Road King for the trip south and home. One plus for the trip home, I had managed to score a reasonably priced upgrade from the coach seat I had booked to a “roomette” accommodation. This was not without it’s trials, though, as Amtrak had massively over-charged me for the new ticket, and I would have to wait until I checked in for them to process the refund of the ~$250 they had over-charged. Happily, everyone was on the same page there, and the refund was processed without any further aggravation.
I was the only rider headed south, so the load process looked to be fairly smooth. I sat by the loading deck and waited for the incoming train (which was 2 hours late) to arrive and off-load. In time, a sled containing two bikes was pushed up to the loading ramp. Proving the axiom that it is a small world after all, one of the two arriving riders lives less than 2 miles from my house. He was headed north on his GoldWing for a family function. In short order, the two arriving bikes were off, and the Road King was securely strapped down in it’s spot on the sled. I headed into the terminal for the wait until boarding time. Luckily, I scored one of the few seats with access to electrical power and got my phone re-charged as I waited.
The roomette was a very nice upgrade from the coach seat, with two seats that fold down into a full-sized bed (and an upper bunk bed for another passenger in the same roomette. I was able to stretch out, relax and read comfortably as we rolled the rails south toward home…

Sean spent part of the day down in Virginia attending a couple meetings related to work.

I spent the day getting ready (unfortunately) to head home on Thursday.  In the midst of laundry and packing, I discovered that I had acquired more goodies on the trip than I had space to pack them.  Not really much of a surprise there.  So I was off to FedEx to ship back some of the treasure.

All in all, a pretty unremarkable day.  Once Sean came back up from Virginia, we did a bit of local riding and headed out for some dinner.  The primary focus of the evening was planning our respective departures the next day - and looking at the increasingly unfavorable weather forecast…..

Up in the morning to another nice day, and headed out for breakfast and some general riding in the greater Gaithersburg / Germantown area.

Our travels brought us through an intersection where, in 2003, I performed what was essentially the last direct patient care of my EMS career.  The return of the memories of that day was very intense.  I was off-duty, driving in my own car, when a call went out for a serious automobile collision a very short ways away from where I was.  When I arrived on the scene, there were two police officers performing rescue breathing on a patient in the middle of the road.  That has the makings of a bad day.  She was four.  That makes for a really bad day.  I walked up and identified myself as a medic, which made for two very happy law enforcement officers, who were more than happy to have this particular problem in professional hands other than their own.  I had them continue what they were doing as I began to cut clothing and assess her injuries.  Her heart was still beating, but far too slowly.  I began chest compressions, in the hope of supporting her failing vitals until the fire/rescue units arrived.

The engine company and ambulance from my station arrived a short while (and also an eternity) later.  The Captain on the engine was doing his overall scene assessment and walked around the side of the scene where the three of us were working on the little girl in the middle of the road.  I told him I needed some equipment brought to me immediately, but it didn’t seem to register on him what was going on.  He continued to survey the scene, and I interrupted his routine with a stout “Hey, Captain, forget the <expletive> circle check - I need an airway bag over here right <expletive> now!”.  Annoyed, he looked over - and registered what was happening.  He ran back and practically dragged the paramedic off the engine over to where we were working.  Suffice it to say I now had his full attention.

Despite our best efforts, she never regained spontaneous breathing, and she passed away after being flown to the pediatric trauma center.

Not the highlight of my career.  It was a valiant effort from everyone involved, but her injuries were just not compatible with life.

Two days later, I found that the “flu” I had was actually a series of blood clots in my lungs.  I was hospitalized a couple days later, and never really returned to the street.

After riding through the intersection, we stopped a short ways away at a 7-11.  I needed to get off the bike, and get back into the proper head-space for riding.  I was actually quite surprised that riding through there put me off my game as much as it did.

After a short break, and some mental re-adjustment, we headed out along the back roads towards Rockville, and a lunch appointment with a good friend of mine from the old days at Station 8, Chris.

Chris has been a career firefighter for several years now, after being hired by Montgomery County from the department where we both volunteered at the time.  Chris is a damn fine medic, and and even better friend, and it was very good to see him again.  Unfortunately, he’s been off the street for several months with a back injury, and things are not looking good.   At least the county is taking pretty good care of him, and he’s in good spirits.

