There is a time for everything...

Hey everybody,

I can't remember how many times I have wanted to get this blog started up again. Every time I do, the process goes like this:

1: Justin thinks "Hey! I loved my blog! I should start writing in it again!"

2: Justin gets on his blog

3: Justin reads some old posts

4: Justin cries bitterly

5: Justin gets off the computer, tears his clothes, covers his head, and rubs ashes all over his skin in a sign of his great sorrow.

See the thing is... I find it hard to believe I could ever be as funny as I was when I lived in Sudan. I don't know why I had so much creativity there - all I know is that it hasn't really followed me back to the U.S.

Alas.

But, there has to be a 37th time for ev

erything, so today I am trying to start it again.

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I guess one of the real reasons I am more confident about starting it up again this time is that I have stuff to write about now. I just got a motorcycle, and I am going to be taking some roadtrips around the U.S., and it is great to have somewhere to write down all the funny (but probably not as funny as before) thoughts that I have about everything and everyone I see along the way.

So let's begin.

My goal is to take my bike out west. When I was younger I saw a video about someone driving down the pacific coast highway, the highway that goes al

l along the coast of California, and thought "I need to do that on a motorcycle."

<-- The Pacific Coast Highway

But, I thought for my first test trip I should do something a bit easier, and I wanted to see all my Pace U friends anyway, so I decided to go up to NYC.

From Raleigh NC, that is a 9 hour and 8 minute drive.

I have heard that typically you want to limit the amount of motorcycle road time per day to 6 hours, as anything past that just wears you out, so I decided to split the trip into two legs; one to DC, and one to NYC.

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1st LEG: North Carolina to Washington D.C.

On this leg I learned a couple of things.

1: Don't leave late

2: There are many bugs in virginia.

3: There are even more bugs at night in virginia.

4: A bug hitting your ch

est at 80 mph feels like a BB gun shot.

5: A bug hitting your face at 80 mph feels like a BB gun shot to your face.

2: Always wear a face shield. Especially at night. Especially in Virginia.

3: Driving at night is not fun.

4: After going 80 mph for 5 hours, your body gets very strange.

5: Never open your mouth while driving through Virginia at night without a face shield

6: Leave on time.

Somewhat random... But all very true.

Now I know what you are thinking: "Well well well, another Uganda-bus-barf-into-mouth incident! Looks like someone rode without a face shield and had bugs hit his face. Foolish. Serves him right!"

No, I didn't do that. But I did find my helmet looking like this after an hour of riding:

Now it was really dark when I took this, so it's hard to see the ridiculousness of how many dead bugs were on it, but trust me: It was significantly ridiculous.

I did, a couple of times get hit by big bugs in the chest, and that was very unpleasant.

All that to say: the first leg of the trip was not very exciting. I meant to leave at 3, but instead I left at 6:30, so most of my trip was at night time, going through the endless expanses of forest freeway in Virginia. I got to DC at around midnight, and stayed the night with my friend Cash.

My lovely couch

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2nd Leg: Washington D.C. to NYC

Leaving from D.C. (Trying to be awkward)

Thankfully, this leg of the trip made up for the boredom of the last one.

I was looking up really good roads to drive on, and I found Highway 213, which goes along some island-ish type off the coast of Maryland. If you look on this map, the three dots are where I changed my route to go over 213 for around 3 hours. It ended up being the best decision of my trip.

View Larger Map

Sometimes I have experiences that are just too intense to communicate to others, and parts of this drive definitely fell in that category. The whole 213 detour was a drive through giant farmlands and weird places that I didn't have time to take pictures of. The first bridge over was two lanes wide, and towered around 75 feet in the air over the bit of ocean that separates the island thing from the mainland. It was unreal.

A field on 213

Dumpster on the border of Delaware and Maryland

Gas Station in Delaware

Then I had a pretty crazy discovery: I found an abandoned amusement park in the middle of nowhere. And by nowhere I mean Delaware. Of course I had to stop an explore it for an hour or so.

The whole place was really eery. The wind was blowing really hard the whole time and the whole place was filled with the creaks and moans of the abandoned structures.

Finally I got to Jersey, and then to NYC.

I shall post more about NY and the trip back in a couple of days. For now, I need to shower. Badly.