Melting Down. Almost.

Today neither Ruth nor her dad are in a mood to write a long blog post. That's why this is going to be a photo story.

This morning we had breakfast at the hotel sitting outside between the old gas pumps.

Then we took off and rode many beautiful backroads.

 We saw a lot of old typical Route 66 locations and some more recent artifacts.

We had started out in Missouri, and then we crossed into Kansas where we had lunch at the "Cars on Route" diner in Galena, KS. Those of you who saw the movie "Cars" might recognize that location and the cars for that very diner, the adjacent buildings, and the old cars gave the inspiration to the movie.

After only 13 mi in Kansas we entered Oklahoma. Here a relatively new highway follows the old Route 66 alignement and we made good speed. This was a good thing because by then the temperature was in the high 90s and we were melting as soon as we stopped. We drank a plenty of water but that was still not enough. So we looked for, and found a great diner in Chelsea, OK where we had cold water, icecream and pie (in that order!).

We chatted with the locals and the young waitress was awed when we told her that our high school has about 2000 students (her graduation class was only 50 kids). Another local told us that he had spent some time in Pittsburgh, PA when the Pirates won the World Series in 1960. And the pitcher who made the deciding play came from, YES! Drum Roll!: Chelsea, OK.

Looking at the photo of Downtown Chelsea one would not expect that...

When we left the diner a woman approached us and she turned out to be the local newspaper reporter. Hearing that we are riding the entire Route 66 she quickly got her camera, took a photo and interviewed us. We'll be The Stars in the next  issue of the weekly newspaper!

After that exciting interruption we hit the road again, saw famous Route 66 stuff like the Biggest Totem Pole near Foyil, OK and the Blue Whale in Catoosa, OK.

Look for Ruth and Marianne near the entrance!

Finally we arrived at the Desert Hills Motel in Tulsa, OK (another original Route 66 motel, the movie Christmas Child was shot here), did some motorcycle maintenance (cleaning, oil check, etc) and mounted our new Route 66 license plate frames.

I guess after 219 mi full of beautiful roads, interesting people, and famous Route 66 locations we deserve a good nights sleep.

1000 miles down, 2000 miles to go...

We have made it about one third of the way, putting most of the highway mileage behind us.  Sunday we continued driving west to St. Louis, Missouri.  After checking into our motel, we went into the city. The Gateway Arch is the iconic monument of the city so of course we had to see that.

  You can go up to the top as well so we did that and had a fantastic view of the city from the top. Because it's 630 feet high, there's quite a bit of wind, enough for the arch to have an amplitude of 9 inches in either direction. You can feel it from the top too! The video in the Visitor Center center is fantastic as well, explaining the building process. No one died during the process even though they built the entire thing without being secured to any guard railings. Dinner was at a Peruvian restaurant that I had found on TripAdvisor and was delicious!

Our motel didn't have breakfast so we found a place along the road to eat instead. It was a place called Kolache Factory, which served rolls filled with various things, like bacon, sausage, egg, among other things.  They had a few dessert/sweet ones as well.

St. Louis is where we picked up the actual Route 66 so the rest of the day was spent riding down the road to Springfield, MO.  Route 66 actually goes parallel to I44, crossing it a few times and taking a few more curves through the woods.

Thankfully it had rained the night before so it cooled down quite a bit, making it a very pleasant ride. The Route passes many small towns as well, giving it the nickname “Main Street of America.” In the morning, we stopped at Meramec Caverns (Jesse James' hideout) which had been recommended to us.

We took a tour of the caverns, seeing stalactites and stalagmites in various formations.

Along the way were all sorts of weird things, like the World's Largest Rocking Chair, old bridges (some of which were closed), and old motels.

Lunch saw us at Missouri Hicks Bar-B-Q, a little restaurant with delicious food and cool decorations.


We eventually finished our 249 miles of the day, finally arriving at about 8 pm in Springfield, MO, the birthplace of Route 66.

Life lesson from the road: Don't unzip the first few inches of the sleeves and drive down the interstate without wearing a long-sleeve underneath. You'll end up with weird tan/near sunburn between where the gloves stop and before the jacket starts for real.

Louisville, KY

Today it's my (Ruth dad's) turn. While Ruth couchsurfed last night in Huntington, WV, Marianne and I spent the night with my sister & brother-in-law in Pittsburgh, PA. We always appreciate their hospitality!

Ruth, Marianne and I have happily reunited in Louisville, KY. By now we have ridden some 700 miles and our derrieres are getting used to it. A good rhythm is to ride about 90 mins and then take a break. At highway speeds that translates into 90-110 miles (depending on the speed limit plus "margin") and by then Marianne's Softail and Ruth's Shadow need to be fueled up anyway because their range is about 160 and 130 mi, respectively. Keeping the legs to 90mins really helps avoiding getting sore!

