Round trip to New Holland PA
Sat Jul 15, 2023
(~715 miles)

A scant week or so following my return home from the Iron Butt Rally, LD rider/rallymaster Jon “Hammy” Tan posted another post-IBR Ride-to-Eat event at Yoder’s Country Market Restaurant in New Holland, Pennsylvania. Several friends, fellow IBR finishers, and mid-Atlantic area LD aficionados were intending to be there. I was stoked at the opportunity to rehash rally stories and catch up after having had several nights of full sleep.

I had originally schemed to bring my convalescing friend Gerry, who’d crashed out of the rally, to the meetup by car and surprise everyone. He was eager to come, but still very much on the mend not quite up for a long day-trip, so two wheels it would have to be. By now, most of my own minor aches & pains from that trip (relatively few except the mental scars!) had subsided. I was ready to get back in the saddle for a more “relaxing” 700 mile day off the clock, if Char would agree to come along to spend the day together.

She was on-board and the weather forecast seemed mostly agreeable, so we planned for a super-early start.  The RTE meetup time was set for 11:00. Despite the delicious and hearty Pennsylvania-Dutch luncheon fare I’d enjoyed my last trip to Yoder’s, I love breakfast food and wanted to sample their morning buffet this time around, which was served until 10:30. So we figured on arriving earlier for our own meal before joining the others to socialize while they enjoyed lunch.

We were on the road just after 04:00, with temperatures in the low 70s and humid. I’d had to top off the air pressure for the rear tire last-minute before we left. It brought to mind having to pump up on the morning of returning from Pittsburgh, which I’d forgotten about. Losing several PSI over the course of two weeks didn’t seem all that unusual, and I didn’t take time to thoroughly check the tire at this point. We were in a rush to get moving, and it seemed it must be a slow leak anyway – surely it would be fine for the day’s ride.

We hit a pocket of rain south of Providence, but otherwise had an uneventful ride down I-95 down into and across Connecticut, stopping to fuel up at the Branford service plaza.

Despite all my past vows and declarations about NEVER crossing the George Washington Bridge again unless under absolute pain of obtaining rally points, We continued into New York and past the I-287 exit, motoring straight into NYC on the most direct route. I’d figured at 07:00 on a Saturday – well, how bad could it really be? ☹

And wow, I’d forgotten just how terrible the road surface is on I-95 through that entire section before you get to the bridge crossing itself. This is just a horrible, terrible, nasty, debris-strewn, pothole-ridden stretch of highway that would be better handled by off-road vehicles with high-suspension IMO! We’re talking Flint, Michigan-bad here, maybe even worse! And riding two-up, we felt every hard jolt, believe me.

There were heavy pockets of moving traffic as we crossed through the Bronx. As we emerged from one of the slowdowns, we were moving along steadily, keeping around the speed limit due to the bad road surface, which was also worn extremely smooth and soaked with the drippings of thousands of daily vehicles that traverse through here each day.

There were lots of vehicles still bunched up around us when some idiot in an old beater sedan comes weaving up through the traffic from behind, making extremely dodgy passes between lanes where there was really no room for him to go. After he’d passed around us and some other cars using the far right lane and dodged back left, his threadbare tires seemed to lose traction on the glossy worn road surface of this stretch and he went spinning spectacularly across the lanes right in front of us to crash into the median barrier.

I came off the throttle immediately as this fool bounced off the Jersey barriers, his front-end destroyed and pieces of his car showering over and around us. His trajectory then carried him back across all lanes of traffic into the narrow breakdown lane, where he hit the barriers there and finally came to rest.

Wow, that’ll wake you up! I focused on avoiding the resulting debris in the roadway and making sure that we emerged past the scene OK. Char’s helmet had had a couple chunks of plastic bounce off it, and after making sure she was unhurt, I was furious that that driver had endangered our lives so needlessly this early on a weekend morning. We were both a bit stunned by what had just happened, but I continued onward to get us as far as possible away from what was likely to become another big jam behind us to deal with the mess that asshole had wrought upon himself. SMH.

