It was a beautiful day at Hawks Nest, N.Y., one of my favorite spots.
This weekend, I did the things that most riders do on a regular basis, but I don’t often do. And more. I rode with friends, rode to the track, to the mountains, and to the beach. Probably best of all, I (hope I) helped a new rider get started on his own personal motorcycling journey. I rode more than 700 miles, to old places I’ve missed, and new places to see.
Pretty damn good weekend.
For most riders in the United States, riding a motorcycle is mainly a recreational activity. Yet although I ride thousands of miles a year, I rarely go out and just ride around for fun, without a destination or purpose.
Similarly, for many riders, motorcycling is a social activity, shared with friends. I almost always ride alone.
Circumstances made this a different kind of weekend, for me. Duties required me to be at RevZilla for part of this week, but then the opportunity arose to ride the Harley-Davidson LiveWire on Friday (more about that in a future post). So that meant spending the weekend in the Philadelphia area.
Meeting up at RevZilla for a Saturday ride.
After the LiveWire Experience on Friday (and Harley-Davidson is trying hard to make a five-minute ride an “experience”), I met up Saturday morning with fellow Zillans PCB and Sean for a brisk ride up to Pocono Raceway, where we were meeting a guy who’s doing some interesting work creating parts to improve the performance of the Yamaha FZ-09. It was a mix of some roads I’d ridden before, through New Hope, Penn., and past the Washington Crossing Historic Park, and some roads, such as a long stretch of Pennsylvania Route 611, plus some no-name backroads PCB found to piece together our route, that I’d never seen before.
It’s near torture being at the track and not being able to ride. I settled for shooting some shots of fellow Zillan Eric Santini. That’s him passing on the outside.
Lots of rafters and kayakers were on the Delaware River far below the Hawks Nest overlook.
After lunch, the other two planned to spend more time hanging out at the track, but the road was calling me. Specifically, I knew I was less than 50 miles from one of my favorite spots, so I rode north through the Promised Land State Park and over to the bridge across the Delaware River at Barryville, N.Y., and then south on N.Y. Route 97 to Hawk’s Nest.
I chatted with a group of riders up from New Jersey, and then with a returned combat vet from Afghanistan named Chris, who lives nearby. Everyone was in a great mood, high on the beauty of an 82-degree July day, perched on this beautiful cliff, watching the rowdy rafters hundreds of feet below, drifting south down the Delaware.
The sloping sun was perfect for photos on the east bank of the Delaware gorge, but it also meant the day was fading, and I was a long way from my hotel room on the south side of Philadelphia, so I slabbed it back to Philly.
Not surprising that a lot of riders were enjoying the day at Hawks Nest.
On Sunday, I got a more leisurely start, now riding solo, and decided to ride south and see some of the Delaware coast I hadn’t visited before. Years ago, my wife and I stayed overnight in the little beach town of Lewes, Del., but I remembered distressingly little about that trip.
An egret scans the water for a meal.
Riding south on Delaware Route 9, every bridge had its own cluster of anglers dipping lines in the marshes. Herons, egrets and gulls were doing their own fishing. But I also wanted a taste of open ocean, so I veered off to visit Slaughter Beach, a town founded in 1681, when maintaining property values and attracting tourists were issues that were not considered when choosing a name for the community. There are various accounts of the origin of the name.
Despite being a sanctuary for horseshoe crabs, Slaughter Beach was littered with their carcasses.
A baby shark washed up on Slaughter Beach.
Horseshoe crabs, a species that predates the dinosaurs, come ashore at Slaughter Beach to lay their eggs. The informational placard on the beach notes that it is a sanctuary for the crabs and encourages visitors to flip over any crabs they find that are helplessly lying on their backs. The number of crab carcasses on the beach makes it clear why this is needed. Further helping the beach to live up to its name was a dead baby shark that had washed up. From the overcast skies, which turned the water a murky green-brown, to the retirees plundering the sea of shells, Slaughter Beach did little to create the kind of festive beach atmosphere I’d expected to find.
Slaughter Beach was not the carefree beach experience I’d expected, but I did get to put my toes in the sand. Sort of.
But then to the real purpose of the day.
One of my wife’s nephews recently announced that he planned to get his motorcycle endorsement and buy a bike. I admit, I was a little skeptical. When he was little, he’d sit on my Sportster in my garage in Puerto Rico and pretend to be riding to Toys R Us, but it always seemed to me to be more about going to the toy store than riding.
Trying on some protective motorcycle gear.
And then, again, I slabbed it back to my hotel.
Frankly, it was a weekend of trying to cram too much into two days. Fewer miles, and more time to enjoy the views would have been better, in retrospect. But no regrets. It’s a weekend I’ll remember, even if I just did the things that other riders do all the time.