Also, at gas stations one always meets interesting people, and when they hear that we are on a cross-country trip inevitably their eyebrows go up. We ran into a woman originally from Utrecht/The Netherlands, a lady in a Mercedes convertible who remarked on our “nice bikes”, and a Harley-couple from Louisville, KY who is dreaming of doing this tour, too.

In Louisville we had planned to tour the Evan Williams Distillery, but unfortunately the last tour was already sold out. So we did the second best: We bought a bottle of bourbon (“Larceny”) which we opened later that evening when we were back at the hotel. But before returning to the Days Inn, we walked along the Ohio River, saw the Clark statue (yes, the Lewis & Clark guy – going cross-country I feel a little bit like him...) and had dinner in hip bar/restaurant called “Garage” which described exactly what it was before it was turned into a bar...

Before returning to the hotel, we briefly ride across the Ohio River so that Marianne and I can claim that we rode through 5 states in one day: PA, WV, OH, KY and IN. Ruth can claim 3 states today: WV, KY, IN.

Yesterday we had to put out raingear on - it kept us dry :-)

And so the journey begins...

If you have been around any member of my family in the past few months, you'll know that your family vacation (sans Lioba*) is a little different this year. We are taking a road trip across the US on historic Route 66......on motorcycles. The condition of letting me come on the trip was that I write a blog with pictures on the tour for people to keep up with. I'm only half-joking on that. So this is it! We leave on Friday, June 5 from our respective locations (me from Harrisonburg, VA, and my parents from Exton, PA) and meet up in Louisville, KT on Saturday afternoon.  From there it's to St. Louis, MO, where we'll pick up the Route.  It actually starts in Chicago but that would add another few hundred empty highway miles which is no fun. We'll have to take care of that bit another time.  From there we'll follow the historic route, stopping at weird monuments, eating at kitchy dinners, and staying in an assortment of sleeping establishments, from motels and hotels, to a wigwam (!) and a haunted hotel.  After taking a look at the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, CA, we'll fly back to PA. The motorcycles will be shipped back to PA and VA and arrive a week later.

It's going to be unlike any vacation that we've taken, especially being on the motorcycles so much, but it's going to be a lot of fun! I've already taken the first step and drove mine 4 hours to Harrisonburg after being home last weekend. This is our current status.  As we go along, we'll update the map with different colors so you'll know exactly where we are.

I currently don't have a good picture of all three bikes but there will be plenty of pictures taken in the next two weeks so you'll have to wait on that. This is what we'll be riding though:

Dad: Harley Davidson Electra Glide 103 cu in (1,700 cc)
Mom: Harley Davidson Softtail 103 cu in (1,700 cc)
Ruth: Honda Shadow 74 cu in (1,100 cc)

Leaving PA for the trip down to Hburg on the Honda Shadow

FAQ

Q: Where are you going to put everything?
A: That black bag on the back of the motorcycle. I'd estimate it to be around the size of a medium suitcase. Obviously packing for two weeks on a motorcycle is a little challenging due to that size limitation and the gear that is required. Luckily the bulkier items (i.e. white jacket, pants, helmet, boots) will be worn while riding which diminishes the volume quite a bit. Aside from the essential gear and some tools/hardware, I'm taking an assortment of clothes that will mix and match and pack up tightly. I did practice run last night packing up everything that you see there and it all fit with enough room to buy some things along the way. 

Q: What if it rains?
A: See the bright yellow on the top left of the picture? That's my rain jacket and pants that fit over the white jacket and pants. If it starts to drizzle, I'll put that on and keep going. The bag has a rain cover as well.  I got caught in some rain coming down from PA so I pulled over to the side and put it on. It kept me dry and warm too. Obviously if it starts downpouring, we'll pull over and wait it out for a little bit. At that point, there's no use trying to continue. 

Q: How are the motorcycles getting back if you're flying back?
A: There are various companies that will ship motorcycles so that you don't have to drive it all the way back.  They have different locations across the US so we'll drop them off at the location in Santa Monica and pick them up in Exton and Richmond the first week in July. 

Q: Won't those 3,000 miles be super boring since you can't talk to each other?
A: Actually we can talk to each other. There's these little bluetooth/radio device thingies that attach to the side of the helmet so we can talk to each other! And listen to radio if we care to as well.
That's all the FAQs that I've actually been asked so far but if you think of anything random, just let me know! If you know of any good places to see along our way, let me know that too.

If you're in an especially stalkerish mood right now, it's late at night and you're wasting time on the internet, or are just curious about this blog, you can continue scrolling and read about my travels around Europe last summer and Guatemala the summer before that. 

