Pennsylvania and the Motel Saddam

I spent 10 hours yesterday on what I thought would be a four-five hour ride south on the 219 from Brativa, where I spent the night after seeing Niagra Falls. Was hoping to get to Frederick, west of Baltimore, but although Pennsylvania is stunningly beautiful, with forests and valleys and lovely little towns filled with old verandah-d clapboard cottages, my impression was a little tempered by the fact that half the state seems to be completely torn apart by roadworks. It was a battle to get through it and after getting lost for over an hour on a detour that took me to a place I thought I'd never get back out of, I gave up trying to push through on the 219, and took the I80 eastbound to join the I81 and drop down from there. It was a long ride, althoug pretty, but I had to admit defeat and give up at 9pm and, exhausted, I hauled in for the night three hours shy of my proposed destination, after contacting Sue to let her know I wasn't gonna make it. Anyone travelling south on the Interstate 81 who wants to treat themselves to an Unusually Hideous Experience should pull off at Frackville and go into the budget motel right by the freeway exit, and meet Andrea. She gains my personal award for being The Most Unhelpful Person In America. She's a chinless, miserable, middle-aged slab of a woman, long since stripped of the ability to smile, and she goes out of her way to be hostile and unwelcoming. It may have something to do with the fact that she appears to be working for terrorists, and it wasn't until after I'd handed over my money that I noticed a huge photograph of Saddam Hussein, sitting on a throne, with a little shrine thing built around it, at the back of the office. At first I thought it was a tongue in cheek sort of thing, until I raised my eyes a little higher and discovered that the name of the hotel propreitor was something long, unpronounceable and bloody middle eastern. Probably a relative. The little gut was saying, Oh, shyte, Maxy, this SO aint the best place to be! The exhausted gut said, Well, whatever happens, you'll handle it. It was too late to look for anything else, and I was too tired to even try. While vaguely wondering whether my tourist dollar was somehow funding some terrorist cause, I chained Cherry Bomb to a concrete post, took photographs of that in case I needed to show an insurance company...

and while I was doing it a greasy, stringy Mexican lad, who for whatever obscure reason thought I would find him attractive, sidled up and propositioned me. I told him to go away (a shade or ten less politely than that, actually), and I slept with a chair wedged under the doorknob of my room, got up through the night to check the Bomb was actually still there, and got the hell out of that place as soon as I could first thing this morning. Huge thanks to my Daddy for tearing me from sleep with a 6am phone call. It was exactly what I needed to get me moving, once I'd woken up fully. I hit the highway soon after, chortling hugely to myself while riding away, thinking about that sad shrine to Saddam, and about how much better my life was at that moment, riding in the warm sun, free and happy, than that of the comically miserable Andrea.
I headed south on the I81 again and had an easy three-hour ride as far as Frederick ,Maryland, where I parked up at McDonalds and drank a small vat of coffee while waiting to hook up with Sue and her friend Terri - aka Mutt & Jeff. Sue didn't take very much strong-arming at all, into ringing in sick for the following morning so they didn't have to head home to Baltimore. I was happy about that, because it felt like I'd pulled off a real mission to get to meet up with her at all, and it had to be worth more than a couple of hours. After a couple of logistical, tactical phone calls, Sue relaxed into the whole truancy thing, and she and Terri waved a bottle of home-made Kahlua at me. At around the same time, a huge crack of thunder ripped through the air, promising yet another electrical storm (its a good thing I like them! especially since I've ridden through several!), so we high-tailed it to a respectable motel and piled in, just as the deluge began, and we are holing up against the weather, playing on the laptop, drinking wine and khalua, swapping silly stories of our mis-spent youth, and various stupid men we've wasted our time on, and scoffing fat pizzas. Terri gets most of the wine, purely for medicinal purposes, as she's hurt her back. Sue and I are drinking the rest in full, dedicated support of Terri's injury. Honestly, that girl just HAS to stop swinging from the chandeliers...

Anyway, the combo of ice and wine seems to be working a treat for all of us, hehehe.

The beautiful Bomb is parked under shelter right outside the window next to my bed...

In the last two days she has brought me 700kms. What a star.