On the road (again) in February. The roads were clear but the backdrop was quite snowy.
Last year, it was just for fun. This year, it was more about business. But either way, I once again found myself obsessively checking weather forecast updates every few hours to see if my plan for a motorcycle road trip in February was going to happen.
Once again, the weather waited until the last minute to cooperate. But with temperatures solidly in the 40s and sunny skies above, I headed east from my home office in Ohio to the headquarters of RevZilla in the Navy Yard in Philadelphia. Plans are for me to do quite a bit of work for RevZilla this year, so this is the first of what I hope and expect to be several such trips.
But I hope this is the only time I’ll have to worry about the first 50 yards of the ride being the most treacherous. That’s the distance between my garage, situated on the alley behind our house, and the nicely cleared street. Just 48 hours before my departure, that unplowed, untreated alley was encrusted in about four inches of solid ice, the compacted remains of all the snowfall we’ve had this year, which has made it (so far) the fourth snowiest winter on record in Columbus, Ohio. I can’t believe I forgot to take a photo on my way out.
Fortunately, the warm-up and sunshine that hit the day before my departure allowed two furrows to melt in the ice. And I admit I was out there clearing the drains, so the water could flow away. So in the end, I didn’t have to ride on ice for the first 50 yards of a 475-mile journey.
Honestly, the trip was so uneventful I don’t really have much to write about. It was a straightforward sprint across half of Ohio, the northern panhandle of West Virginia and all of Pennsylvania. The snowmelt flowing across I-70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike made a mess of things, but for the most part the roads were dry.
A gas stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and definitely time to clean the windshield.
One thing I definitely need to do is learn my way around Philadelphia better. I thought I’d avoid the worst of the rush-hour traffic by riding into the city in the evening, but the snarls were pretty bad. No fun when night has fallen and my headlight is struggling to break through the layer of road scum that has dried on it. The last 20 miles were the hardest, but that’s often the way life is.
But at last I made it to the RevZilla HQ, where the bright lights of the showroom looked warm and inviting, even as it closed down for the night.
A winter scene along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It makes the conditions look far worse than they actually were: about 45 degrees and mostly sunny.
In 475 miles, I saw one other motorcycle on the road: a dark figure on a Harley, two lanes over, braving the evening Philadelphia commute. Between the darkness and the traffic separating us, I couldn’t even identify his ride or share a wave. I doubt he even saw me.
Of course it’s already been suggested to me that such a ride raises questions about my sanity. So be it. I won’t argue the point. But given how this winter has battered, frostbit and buried us, with no chance for a ride of more than a few miles from Jan. 1 to the end of February, I’ll take what I can get.
The post below from RevZilla’s Instagram shows how my bike looked the next morning in the bright light of day. No wonder my headlight wasn’t illuminating the road very well.
