I left my parents’ place on Friday, drove only about an hour or so, and parked at my friends Brian and Amanda’s place for the weekend. I’ve known Brian since before the Earth cooled (1995, I think), and many common interests have kept us together over the years. Amanda is Brian’s perfect match, and since he and I are so similar, she and I get along quite well, too.
Among our common interests is Mazda Miatas. We all had them at the same time back when we used to do car events together. They still have two of theirs, now appropriately labeled as his and hers since they moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire last year.
Friday night we hung out at their fire pit in the back yard. I brought Lister along. He seemed to appreciate being part of the action.
Saturday was a total washout. Amanda and their son, Jacob, had plans to visit family during the day, so it was a guys’ day out for us. Being great big nerds, we thought it would be a good idea to check out the American Classic Arcade Museum. In reality, this was merely Funspot, with a whole bunch of their old games preserved and working in a couple of big rooms. But for people who grew up in the 1980s when arcade games were all the rage, this was a fun blast from the past. Many of my old favorites were there. I was surprised at how bad I was at them. Best of all, the old games still ran on a single token, so $10 lasted the whole time we were there with tokens to spare. I left mine with Brian to take Jacob there sometime. We stopped for a bite and a beer at Johnson’s Tap House, then back to the house. Later we got pizza at Goodfellas, which seems like a dive bar but has some legitimately tasty pizza.
The only predicted break in the rain all weekend was Sunday morning, so I took advantage of the opportunity to unload the bike from the trailer, superslab it to the coast, and ride Route 1A next to the ocean before it rained again. Traffic was there, but amazingly light for a Sunday in June. The poor weather forecast scared a lot of people away, which meant I didn’t get bogged down in traffic, even at Hampton Beach. I rode all the way up Route 1A across the little bridge into Maine, then took back roads all the way back to Rochester. This was no epic ride down exciting roads. This was just cruising and enjoying the scenery.
This is a short ride I’d been planning for a while, a repeat of the ceremonial start of my first trip west. Two years ago, I left New England with about 12% of a plan. I knew I wanted to go west. I had Route 66 in mind, but wasn’t sure about it yet. I did know that this would be the last I’d see the Atlantic Ocean for a while — two years, as it would turn out, since I spent most of last year on the west coast.
Coming back here and doing this ride again felt like coming literally full circle. It brings that particular chapter of my journey to an end and begins a new one. While I’ll always have friends and family that tie me to New England, I have nothing anchoring me here anymore. My entire home on wheels, even the motorcycle, has changed since the last time I left. Back then, it was still so soon after the breakup that I didn’t know what I wanted to do next, only that the possibilities were out there. This time, I’m leaving with a plan to get back to Arizona by way of Montana and Oregon, and looking forward to meeting people along the way who I didn’t know at all back then. This next chapter ought to be a good one.
It doesn’t hurt that Shadow, here, took quite a liking to me. Yes, I cheated on Lister. Fortunately, he’s not the jealous type.
Since the predicted afternoon rain never materialized, we took a couple of twin Miata trips in the afternoon. We crossed the Maine border (literally next door) to go to Schoolhouse Ice Cream and Farm. It’s literally an old schoolhouse that has ice cream, and a farm, with all kinds of critters you can feed and bet. Jacob loved it, and I thought it was pretty cool, too. It’s certainly one of the most interesting ice cream places I’ve been to. It kind of reminds me of Kimball’s Farm in Massachusetts back in the day, before they ditched the farm and basically turned it into a theme park instead. Later on, we took both Miatas to Revolution Taproom and Grill, where we had even more tasty beer and pizza. (You may notice a trend here.) We had another fire in the backyard. I was going to bring Lister, but he was a sneak and leaped out of the van without his leash or tether the second I opened the door, so he got to sit this one out. It started to rain soon after dark. We were disappointed, but considering the forecast had called for rain all afternoon, we can’t complain. We retreated to the “Snooty Room,” decorated like a room out of the 1940s, and hung out until I started falling asleep. I slept well, except for a strong thunderstorm in the middle of the night that woke me up.
Smokey Da Van 