Day One.
Bristol to Portland.
Because I am perpetually late, we got underway at about 10:30 (instead of the 9 we were aiming for). Made it into Westfield around 12:30 and stopped for lunch. We decided to take the Mass Pike to 495 instead of follwing 10/202 all the way through New Hampshire.
Pulled in to Portland at about the planned time (6ish). Overall not bad. Frequent breaks are a must though, since we went pretty much solid from Westfield all the way to Portsmouth (about 150 miles, all highway). My butt was not amused.
But I don’t think I’m too terribly interested in travelling on highways any more. People are either stupid, blind, or deliberately inconsiderate. I cannot count the number of times that cars cut in between the bikes for no good reason (I’m not going to fault someone for merging, but if you’re in the middle lane, and there’s nobody in front of you, and no exits in sight, let me have my zarking lane, OK?
Oh, and another thing. If you’re going to change lanes in front of a motorcycle, could you consider staying a bit more than two feet off our front tire? We’re kinda exposed out there, and the last thing we need to see is your bumper where the road used to be.
And I cannot stress how important this is: do not tailgate a motorcycle. If we have to make a sudden move or a sudden stop, we can do so in a far shorter distance than you can. In which case you’re going to hit us, and that’s not going to be pretty. I’ll let you try to explain to my mother why there’s little bits of me embedded in your grille, because you were in too much of a hurry to actually DRIVE NICE.