24 July 2007
Woke up feeling a little lousy; scratchy throat and popping ear--wonder
if my body knows that the big push is over, and it's ok to break down.
Well, it's not ok!
It was chilly, and sprinkling a little bit when I
left, but I didn't bother with gloves or anything else. Took I-95 south
for 150 miles; it was fairly deserted at first. Sometimes there'd be
one or two vehicles sharing it with me, other times not. Once I got to
Bangor, traffic had picked up, but it still wasn't bad. I got off the
Interstate in
Augusta (although MapSource had taken me further south, the GPS knows I
don't like toll roads) and mostly stayed on secondary roads all day.
But traffic was light, and what there was of it was moving at a
compatible rate.
I stopped for a little break at 130 miles into my
first full tank of the day, figuring that was somewhat over half way to
the next fill-up. But the trip meter turned over 220, then 230 and the
reserve light still hadn't come on. Finally, at about 240 it came on,
and said I had 57 miles left. Now, you know that ain't right! The 57
counted down pretty quickly to 47, within a mile or so. I figured I'd
push it, I'd like to get over 270 miles on a tank, just for grins. As
it turned out, I got 286 miles on that tank! Bad news was, the next gas
station was at 287.5. ("Miles to go" said 7 when the bike died.) The
good news was, I had filled that litre bottle some days ago, so I
dumped it in and rode on in.
For some silly reason, I wanted to get
into New York before stopping for the night, so I skipped some decent
looking motels in Bennington, and pushed on. Didn't really see anything
in Troy, and when I got to Albany, the GPS wanted me to take I-87. So I
pulled over, and started looking for motels. Turns out I was quite
close to the airport, so there's a plethora, but they're not the kind I
like. Finally I found an EconoLodge, but he didn't have any vacancies;
I went a bit further and ended up in a Regency Inn ($102!).
The
advertised Wi-Fi is down (if it ever existed), there's a hole where the
air conditioner used to be, paint flakes on the floor, broken glass on
the balcony, the TV remote is missing, there's no sound on the TV, the
garment rack is crooked, only screwed in on one side, and has one
hanger, there were no towels or soap until I complained, no trash can,
and the toilet doesn't flush properly. Plus I had to drive a mile and a
half back to get groceries ($9).
States:
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York.
461 GPS miles (8359 total), 51.3 moving average, 73.2 max.
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