Oh the people you meet..... (Shout Outs to People/Places)

This trip has reminded me that... 

 everything you see and everyone you meet all have a story to tell....(all you have to do is want to know/ask)

there are so many great people in the world (despite what the news and newspapers show us)...

Whether it is....

- Leaving Niagara and stopping along the Niagara River Corridor Parkway and meeting this really nice guy who was on his motorcycle too... we talked for over a half an hour (Day 2)

-Riding through the grape country of NY & Pennsylvania and you see the abandoned old headquarters of Welch's Grape Juice Co. in Westfield, NY (Day 2)

-Meeting the lovely lady who works at the Johnson Estate Winery and after she found out what I was doing came running out to me to tell me that I had to drive up through the vineyards to get a great shot of the vineyards with Lake Erie in the background... FYI It was a sketchy ride on the dirt road (Day 2)

-Checking out of the Comfort Inn in Downtown Cleveland and talking about life and children with Sheila and another beautiful woman who were both working the front desk there. You were both awesome!! Keep on being amazing! (Stay active in the community they need you Sheila) (Day 3)

- Driving through Cleveland and seeing all of the remnants (remains of) all the steel factories - reminds me of why we should try to buy American made products when possible. (Day 3)

- Stopping to get postcards to mail out to all of you (Wang Students) in downtown Cleveland and I had no change for the parking meter :( Luckily I saw the Officer who was giving out tickets and we talked... He rocked! He put a blank ticket on my bike so that if another officer came by they would think I already got a ticket!! (Day 3)

- Going to Walmart to get a portable hard drive because my computer couldn't fit any more video (didn't think about that happening BUT I should have) & I ran into the SOULS OF MISCHIEF crew!!!
I don't think they were too thrilled when myself, dressed as an astronaut, approached them but they warmed up quickly! Thanks guys and have a great tour! (Day 3)

- after getting scared to death in an awful storm I stopped under a bridge.. When the storm passed I went to a truck stop and met a family who was at the truck stop with their kids because they lost power... You know your not in Mass or NH when a family goes to the truck stop for a night out when theirs no power... Obviously not a lot of stuff around there.. (Day 3 - Indiana- East of South Bend)

- Patrick & Reggie from the Days Inn in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.. Patrick owns the hotel and he was working the front desk when I arrived. He was such a genuinely great person.. Super helpful, and caring.. When I wanted to go to the store he told me not to walk "that" way but go "this" way. I wanted to grab a bite to eat and he told me he would have Reggie give me a ride..  & Reggie - I think the best thing to say is "Reggie Rocks"!!! There are some people in life that go out of their way to care (Patrick & Reggie) and I was walking down the hallway when I first got there and Reggie beat me to saying hello & asking how I was doing.... At one point I was thinking about going to the store and he pulls out his keys and says you got it!! I'm rambling now so in closing Thank You ALL and tell that lovely young lady that was late to work to show up on time and then I'll give her a ride on the motorcycle!

Still to come 

-Man at gas station outside Madison WI
-guys at the Ducati Shop
-Mary & Gary of Sauk City
-Larry Potter of Minnesota
- hairdresser on Main St. Sheridan WY
- Ken Weber of Honda Valley Motor

...... more will be added and eventually a final video will be made

Day 4 Michigan City, Indiana to Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Going into this entire trip I promised my self I wouldn't ride at dawn, dusk, or at night.. too dangerous... Well I have found myself riding at dusk and at night too much... Everything takes longer on a bike... Every time I stop everything has to come of my bike unless I will be really quick or can keep an eye on my stuff... I've gotten better and quicker - I park near shopping carts in parking lots and put my stuff in... Went to return the external hard drive I bought becasue I forgot to look for whether it was compatable with a Mac..  It wasn't so....

to see where I am now click here

The weather took a turn for the worse so I stopped in McDonalds to let the storm pass and met a lady who gave me some pointers for going through Chicago. Skyway Highway and Lake Shore Drive here I come (after driving though South Side Chicago)

Chicago is Boston on steroids the skyline is just the first row of really tall buildings behind them there are more!! In addition Lake Shore Drive is similar to Storrow Drive but instead of 2/3 lanes it is 4/5 lanes (in each direction) and rather than looking at the Charles River, Lake Shore Drive overlooks Lake Michigan (which looks more like an ocean)








Unfortunately since I was not able to take all of the videos off  my video camera the night before the cameras memory filled up... So the next 2 1/2 hours were spent downloading the video onto my NEW external hard drive... 2 coffees / 3 waters and a sandwich later I was leaving Chicago and just made into Milwaukee Wisconsin by night fall.
In between the two cities I didn't have to look at as much corn fields and other crops.. but there were still  some... I did however pass an outlet mall and since I'm running out of clean clothes already I decided to stop and find my favorite store........

notice the Puma store in the background :)

Then it was off to Milwaukee... just made it into town by nightfall but I'm having some motorcycle issues. My chain is expanding so much that it is rubbing and ripping up the side of my rear tire.... Gotta find a shop tomorrow!