After lunch, Sean and I rode around a bit and then headed to the theater to catch a movie.  We both needed a bit of down-time.

Once I arrived at the hotel on Friday, with my freshly broken antenna still gnawing at my mind, I called Ham Radio Outlet in Woodbridge.  They were kind enough to expedite an order for a new antenna and mount for me, and ship it to the hotel.  It arrived Monday afternoon, and after 15 minutes or so of work, the new antenna was installed and ready to go.  Still not quite sure how they managed to break it, but there it is.

We awoke early and headed to Germantown for some breakfast.  We had a good ride scheduled for the day - we were headed north to the town of York, Pennsylvania.  York, you see, is home to one of Harley-Davidson’s four manufacturing plants.  This particular plant is near and dear to both of us - this is the facility that manufactures Harley’s Touring and SoftTail models.  Both Sean’s Softail Heritage Classic and my Road King Police would have been assembled in this very plant.

The ride up was straightforward superslab, up I-270 to US 15 to Gettysburg, and then east along US 30.

As we rode along US 15 across the Maryland / Pennsylvania border, 15 changes into a controlled access freeway gliding through the majestic hills and forests, alongside huge parcels of farmland.  The traffic had melted away, and we road north towards Gettysburg on our steel horses beneath a vivid blue sky.  There was just Sean and I and the road.  It is hard to describe, but it was absolute riding nirvana, a perfect combination of road, ride, weather and environment.  The bikes rumbled along contentedly, as if drawn back to their place of birth.  In a few miles, we approached Gettysburg, and turned onto Route 30 for the final leg of the trip.

US 30 is a noteworthy piece of history in and of itself, being a part of the Lincoln Highway, which ran across Pennsylvania from Ohio to Philadelphia in the 1930s.  As one travels along 30, you can see the old roadside diners and service stations that made up the sum total of services available to travelers back in those days.  You can find some interesting reading on the history of US 30 here.

Alas, right now 30 isn’t entirely pastoral and idyllic.  Major construction is occurring, and the road surface was a bit, well, challenging at times.  As a part of the construction, they have added a half a lane to one side of the road, and shifted the traffic over.  The old double yellow line is now a parallel track of roughened grooves right down the center of the lane.  No problem for cars, but not exactly motorcycle friendly.

Eventually we escaped the construction zone, and we rode into York, and the Harley factory.

At the factory, we pulled in among a good sized group of other bikes, and headed into the tour center. Timing, as they say, is everything, and we arrived about 30 minutes before the next scheduled factory tour, giving us time to browse the exhibits and sit on a couple of the display bikes before heading over to the theatre to meet up with our tour guide and safety observer. We were given pins to identify us as tour participants on the factory floor, and shown into the theater for a brief film on the history of Harley Davidson and the York plant. We then queued up to receive safety glasses and wireless earphones, and to turn in cameras and camera phones for storage during the tour. Photography is not permitted on the tour, unfortunately.

The tour itself is about an hour long, and walks guests through the production process starting with large industrial robots and enormous press machines forming fenders for the Touring line.  A robot arm places a sheet of steel on a form, and a huge die is pressed down, forming the fender in a single cycle of the press.  The front fender blanks are then moved by conveyor to shearing machines where the excess material is clipped off, leaving a rough fender ready for polish and paint prep.  Read fenders are made nearby, in a similar process.  Because the rear fender requires a variety of holes and notches, the blanks for these are fed into a laser cutting robot, which skims around the fender blank, cutting away excess material and cutting the notches and holes.  The laser produces cuts so smooth that no further de-burring operations are required.

The tour travels on to the assembly floor, where touring bike chassis travel along an overhead track on large orange arms that resemble an upside-down question mark.  As the bikes move along, workers attach various parts and subassemblies to the chassis, and slowly a motorcycle takes shape.  Each chassis is accompanied by a build sheet, detailing which features are going to be on that particular bike.  Harley does not pre-make motorcycles, and only initiates the build of a bike when it receives an order from a dealer.  No two Harleys on the line are the same.

From the assembly line, we moved along to the testing bays, where each new Harley is ridden on a set of rollers up to highway speeds by experienced H-D mechanics to test the bike’s systems.  Sounds like a rough job, getting to test-ride a dozen new Harleys a day.  The scenery is a bit repetitive, though.

