Day 5 - USA all Day

6/19/2011 - My first day entirely in the United States started off with me waking up to the rolling thunder of all of the Harley Davidson motorcycles in the parking lot of the Days Inn. I had expected to be woken up in this fashion based on all of the bikes that were in the parking lot. I made my way over to the breakfast room by the registration desk and made myself something to eat. They had these frozen "pucks" purportedly made out of eggs and some sausage discs that were roughly the same size. Toss each of them in the microwave for a minute, slap on a toasted english muffin with a slice of cheese and viola, instant Days McMuffINN. It was about what you would expect to buy in a gas station. I finished that and my coffee and I was off.

It was too bad I made a wrong turn to start the day off and ended up going 1/2 hour north of where I wanted to go. I got myself turned around and then headed east for the coast. The rest of the ride through New Hampshire was just as beautiful as it had started out the day before. It was nice to be on back roads for the morning, but they were kind of busy with lots of people headed toward the Atlantic to spend the day. I finally got my glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean but neglected to take a picture of it. Little did I know that this would be the only time I would see it on my journey. I promptly made my way towards I-95 and headed north into Maine.

I got off at the very first exit which ended up being my second mistake of the day. As I was getting off of the freeway I saw a sign for the Maine welcome center which was another exit or two up the highway. "No problem" I said to myself. I'll just hop back on the highway and go up to it. No such luck. The exit that I got off at had no way to re-enter the highway going north. So I looked around for a little bit to find a sign that said Maine and the best I could do was the photo at the left. If you look closely above the number 95, the Interstate sign says Maine. Slightly bummed, I hopped back on my motorcycle and headed south in anticipation of Massachusetts.

This would be my modus operandi for the remainder of my journey: Get on I-95 cross a state line, go to it's Welcome Center, snap a picture of yourself at the Welcome Center, wash, rinse, repeat. I was on a time deadline and this was the only way I was going to be able to "collect" all of the rest of the states on my list and still be home before Tuesday. So things continued as such for Massachusetts.

Unfortunately, the Welcome Center in Providence, RI closed at 2:00PM on Sunday afternoon. I made it there at 2:25PM. No place on the outside of the building did it say either Providence or Rhode Island. The only pic I have of myself in RI is this little gem I took in a McDonald's parking lot.

So, off I went to Connecticut. Nothing really that remarkable about riding through "the Constitution state" other than the fact that the southbound highway actually travels west. This made made traversing the state in the afternoon REALLY tough. The sun was in my eyes making me squint which in turn made me really tired. I started feeling like I was going to nod off.

I finally had to just pull off at a rest area and collect myself. I certainly wasn't going to make it through New Jersey today as I had planned. It was around 5:00 when I pulled over and started mulling my options. If traffic stayed consistent, it would put my in the vicinity of New York City at dusk which is when I would pull over for the night anyway. At this point I got the bright idea to call my good friend Anthony who lives in Manhattan to see if I might be able to surf on is couch for the evening. The answer was an emphatic yes, so I had my destination set; however, traffic would not cooperate with me. The closer I got to NYC, the worse the traffic got. It had slowed to a crawl which absolutely sucks on a motorcycle. All of the toll plazas I encountered didn't help either. I finally made it to my destination close to 10:00.

I parked on the street in front of Anthony's building. I would have until 8:00AM Monday to move it or risk getting another parking ticket like I did last year on the Bukkit Tour. We went out and grabbed a mouthwatering (and HUGE) slice of pizza at Artichoke's. Next we had a beer at a small bar across the street. Since both of us had ridiculously busy days, we decided to turn in early and were asleep by midnight. I was ever so grateful for the safe place to stay and got a REALLY good night's sleep. Little did I know how much I'd need it on day 6.