I met a lot of amazing people in Milwaukee between Patrick Reggie and Kelly its been a real awesome trip and I'm loving Wisconsin so far.










I'll add more later ( I know I am behind)

 As of writing this I am broken down at the base of the Rocky Mountains but my parts got overnighted (1 day shipping) from Texas to Sheridan WY so they should be arriving any minute now!!

Day 3 Met Hip Hop Legends

I went to Wal-Mart to get an external hard-drive because I ran out of room on my laptop already and I pulled in an met my legends in the Underground Hip Hop seen.

I grew up listening to Hip-Hop and all the goodies like Tribe Called Quest, Jurassic 5, Digable Planets, De La Souls, DJ Premier, Souls of Mischief.

So I park the bike and ran into the Souls of Mischief / Heiroglyphics crew. (Little did they now that this white boy (Mr. Potter) who looks like an astronaut in my gear still has their "93 till Infinity" album on tape.

This was an amazing moment.. and guess what they checked out my blog. :)

They have a new album that came out so they were on tour in Ohio and beyond

**Eventually I will have time to edit the videos and not have to keep throwing screen shots up**

93 till Infinty meets Coast-to-Coast

Day 3 Cleveland to Michigan City, Indiana

Cleveland, Ohio to Michigan City, Indiana (300 miles)

Click here to see where I am now

I planned for a lot and packed a ton of stuff but one thing I DIDN'T think about is data storage.... All of the videos I am shooting take up a lot of space on a computer. By the time I got to cleveland I couldn't fit any more video on my computer... So I stopped off at Wal-Mart to get an external hard drive to put all my videos on... and I'll have to get another one in a couple of days

Souls of Mischief/Heiroglyphics Crew (Walmart Parking Lot)

Plus someone dressed like they're going to the moon

Land:

Leaving Cleveland the land gets flat quick and all that is around is truck stops and corn. I know I told all of the 7th graders about how every time we eat corn we see it twice.... well I've seen my fair share of corn and it's only going to get worse from here... 

Weather: 

It was really windy because the land is so flat and there are no trees, hills, mountains etc.. to break up the wind and slow it down.. I was getting blown around a lot.. 

Then....

I was trying to make it to Chicago today but then this happened...

The sky blackened & I could see lightning. I pulled over to put waterproof covers on my bags but didn't have time to put my liners inside of my jacket and pants.. it takes about 10 minutes and never mind I cant take my pants off on the side off the highway.. At this point the wind is really wipping and I start to get poured on.. You could see the wall of water coming and then...

... I had to get to cover. I start driving
& I CAN'T see.. (The picture doesn't do it justice
because my visor on my helmet wasn't this clear..)  I was getting blown from one side of the lane to another and there are tractor trailers going by. At this point I am driving around 40 MPH and tapping my brakes so that people coming up behind me see me... I was praying for a bridge to be coming soon. I have been in a motorcycle accident and this was scarier (because I had to live this for about 10-15 minutes until I got to a bridge)

Walls of water carried by the wind gust would just hit me and sent me one way and then another... Was  definitely a sketchy feeling but then..... I got to a bridge and a bunch of cars pulled over behind me.. I was shaken up a bit.. This was the first point where I was like what am I doing out here...

Got under the bridge, relaxed and then started shooting footage.. as the storm passed (about 10-15 minutes after getting to the bridge) this is what I saw

The intense light from the lightning blinded my camera

 After the rain really lightened up I got back on the bike and headed for the nearest coffee shop (truck stop). When I got there someone asked me if I was out in that because there were 80 mile per hour winds... I told him I didn't really have a choice I had to make it to a bridge... Power was out in much of the area and tree limbs were down..

Next stop! Michigan City ( nearest place that has restaurants and hotels)

Day 2 ( Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada to Cleveland)

Day 2

Driving Time- 3 PM - 8:00 PM
Miles - 240 miles

To See where I am now click here

U.S. map (still got a ways to go ;)

 Canada

Drove along the Niagara River Corridor Parkway (Niagara River connects two of the Great Lakes). Eventually crossed the Niagara River  & had to go through U.S. Border Patrol to get back into NY state

Crossing into the U.S. (1/2 the bridge is Canadian & 1/2 U.S.)
City of Buffal in the background

NY

Drove through the City of Buffalo, which has a population of 361,000. You  could tell there was once a lot of factories and that it was probably a booming city at one point. Like so many cities they all have a story to tell ( a past and a future) and so often just by driving through you can start to hear the story.

