I'm Numb All Over, But It's Worth It

To celebrate our 22nd anniversary, Sam and I took the motorcycle on a road trip. What? You didn't know Sam had a bike? That's because he just got it from his brother recently. It's very new-to-us. I had a trip planned to see some fun in-state attractions, so we decided to take the bike and have a grand time touring.

Which we did.

We are from the southwest region of the state, and drove to the northeast region. Pennsylvania doesn't look like that huge of a state, and in comparison to many it's not, but according to Mapquest, from Point A to Point B it takes about 4 hours. Unless you're us, and you're riding a bike that you haven't had for long and therefore aren't used to riding. We made a lot of stops to relieve our backsides. Who knew that sitting on a motorcycle seat makes your behind sore? Because it does. I think we've reached the numb stage. We're... sore. And because we're new to biking and because we had to stop a lot and because we took the scenic route, we extended that 4 hour trip into a 7 hour trip.

On the way up I spent a few hours convincing myself that I'd probably lose weight by vibrating the pounds right off. There is a lot of vibrating going on when you're sitting on the back of a motorcycle. Then I spent the next few hours telling myself that it was an untrue statement, because otherwise I'd be really mad at myself when I get on the scale and it reads exactly the same. I have a lot of thinking time while on the back of a bike because there is all that radio silence. And the roar of the muffler. My ears are still ringing.

We drove to Centralia, PA to see the town that burned from underneath. (Google that. It's way cool.) And then we spent a lot of time driving around trying to find the way cool parts of Centralia. From what we were able to determine, they're gone. They roads have decayed into nothing, the fires burned out, and nature has taken over everything. We did see the vent pipes where the fire started. The chain link fence around them was broken down and weeds had grown up around them. That's all there was to see. It was disappointing, really. If there was something else, we totally missed it. We even stopped to ask a local for help. He was unhelpful. Stopping so long there made us late enough to hit the thunderstorm on the way to the hotel. Riding bike in a thunderstorm is a good time had by none. At least the weather was hot, because it was awfully cold once it started raining and actually felt kind of good.

The next day we drove to Ricketts Glen State Park to see waterfalls. The falls were absolutely stunning. The hike, however, made you realize that all things worth seeing are worth working for. We had a deadline to get home, so we didn't dawdle at all along the trail, and kept up a brisk walking pace. It took us 3 hours from the time we left the bike until we got back to it. We'll be feeling that for days to come, no doubt. The trail goes waaaay down to the bottom of the mountain, then climbs right back up it. I mean, you're not going to have epic waterfalls on a flat trail now, are you? Totally worth our time, and the 2 days butt-numbing trip to see. Really.