* Lioba is spending the summer in Skagway, Alaska, as a hiking guide! Here is a link to her blog if you want to catch up with her:
https://liobam.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/on-the-road-to-skagway/

Heidelberg

(I wrote this right after the weekend but am just now getting around to posting it with pictures and everything so keep that in mind. This was the weekend of June 19th)
 


Wow. What a weekend. Last Thursday was yet another holiday so I took Friday off too. This is what the weekend looked like:
Heidelberg > Landau > Strasbourg > Wissembourg > Speyer > Munster
Since that's quite a lot, I've split up the weekend into two parts.  Stay posted for the next one soon!

Very early Thursday morning, I drove down to Heidelberg (Zimrides).  After dropping my stuff off where I was staying, I headed into town.  I took a tour of the Altstadt, the middle of the town, where the lady took us around some of the historically noteworthy things and explained a lot of the history of the town.  Heidelberg is home to the oldest university in Germany - it was founded in 1386! Some of the buildings are in the Altstadt while many of them have newer buildings on the outskirts. An interesting part of the University is the Karzer - the student prison.  They were thrown in here for various reasons. However this wasn't your normal prison.  They could basically choose when they stayed there. If that night didn't work, then they'd go the next night or maybe even the week after.  During the day they still went to all of their classes/lectures but during the night they went back up to the prison.  Their friends were allowed to visit them and bring food and drink so whenever someone of the friend group had to spend a night, they had a little party up there. Not too bad although the beds are of wire strips so rather uncomfortable to sleep on I'd imagine.  They also decorated it as you can see in the picture.

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Die Alte Aula - one of the old lecture halls

 After a delicious nutella crepe for lunch, I made my way up to the Schloss (castle) via bergbahn (funicular).   Since it's up on a hill, it gives a fantastic view of the town and the river.  The castle itself was built in a few different sections which is visible with the different style of architecture.  Inside the castle is the Apotheken Museum - Pharmacy Museum.  I found it very interesting :) There's also das Große Fass, a massive wine barrel that holds 219,000 liters of wine.

I also took a tour with a Waschweib, a washing lady of the castle.  She took us inside the castle and told us about the history and some stories of the people living there.  The wash ladies of the time would go from castle to castle and gossip with each other about all the rich people.  Heidelberg is in the south of Germany and they speak a very different dialect of German than I'm used to.  This lady had a very strong accent.  I had to concentrate so much to understand what she was saying but I got most of it.

On the tour was another girl traveling alone so we stuck together and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon together, walking around the castle grounds and then going into town for a piece of cake.  She's a study nurse traveling all around Germany collecting data on dialysis patients.  She'll be in a different town each week for a year and then return to those towns to follow up in a second year.  She also lived in the US for a year so we had a great time reminiscing about American things. That night I met up with the people I was staying with and we went to a little festival at the university. Lots of pallet benches, lights in trees, homemade jewelry, super cute decorations, and music provided by a girl who sang and played piano and percussion with a looping pedal.  I always love listening to those people. To get there, we biked but I obviously didn't have my bike with me down there so I sat on the back of one of the other ones. I've seen people be transported this way and had always wanted to try it and now I finally got to! It wasn't the most comfortable but it worked. Unfortunately I don't have a picture but maybe in the next few weeks I'll snag one.

The next morning I wandered to the other side of the river and walked up the Philosophenweg which gave a fantastic view of the town from the other side. This path is up a big hill, about 20 times worse than the Village Hill at JMU. At the top of this hill is also one of the physics buildings. I think the walk alone would deter me from studying physics, as if there wasn't enough already. After walking back down across die Alte Brücke (Old bridge), I caught a bus to the Carl Bosch Museum which is a little bit outside of Heidelberg, nestled in the hills.  Carl won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for chemistry.  Since that's what I'm studying, I figured it was worth a look.  A cute little museum and definitely worth it.  I learned a lot about his life, his studies, and of course his research. Fun fact: he liked to collect bugs.

Funky monkey statue

This is a bathtub.

For lunch I met up with Julia, the other girl that was staying with the people I was staying with.  We ate a Mexican place but the people that were working there looked Italian and I had a doener, a Turkish meal. Interesting mix but delicious.  Julia had spent a year in Russia so we spent the afternoon comparing the American, German, and Russian cultures.  In the US, people are generally very friendly and open, always smiling at strangers, while in Germany, people are lot more closed off and private.  It isn't that typical to smile at someone you don't know while walking down the street.  Russians are even less smiley.  To them, a smile is flirting. So Americans think Germans and Russians are rude because they don't smile while Russians think Germans and especially Americans are trying to manipulate them because they smile more.  There's a phrase in German that explains this perfectly: Andere Länder, andere Sitten - basically different country, different customs/habits.

That was all of Heidelberg! Friday afternoon I took the train to my cousin's in Landau, which is about an hour south of Heidelberg.  Those adventures will be in the next post!

I had posted another post two weeks ago but never linked it to Facebook. If you missed it, you can click here to read it.