Past Buffalo I ended up driving through grape farms after  grape farms. It was so beautiful because the terrain was hilly but it definitely gets repetitive. Grapes need a lot of moisture in the air and since this region of NY and parts of PA (Pennsylvania) are along Lake Erie they get it. Lake Erie is so large that it changes the climate (temperature and precipitation) for the surrounding area. Westfield NY is the grape juice capital of the world, more grape juice comes from here than any where else. This was the original headquarters for Welch's Grape Juice Company. The grape juice and wine we get at the supermarket has to come from somewhere. :)

Grape Vines with Lake Erie in the background
(Westfield, NY population 3,400)

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania was just like the last part of NY, still a bunch of grapes.  The other difference is that I-90 is now called the Pennsylvania Turnpike instead of the NY Thruway. I don't remember much else of importance.

Ohio

Crossed into Ohio on I-90 and now it is called the Ohio Turnpike. Ohio had a lot of farmland but as I got closer to Cleveland the farms disappeared from view. Cleveland is right on Lake Erie and it has a beautiful skyline so there were plenty of great photo opportunities. The sun was setting so this was my last stop for the night before checking into the Comfort Inn in downtown Cleveland.

Day 1 (Plum Island Massachusetts to Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada)

Day 1 
** Video is coming but probably not till I get to Lake Tahoe**
Time on the road : 9:00 am - 12:00 am (15 hours)
Miles Driven : about 500 miles

To see where i am now just click here

Driving from Plum Island MA through Boston was great. Then took I-90 (I= Interstate & if the number is even then the highway goes East/West across the country, if its odd it runs North/South)

MA

I-90 (AKA-Mass Pike) Goes from Boston all the way west across MA (which can get boring at times & there are a lot of State Troopers) and before you get out of MA you cross through the "Berkshires", which is a region blanketed with small mountains, rolling terrain (lots of hills), and is well noted as the region that makes the paper that U.S. Dollars is printed on ( North Adams, MA)

** I will uplaod video but editing the film is taking for ever.**

NY

I-90 ( AKA- NY Thruway) goes from the MA border all the way across NY till it hits the corner of PA. At times the drive was beautiful. Farm land all over the place even on steep hills. When I hit the Mohawk River Valley the highway was right along side the river for miles and it was gorgeous.

 ** Unfortunately this is conveniently the same time my Go Pro Camera decided it didn't want to work. I tried stopping and fixing it by pulling the battery,  pulling the memory card, but couldn't re-format (erase everything on) the memory card until I could stop and spend a couple hours getting all the video I had shot off of it** Eventually I did stop at a Rest area and set up to download all the video and called Go Pro to help me re-format my memory disk (& to complain!!!)  .... It takes a long time to download High Definition video so about 1 1/2 hours was spent downloading the video to my laptop and the other 45 minutes was spent dealing with Go Pro on the phone ( I was not a happy camper - but very respectful :)**

 2 1/2 hours later I was back on the road driving the last  200 plus miles to Niagara Falls and it was starting to get dark.  I was warned about dawn (sunrise) and dusk (sunset) to be very careful if I am driving at these times because that is when you are most likely to encounter animals on the move (either finding food or getting back to "home". Well.... they were right in less than a 30 minute span I saw over 10 deer within 40 feet of the highway at dusk.. This was a unnerving (sketchy) feeling. Some were within 10 feet of the road. After riding in the dark for hours I finally hit Buffalo area which is where I got on I-290  (I=Interstate and since it is a 3 digit number you look at the last 2, which =90 so that tells you that it connects to I-90 and the first digit if it is and EVEN # tells you it connects to I-90 in more than one spot. If the first digit is odd it only connects to I-90 once).

Then I-190 and finally hit the Canadian Border and waited at the border checkpoint. Once I was cleared to cross into Canada it started pouring.. After being thouroughly soaked I made it to my hotel. I dried out my clothes and called it a night.

Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada
In the morning I walked around and took tons of pictures and video taped my voyage on a boat, called the "Maid of the Mist" that goes nearly into the falls. I don't have time to edit video and the full length videos are way to big for the blog so here are some pictures I took for now.

There are two falls and together they are known as "Niagara Falls". One (to the right) is called Horsehoe Falls and one (to the left) is called American Falls because it is located completely in the U.S.

American Falls (U.S. is in the background)

Horseshoe Falls 

Leaving Niagara Falls on the Canadian side of the Lake on the Niagara River Corridor Parkway. A beautiful road to drive on.

Where's Waldo (Well actually Where's Mr. Potter)

Where's Mr. Potter (click here)

As of now you will need to click on the following link in order to be able to track where I  have been and where I am now. I will be trying to get the map to automatically update on this blog...