Filling A Gap in the Narrative
This post is about my last excursion up in the Poconos on Sunday 08/08, during my mountain getaway after the end of that 10–week stretch of insanely compressed Summer Physics courses.
It’s Monday, 08/09 just after 8 AM, and my stay in the Poconos is ending. I’ll be loading up the few things remaining in my room at the wonderful AirBNB I booked for the weekend and heading back down to Broomall for a short visit to the apartment. Turns out I packed way too many things for my trip down to Florida beginning this afternoon. But it was a good test run to come up here and find that out. Better to pack too much early and be able to get rid of 75% of it than too little and find that out too late. Why did I think I would need dishes and cutlery? And my coffeemaker? And enough food for a week–long camping trip in an inaccessible location?
Yesterday I made it down and over to the Delaware Water Gap, a striking geologic formation along the Delaware River, which separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey at this latitude.
Here’s a panoramic photograph I stitched together from three separate images using Microsoft’s free Image Composite Editor, very easy to use. Although the images were taken at the end of the day, I thought I would lead with it.
However, the way I got down here wasn’t what I had planned. I’ve made a huge map of the 45–mile trip, including things that went well and those that did not. I’ll show the map first, then continue with the narrative below it.
Google Maps gave me a straightforward route, stay on SR 191 until it merges with SR 447, then follow that on down to US 611 and take that right over to the Gap. That’s the green line on the map. But way, way before the merge, I saw SR 447 split off to my left at a stop light. Thinking that was the place, I turned left and took it, that’s the red line. This happens to me all the time. You wouldn’t think from looking at the two routes that there was much difference between them. So wrong, and such a bad idea, unless the plan was to take a much inferior road and increase the odds of an early demise, or at best a long stay in the hospital. It would not have made much of a difference in a car. Yes the road is a lot rougher and it’s got more twists and turns, but so what? Aha, I can hear you thinking, why was that so bad? Isn’t that more fun on a motorcycle? It would have been except for one feature of the road that persisted for 19.9 miles until it rejoined SR 191.
You know when they dig up the street in your neighborhood to lay new pipe for the water main? The trench is about 18–24” wide, and when they are done they fill it in and resurface the road. So no big deal except that the troglodytes that did that on SR 447 did not steam roll the surface flat again with the existing roadway. They left a raised ridge on both sides of the filled–in surface. Again, this would not have been a big deal in a car, but when a motorcycle wheel goes from high to low or low to high across a ridge like that, which was raised up about 1/2" above the roadway on either side, an interesting motion occurs. Interesting in the sense of disturbing, unsettling, disquieting, unnerving. The bike does a very quick wobble: Center, Left, Right, Center, with a significant amplitude and all in about 1/10 of a second. It feels like you’ve hit something that will propel you right off the road. There is a lurch in the stomach and a momentary feeling of certain, impending doom.
However, as I shall explain in quite some detail in an upcoming post, “The Zen (i.e., Physics) of Motorcycles”, there is really no danger, and the bike will remain stable in the long run as you transition from one side of the ridge to the other. After you’ve experienced this enough times, you learn to suppress the gag reflex and trust the bike to maintain its line of travel, and invariably it does. But that does not prevent the gag reflex from occurring, every time, no matter how many times you’ve been through it. It is accompanied by a very brief moment of loss of the sense of bodily balance. You know the feeling after you’ve been spun around rapidly a few times and then come to rest? How the room seems to keep spinning for a moment? A little like that. For 19.9 miles.
It was impossible to avoid crossing the trench, even though there was plenty of room on either side. You see, I was not the only one on the road, and as I have related in a previous post, those incompetent fools behind the steering wheels of vehicles coming my way JUST COULD NOT STAY IN THEIR LANE. I was constantly having to move over to the right in my own lane to avoid getting pancaked. Then I would move back to the left of the trench to ride between it and the centerline of the road. It’s just safer there, more room on the right in case something happens, like avoiding those incompetent oncoming fools, have I mentioned them? So I was constantly traversing the ridge one way then back the other way, accompanied each time by that wobble. For 19.9 miles. Finally, thank DOG, I re–merged with SR 191 and continued on to the Water Gap. After that the day returned to a beautiful outing in that spectacular, beautiful countryside. On the way back I did manage to stay on the green line in the map and avoid that stretch of road.
I got back about 6 PM and got right to it, getting the bike up on the trailer and strapping it down for the 2–1/2 hour drive back down to my apartment and then the departure for the long, 1100–mile drive down to Tampa. There was an incident loading the bike. It did not seem significant at the time. More in my next post, which will cover the two–day trip down into the South. I was raised there, but even way back then, as it still does today, when I am there it feels like I have left the country of my birth and need a passport to travel any further. More about that too.
All the best,
From Tampa, FL at 9:30 AM on Wednesday 08/11.
Rex