Not too much further, we hit a real stoppage – the approach to the bridge was backed up for about two miles due to that same lower deck closure that messed with me on day 11 of the IBR two weeks back. While it gave us some time to catch our breath a bit after that near miss, it still sucks sitting in traffic. Never again! (again 😬 ) After about 20 minutes, once we got on the bridge itself, traffic opened back up.

Char enjoyed the somewhat foggy views over to Manhattan skyline while running south on the NJ turnpike. I spent time fighting a bit with my new Zumo XT GPS, which I’d received from Garmin to replace the bricked one from the IBR. This time it was just a matter of having missed configuring some of my preferred settings on the unit.

We crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania, then took I-276 skirting north of Philly, to I-76 and then exited on PA 10, heading southwest into Lancaster county. While busy with local traffic, part of this stretch follows a gentle ridgeline several miles through rolling farmlands, verdant in the midst of summertime.

Once through the traffic lights in Blue Ball, we crossed the town line into New Holland and arrived at our destination around 09:30. It was getting quite warm out already here in rural PA, promising to be a hot ride home later.

We explained to the hostess that we were there for an 11 o’clock reservation but wanted to start early to eat breakfast – could we please be seated at the reserved section (last time Hammy was given a private room for the grou). We were hoping to be able to carry our tab forward into lunch, to enjoy some coffee and pie when the others arrived. Unfortunately, the restaurant wasn’t having it, so we simply got a regular booth and dug in to the sundry delicious homestyle breakfast foods available at the extensive buffet, including eggs, meats, French toast, hotcakes, cereal, various casseroles, and much more.

Despite no air conditioning in the restaurant, we enjoyed our leisurely breakfast while waiting for the others and re-hashing our near accident back on 95. We settled our check then went out to wait for the other attendees, who began showing up shortly before 11.

Re-entering the restaurant, we were all shown to a big empty section in the rear dining area. Being full from breakfast, Char and I settled for drinking water while the others went to fill their plates with wonderful-smelling entrée meats, veggies, pastas, and other varieties of homestyle cooking. There were several IBR finishers in the crowd as well as a few regulars from the other eastern rally events of past years.

I was pleased to see several riders who’d experienced rally-ending misfortunes at this year’s IBR including Chris Comly and Lisa Rufo (with Marty and Steven of course). Steve Giffin was present and accounted for, recovering quickly from his luckily minor injuries from his IBR get-off. Chatting with someone throughout the wee hours of the night like I had with Steve whilst riding hair-on-fire across the country forms a certain connection. After a couple weeks of recuperation and hindsight, it was awesome to fully re-hash our Leg 3 routes and challenges along with rally winner James Owen, who’d also shown up for the meal.

 

Our friends Ken and Felicia were present, taking time between galivanting around the country in retirement, and we hadn’t seen them in forever. We had a very nice time catching up with everyone and meeting a few new folks while everyone chowed down. Thanks to Hammy for organizing these semi-frequent get-togethers to keep the mid-Atlantic riders all in touch despite the current dearth of local rallies.

When it was time to finally get going, we all ambled out into the sun’s heat once more and folks started taking their leave. I made a quick run over to the Yoder’s Market next door to pick up some shoofly pie to deliver to Gerry on our way home. The two-up Amans decided to follow us on the nice series of back roads I’d previously tested out last time I was here, to get north to I-78. The forecast and radar showed we’d be hitting some scattered thunderstorms at some point along the way, but at least we could enjoy some local scenery and some time off the interstate for part of the journey.

We followed route 23 back east and crossed I-76 again before ducking onto the series of back roads I’d cobbled together heading generally NNE. The roads through the rural and small-town Pennsylvania landscape were as pretty and curvy as I’d remembered. However, some of the earlier storms had already passed through the area and there was a lot of flooding water and debris dotting the street surfaces now, which kept our leaning to a minimum out of caution.

