Triumph Trophy 900 at the Bob Evans on rt73 in Marlton/Cherry Hill area at 9am.My vacation started out on the beautiful morning of Saturday Sept 2nd. The weather was perfect and I was looking at a over a week of many motorcycle miles, no work, no tv, no email and no internet. I left my house around 6:30 so I could meet Dave McElvain and his Triumph Trophy 900 at the Bob Evans on rt73 in Marlton/Cherry Hill area at 9am.
One would think that would be pretty easy since I've been to that area countless number of times. Unfortunately at that hour of the morning my caffeine deprived brain malfunctioned and I got off at the wrong exit and proceeded to spend 30 minutes trying to find the restaurant. I even stopped at a gas station to ask for directions (see, men do ask) but the attendants only spoke Urdu and the yellow pages didn't show any Bob Evans restaurants in the area. So I rode around some more and then stopped again at a hotel to asked them. The manager noted that I was one exit off and I headed quickly to the restaurant.
Dave was sunning himself out front of the restaurant when I arrived at 9:30am. Instead of greeting him with a hello, I screamed "I AM AN IDIOT." Oh yea, I'm on vacation. Back into the restaurant so I can suck down a couple cups of coffee and a bagel - which coincidently proved to be the last low-fat breakfast of the trip.
Back on the road at 10am we head to the NJ Turnpike to get the hell out of the Garden State. I really can't understand why NJ deserves that slogan since to the casual observer the entire state consists of toll roads and strip malls. There are no decent motorcycle roads in the southern end of NJ so the best thing to do is hop one of the many toll roads until you're in NY - which is exactly what we did.
Our destination for Saturday was Boston. We took a series of back roads and interstates to get there. Most of that portion of the trip was unmemorable. The only things that stuck in my mind were the $2.09 a gallon gas prices we ran across in a small town in NY and the fact that drivers do 80mph on route 90 heading into Boston. In fact, we were passed by an Eclipse that had to be doing 100mph.
Oh yea, there was one other memorable site. It was about 6 pm as we were heading into Boston. Most of the east coast had been overcast so temps were in the low 60's. I was wearing a leather jacket, an unplugged electric vest, fall/winter gloves and my aerostich pants, and I was comfortable. From behind us comes another biker doing 75 or so. When he got next to us we could see he was wearing shorts, a windbreaker and no gloves. This was on a minimally faired sportbike. I'm sure that in his mind he felt he was a huge hairy pendulous biker, but in reality, given the wind chill factor, I'm sure he was a tiny peckered nancy boy.
In Boston we were to hook up with Dean Cookson who would be with us for the rest of the vacation as well as have Saturday dinner with a few other NEDODers. We got to Dean's house just before dusk and unloaded the bikes of the gear we needed that night. After a beer and some downtime we headed out for our little walk to the BBQ/Rib joint Dean had picked out for us. (This would be the first in what would turn out to be many a meal centered around pork.) Dean said it was a 1.1 mile walk, but Dave and I think that must have been as the crow flies. Although I will admit the walk back seemed a lot shorter.
On the way to the rib joint we happened across 2 things that would be repeated ad nauseum the rest of the weekend. The first was a piece of crap van at a gas station. On the back of the van was a bumper sticker that read: I 
ASS. You'd be surprised at the amount of humor mileage one can get out such a simple phrase and the possible variations of it.
The second was a guy that had just attempted to gain entry to a small home. What caught our attentions was that fact that he was riding a Kawasaki 250. We were passing by as he was returning to his bike. At this point he asks us if we "know were he could get some smoke." Now what singled us out as potential fellow pot heads is beyond me. But it gave us a laugh.
We got to the joint (maybe that's what did it) before anyone else and put in our reservation for 8 people and went down to the bar to drink until the others showed up. Beers all around, bizarre micro brews of which I can't remember their names and appetizers - shrimp done up like buffalo wings, slightly crunchy, slightly hot. Amazing, simply amazing, a dish one should attempt to reconstruct at home.
A few more beers, a few more denizens, a lot more pork and it was time to leave to try and get a good night's sleep before we head to Bar Harbor to catch the ferry to Nova Scotia.