Swings and Damn Roundabouts Again

So off I set from the wedding, still fond memories lingering there; and we found Patrick's glasses which he left behind in a hotel room from the night before the wedding.

Heading into west Massachusetts hoping to see the fabled 'New England Fall' where the trees all turn their leaf colour in a glorious range of shades.

Not a lot to see at first.  Most of the first hour is spent in a duel with my GPS system which is detirmined to send me a different way from the one I am sure I programmed into it.  Finally I stopped for a coffee in Ware. (later in the day, recounting the incident, a guy said where? and I said Ware, and he looked at me and...)

There I went back to the old fashioned technology of cartography and worked out where I wanted to go by consulting the map.  Highway 9 looked like it went the right way, as indeed it proved to be.  Then I fell into conversation, as I am wont to do, with another man at the cafe bar.  I guess I should have heeded the warning signal as I went to the 'bathroom' and he said something along the lines of  'if you're an atheist you have no value system'.  Didn't pick that one upon my return but as the TV was playing politics and religion I did open a general conversation about religion and politics.  This soon moved into the economic problems and his view that it was people on welfare who caused it, expecting a free lunch.

Aroused by this I defended the poor but should not have wasted my time.  The real problem was immigrants who don't want to work;especially ones with darker skins.  So I asked explicitly whether skin colour made the difference and the answer was yes.  I told him what I thought of him and left.  In such a dudgeon that I left the map behind on the counter.  Fortunately the blond lass who had been serving heard the engine start and brought it out to me.  I apologised for leaving in such a hurry but explained why.  I have to put up with it every day she explained sadly.  Can I come with you?  Classic moment: Blond gets on motorcycle and they drive off into the sunset together.  Didn't happen.

I travelled further into the hills; judging by the number of other motorcycles on the road I had chosen a good 'un.  Its the same range of hills I entered 4 weeks ago in West Virginia, the Appalachians, which stretch over 500 or 600 miles down the east side of the US, a massive range redolent with names from US culture; whether that is folk music or Laurel and Hardy, or literature: the Hampshires, the Catskills, the Blue Ridge mountains, the Great Smoky Mountains.

Then I began to get an idea of what it was that created such a buzz.

Shame about the power lines but you begin to get the picture?  Its the subtle differences, and some not so subtle, in shade and colours that makes it so delightful.

A little further down the road and I had to stop again and give the Blue Monster a touch of insignificance:

As you might imagine I tended to take these roads at a gentle pace.  I was not in any great hurry today, just easing back towards journey's end in Washington.  And as each turn brought views almost as good as this, why hurry?  There is one tree whose leaves turn a quiet glorious red which I don't seem to have captured, but there is still today.  

And finally for this picture section here is a river somewhere in west Massachusetts.  That is the road running horizontally through the centre:

All over the US, wherever I have been, I have seen grey squirrels abound.  The ones we in the UK hate because they were introduced into Britain a couple of hundred years ago and have proceeded to almost drive into extinction out native red squirrel.  Its to do with their ability to digest the food at a less ripe stage than the red can.  Therefore they get it all first and the reds starve.  Well, as the picture above was loading, I looked out of my window and there was a red squirrel.  Do they have the same problem here I wonder?  Probably not I remember as in fact the grey has a natural predator - the Pine Martin - which maybe flourishes here and keeps the greys down.  In Britain we have got rid of the Pine Martin because the other food it loves, apart from grey squirrels, is birds eggs.  The problem there being that it lives in places where the rich and richer like to shoot birds for sport.  The Pine Martin interferes with the business of 'The Shoot'.  Ironic really that there is this great campaign in Britain to 'Save the Red Squirrel' when all that is needed is a campaign to shoot the rich.  (I don't really mean that by the way and I am not inciting violence Mr MI5 surveillance officer)

So on to the town of  Pittsfield where I fancied I might spend the night.  Pulled in at the Marketplace cafe - yep that is a plug its nice - where I soon got chatting to a nice young man in a pork pie hat.  He was a bit of a biker himself and he and his companion soon advised me not to stay in Pittsfield but to travel another 25 miles or so south to Great Barrington.  A much cooler town.  He went outside to examine the Blue Monster and I joined him.  I had left her on the side stand and, following some very good advice from my local BMW dealers at home, if I left her for more than a few minutes I needed to put her on the centre stand or she would suffer an oil loss.  So I put her onto her centre stand as we chatted about bikes.

Fifteen minutes later two women burst through the cafe door.  Is that anyone's motorcycle outside?  And there she was, on her side, in the gutter.  The explanation?  An extraordinary coincidence.  Avner, who sold me the Blue Monster had left her on the side stand in August and the tarmac had melted (it was in the low 100's in Washington in August) and the side stand had driven through the melting asphalt and she'd fallen over.  Here there had been a road repair at the edge of the road and I had inadvertently put one leg of the centre stand on the hard original road surface and one on the newly tarmaced.  Result was that one leg sank and the other didn't.  Oh bollocks.  One wrecked wing mirror and another $200 down the swaney.  Or something of that order.  I am tempted to go back to the town council and demand compensation.  There is a good motorbike repair shop on the way which might just have a spare mirror; so maybe....

Otherwise its my last day but one on the road.  Tomorrow I have to be back in Rockville, just outside Washington, and then in fairly short order its back to the UK.

There has been a sudden surge of 'hits'on this blog so thank you gentle readers wherever you are.  I have yet to work out how you can read it in chronological order; ie from first to last, which is the logical way to consume it.  But if you have just been dipping in here and there I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings.

The Empire is in decline and I will attempt to round up and round off before I finish.