Frenchy's Rant

Had a little visitor last night, probably the coolest insect guest ever. A dryocampa rubicunda, or Rosy Maple moth stopped by for a bit. Note the rock star like hairdo on this little critter.

Yeah baby! You can tell exactly how exciting my life is right now if the best I can do is some blurry pictures of a moth. June 10th – the start of the Great Unsponsored Nova Scotia Expedition can’t come soon enough.

On a deserted island, in a house with walls made out of this:

The other day, one of the many trucks that endlessly shlep the tons and tons of WWE arena gear around the country was found with both side windows smashed. A clear case of vandalism, right?

Not necessarily.

Someone, who shall remain nameless, remembered being asked by a truck driver for a sledgehammer that morning. Seemed the poor soul had locked his keys in his cab.

We can only guess what happened next. Allegedly, the driver took that sledgehammer and smashed his side window to get to his keys.

But wait, BOTH windows were smashed, right?

That’s right… they were. As far as anyone can tell, the keys were on the other side of the cab.

I admit I kind of glossed over certain events in yesterday’s post about our little ride from Tennessee to Rhode Island. Obviously being the one that writes the blog, I’m bound to edit out certain events, especially when those certain events are extremely embarrassing or humiliating – to me. I consider just about anyone else fair game, but moi, humiliate moi self?? Come on now…

But, sometimes, though personally embarrassing, the story is worth sharing, and since nothing else of interest has happened lately, here it is, in all it’s gory glory – the story that did not make yesterday’s blog post:

The first day of our ride, Abi and I only rode about 160 miles. It wasn’t a long day, but it didn’t really need to be. We found a suitably dumpy hotel, which, at $52 a night was perfect.

For $52, you get a bed, a TV (usually with color), a toilet, and not much else. And as expected with that rate, most of those items will be old and worn, but will generally work as they should.

But of course, one of those items did NOT work as it should. In fact, after using that device in a generally approved manner, it was in desperate need of maintenance. In a $52 a night hotel, there obviously isn’t a large staff of maintenance folks hanging around and waiting to discreetly help you to unblock whatever hotel related problem you may experience.

Yes, the commode managed to get blocked up, and blocked up good. And, surprisingly, no Indian food was involved.

In any case, now there’s a problem. The only way to solve this problem is with a plunger. The only place that might have a plunger would be the front desk, because for $52 a night, you definitely don’t get in-room plumbing implements. The girl at the front desk was kind of cute, but this was probably not the best way to break the ice.

So, I trudged down the long Walk of Shame to the front desk, and lo and behold, the cute front desk girl had two equally cute friends in there, all watching Sex in the City and eating a nice McDonald’s takeout dinner together. Great.

“Hi.” she says. “Can I help you?”

“Err…” I can’t bring myself to ask. Why me? I just can’t do it.

She eyes me for a minute. All her friends stop watching Sex and quickly join in the staring.

“Err….”

The girl behind the desk starts looking a little nervous, probably wondering if another mumbling homeless maniac has wandered in to the Lo-Budget Inn. I start wondering how long it will take until the police come.

“Err… I was just kinda wondering if….”

“Yes?”

“If you have a…. ” – deep breath – “…a plunger handy?”

She visibly relaxed, and a smirk slowly crossed her lips. Did I say she was cute? Oh, how wrong I was. I’m sure this evil girl just lives for dishing out the sarcastic punishment in humiliating moments like this one. Hell, if it was me, I would too.

“Why?” the not-at-all cute witch drawled. “Is there a… problem?” One of her little hamburger swilling bitch friend snickers in the background.

I consider saying, “No, I just like to beat smart ass desk clerks to death with plungers, and I seem to have misplaced mine,” but that wouldn’t get me very far. Instead, I just meekly half nod.

She goes in back and comes out with a plunger, hands it across the desk with a massive eye roll, a barely covered up giggle, then, in a masterful piece of over-dramatic flair, she crumples up her half-eaten hamburger in the wrapper and ceremoniously throws it in the trash, far too disgusted by my problem to finish eating.

All three little bitches bust out in howling laughter as I emerge a beaten and humiliated shell of a man on the Walk of Shame to fix my self inflicted toilet problem.

Yeah, our motorcycle rides aren’t all glamor, and this story is a perfect example of why the shittiest parts don’t usually make the blog.

After nearly two years of touring, from California to Baja California, from ghost towns to TV trucks, from the Grand Canyon to Key West, and all the little places in between, my newly nicknamed Yamaha FJR, the bike that I traded the Hayabusa away for in California, has finally come home.

The bike’s new name? Rain Cloud Follows – given during the last leg of the ride home, from Tennessee to Rhode Island.

After the spectacular journey that was Scotland, I didn’t really feel up to taking a ton of pictures and writing a long, yawn-inspiring story of the trip. After all, it was only three days, kind of an intermission between epic rides. We got on our bikes on Wednesday in Tennessee, and got off them safe and sound on Saturday evening.

On the way up, we saw some interesting sights.

And interesting signs.

The back roads in West Virginia were as impressive as any I’ve had the pleasure of unraveling thus far. The state pastime in West Virginia seems to be either Street Sign Shooting, or Home Burning.
Since I was just riding and not really taking many pictures, I didn’t get any shots of all the burned homes, but there must have been thirty or forty of them, all torched to the ground. Seems people in West Virgina deal with foreclosure differently than people in New England do.

The biggest laugh of the trip was courtesy of the New River Gorge National Park ranger who advised us to go to an observation point three miles up the road to see the biggest waterfall in West Virginia.

The fact that the observation point was about three thousand miles above the falls probably didn’t help much. The sight was less than impressive. Later that day, Abi held a water bottle over his head, poured water out and said, “Can you guess what I am? No? I’m the second biggest waterfall in West Virginia!”

Like I said, this trip was just an interlude between major rides. You have to make your fun when you can.

Of course, every night it rained,usually starting just as we were stopping, though one day it misted and pissed all over us. The name Rain Cloud Follows came up, and is the perfect name for this bike.

Can’t wait to see what happens when Stormbringer and Rain Cloud Follows head up to Newfoundland in a few weeks.

We meandered through the rest of West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and finally, my home state, the Kingdom of Rhode Island.

And my favorite place of all. Home.

It’s good to be home, if only for a little while.