From there, we moved along to the paint and finish bays, where displays showed the progression of metal parts from fabrication to surface prep, paint and clear-coating.  Harley claims to have some of the most exacting paint standards in the vehicle manufacturing industry, and it is easy to believe looking at the finished products.

Following the tour, Sean and I headed into the gift shop to peruse the merchandise.  Taking a page from the masters of marketing at Disney, Harley Davidson has exclusive apparel and items for each of it’s tour centers and museum.  I acquired a couple of shirts for Lisa (and one for myself) and Sean acquired a brace of shirts.  We rolled out of the lot and headed west along 30 towards Gettysburg.  Along the route, Sean stopped to take a few pictures of various diners, and we pulled into Lee’s Diner for a spot of lunch.  Lee’s is an authentic diner, built in 1951 and in continuous operation for the ensuing 48 years.  We selected some basic diner fare, and talked with our server about the diner and the town and the lifecycle of Route 30.

Fed and content, we resumed our trip west, and pulled into the visitor’s center at Gettysburg’s historical battlefield.  Along the way, Sean collected some more pics of the period diners and service stations.  One at the battlefield, we dodged touri and obtained a map of the driving tour, then rode around the battlefield for a while before rolling toward Route 15, and the trip back to the hotel.

All told, we accumulated a couple hundred miles on the bikes, and had a truly great day of riding.

Woke up in the morning to find that it had recently rained, and everything was quite wet. Rode over to the diner we missed the previous day for breakfast.  I found I was pretty uncomfortable riding in the wet, which I suspect is simply based on a lack of experience in doing so.

Fortunately, as we ate breakfast and then walked over to Starbucks to feed Sean’s near-Betty-Ford-level addiction to espresso, things dried up.  And with that, we were off to Virginia, and the Udvar - Hazy center which is perched on the southernmost part of the Dulles Airport grounds.  They have an excellent collection of aircraft both military and civilian spanning the history of flight.  The collection is dominated by two attractions, though.  A Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft, and the Space Shuttle Enterprise.

A product of the heady days of the Cold War reconnaissance race, the SR-71 was developed by the famous Skunk Works at Lockheed.  The Blackbird is almost universally accepted as the most successful reconnaissance aircraft in history, operating with impunity all over the globe.  The SR-71 A on display at the center set a record on her final flight, traveling from Los Angeles to Washington DC in 1 hour and 4 minutes.  Just another day at the office for the mighty Blackbird.

The Enterprise was the first of the Shuttles, and was used as an atmospheric flight testbed.  Although she never flew in space, Enterprise was a key part of the Shuttle program, which represents the pinnacle of mankind’s quest to explore space.  Although she completed her testing role in the 1980s, Enterprise had a role to play in the investigation of the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.  On February 1, 2003, the Columbia was lost on re-entry during STS-107, killing all 7 aboard.  During the subsequent investigation, it was discovered that the leading edge of the wing had been damaged on launch, resulting in a failure of the heat shield and catastrophic damage to the spacecraft.  As a part of the investigation, sections of the leading edges of the Enterprise’s wings were removed for testing.  For a long time, there were large green panels over the gaps where the leading edge segments were removed.  The leading edges have been re-constructed now, and Enterprise sits as she was at the end of her flight career.

The ride out to the museum was pretty good, save for the portion on Route 66 in Virginia.  Route 66 in this area is concrete, with irregular scars and lots of seams between lanes.  It’s rough, and densely populated.  We decided to seek another path back.

After we concluded our visit to the center, which includes a superb gift shop with a great selection of books related to civil and military aviation, we headed back toward Fairfax to visit the National Firearms Museum at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association.  This museum has an astounding collection of firearms from the first matchlock muskets to the very latest in modern small arms.  We strolled through the collection and spotted a few firearms we had never seen before, including a prototype semi-auto rifle in .303 British from WWII.

We decided it was time to head back up the road to the hotel, and I consulted the iPhone maps application for a routing plan.  We ended up riding along Vale Road, which was absolutely amazing.  Windy, hilly and lightly travelled, Vale meanders to the Northeast past a variety of enormous, multi-million dollar homes.  We rode along the hills and curves, eventually connecting with Route 123, which brought us north through Vienna (land of 1,000 speed traps) back to the beltway and up the super-slab to the hotel.