The asphalt was steaming after being warmed throughout the morning and hit with the midday showers, some of which we actually caught up to and had to ride through. At one intersection, my rear tire slid out a bit as we started moving from the stop sign, giving me the willies. Ken mentioned it later and we guessed there had been some diesel in the road from all the farm vehicles we’d seen in the area.

The weather was moving east in big blobs of storm cells, and when we finally emerged onto I-78 and picked up speed, we finally caught up to one of the big mothers. It was cats and dogs for a few stretches along the interstate, though both Ken and I were less concerned about it than all the other drivers on the road, who all slowed down way below the speed limit and drove with their flashers on like they were in danger of tipping over or something. 🙄 We did need to slow down quite a bit with our flashers during the heaviest sections, especially at the bottoms of slopes where water was pooling, but it was much easier to see when not behind other vehicles, so we dodged and weaved for several miles all the way into New Jersey and north on 287.

We finally broke north of the heaviest downpours in time to wave goodbye to our friends as they split off north on I-87 and we curved east to continue over the Hudson River. The weather continued to lighten up and after reviewing the radar, we decided to continue drifting north using I-684 to avoid the storms along I-95 or the Merritt Parkway through Connecticut. We’d broken out into clearer weather and were starting to look for a fuel stop near Bedford NY when I felt something definitely wrong with the bike’s handling. Coming off the throttle, I looked down at the TPMS, where the rear was reading 0 pressure.

“Crap, we have a flat tire!” I said. I flipped on the flashers and focused on keeping us upright while avoiding other vehicles coming from behind and steering over into the breakdown lane.

We made it to a stop without issue and dismounted. This was a pretty quiet stretch of 684, between exits, with woods next to the highway on either side. Nice wide shoulders that were pretty level for using the side stand. Checking the rear tire, I could immediately see the tire was completely flat. Shit! Thinking back to topping off the air this morning, I could have kicked myself for not checking the tire over more thoroughly.

We shed our jackets and helmets in the heat, placing Char’s bright white one behind us in the breakdown lane for conspicuity. With her help, I got the bike up on the center stand and started breaking out the tools and flat-repair kit. We were out of the rain, but had no idea if the storms were coming this way, and I didn’t want to waste any time.

I didn’t immediately see the problem, so I hooked up the air compressor and by feel while spinning the wheel, finally located a pretty large hole right in the center tread. It was big enough to put the reamer tool through almost without difficulty, so it must have been a pretty large bolt that had gone through. I thanked our lucky stars that we hadn’t gotten this flat in the middle of that GWB traffic this morning, or worse in the downpours we’d just come through! We were dry and relatively safe with decent traffic visibility and room to work, with only light traffic flow going by.

As I started to unpack the plugging supplies, a utility truck with New York state highway logos pulled in behind us. The driver, Matthew, asked us if we needed any assistance, whether it be fuel, tools, or even a drink of water. He was very friendly and said his job was a public service provided by the state, to help stranded motorists get going again. Cool! I told him I’d identified the problem and was preparing to plug the tire, so he said he’d wait around and serve to block us from the flow of traffic . He set out some cones for extra visibility.

Plugging the tire went quickly with such a large hole and seemed to be holding air well. We accepted a bit of gas from Matthew as well, since we’d been starting to look for it anyway and he said the next exit with a station would be several miles further ahead at the junction with I-84. All told, we were rolling again about 30 minutes after first coming to a stop – not too bad!

I took it easy on the plugged tire for the moment until we were sure all was good and got us to the service station by 84. After filling up, we got back on the interstate and continued on our route through Connecticut, getting through Hartford and arriving at Gerry’s house around 19:30. We had a nice visit with Gerry and Nicole, presenting the shoofly pie and well-wishes from all the other riders as his consolation prize for not making it to the RTE. Charlotte the dog was now my best friend, presenting her belly for rubs as we sat around and shot the shit for over an hour.

Out of there by 21:00, sticking to the interstates after dark, we were home around 22:40 – a long and eventful day out for breakfast!