We grabbed some dinner and rolled over to Borders to sit and write a bit, enjoying a beverage on the outdoor terrace and soaking in the cool evening breeze.

Following Borders, we decided to ride around some of the old neighborhoods and haunts as night fell, working out way generally toward the hotel.  We had big plans for the next day, so it was time to turn in for some rest.

Woke early and headed out with Sean to obtain some breakfast.  Too early, in fact, for the diner Sean had selected for breakfast - they weren’t open.  So we diverted to the old standby IHOP, and took on some food.

Following breakfast, we headed out to ride some more in the area and visit the rest of the locations where we used to live / work / hang out / run amok.  Not much has changed in the old neighborhoods, and it was interesting to see that some of the landscaping Lisa and I did on the townhouse we owned in Gaithersburg was still in place.

And then, while riding the area, Sean happened to notice that a gate into an area we used to visit in high school was open….

Some explanation is necessary here.  When we were in high school, there was an abandoned Nike missile site off one of the back roads a short drive away from our neighborhoods.  The site was accessible via numerous holes in the fencing, and we made many less-than-sanctioned visits to the facility.

At the time, we were all into the Cold War history to some level, and we were aware of the historical significance of the site.  We didn’t go in there to vandalize the place or steal any items, but to investigate and understand what the facility must have been like during that time.  Back then, there were still several buildings on the grounds, as well as a trio of underground facilities for storing, loading and launching the Nike missiles.  The buildings were filled with debris, but were still painted in the unit livery, with the unit insignia still visible in faded paint on the side of the larger building.  We would go into the site and into the underground facilities and catalog the remaining items, trying to understand the function of the site and how the crews worked onsite.  At that time, there was a little bit of graffiti on the site, and some minor damage, but overall the site was pretty well preserved.  Apart from the #3 underground facility, which was nearly always flooded, that is.

Move forward 25 years.  The site is next to a National Guard facility, but is separately fenced (and all the fencing is unmarked).  The gate was wide open, so we rode in to look around a bit.  What we found was distressing.

The buildings have been razed, and the remains removed.  The underground facilities were secured with steel bars and locks on the doors.  I saw were, because the doors have been broken open except for the #1 hangar, which had heavy angle iron welded over the doors.  Inside, there is trash, tons of graffiti, and numerous piles of miscellaneous burned materials torn off the walls.  An important, irreplaceable piece of history trashed.

We took a few pictures and carefully made our way out of the facility.

Seeking something to raise the spirits a bit, we rode over to the local Harley dealer to check out their t-shirt offerings (which we ended up purchasing).  One of the employees there, upon learning we were visiting from Canada and Florida, offered to rent us a couple of bikes.  ”No thanks, we brought our own :)”.

From there, we headed out to the northwest to visit Sugarloaf mountain, with the intent of getting some shots of us and the bikes with the sweeping panoramas of the area in the background.

Which brought me to a new riding experience - hills.

We don’t have hills in Florida.  It’s flat.

We have hills in Maryland, and twisty roads going over them.  Takes a bit of getting used to with the way it changes the sight lines for the curves.  As I remarked to Sean at a stop sign, “these hills are messing up my Chi”.

We rumbled through the countryside, up and down the hills, out to Sugarloaf.  Which is when we discovered that the folks who administer Sugarloaf don’t like bikers, and don’t permit motorcycles on the mountain roads.

So we decided to head back toward the hotel and drop in on Dave.  Dave knew as soon as he heard Sean’s Vance & Hines pipes that we had arrived.  We hung out with Dave and Kathy and their two children for a bit, and after making plans for dinner we headed back to the hotel to get changed / refreshed.

During dinner (at a nice Italian restaurant in Germantown), Sean took his turn as storyteller, regaling Dave’s 4 year old daughter with tales of Taliban and of the brave knight who captures the monster Saddam Hussein, all in the manner of a fairy tale.  At the conclusion of the second tale, Dave chimes in as the announcer - “Next on Sean’s Playhouse, why your jihadi mommy won’t be coming home tonight…”  We pretty much lost it at that point.  We said our farewells, and headed back to the hotel.

Around 0230, some nitwit pulled the fire alarm.  I postulated to Sean that this behavior is indicative of latent homosexuality with a fireman fetish.

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.