Annapolis, Sail on a Schooner

July 23, Thursday

I headed over alone to visit with Dad and my sister Shirley and had a nice visit with lunch. Dad's koi fish pond is amazing, he has lots of huge koi's and many many smaller gold fish. The water in the 33,000 gallon in-ground pool / fish pond is crystal clear due to the great filter system Dad has designed. My Wayfarer sailboat and I got acquainted too. I found out that the tires I ordered, hoping they would show up at Dad's place in a timely manner, instead had an ETA of next Tuesday ! That's not gonna work too well. Fortunately, after a bit of communication with Southwest Moto Tires ( swmototires.com ) Erik was able to have them forwarded on to New Hampshire to Shirley's house. I'll be able to pick them up there and have them mounted. That will give my front tire a chance to wear down a bit more too. The rear is ready to be changed, but there's still good tread left on the front. I would rather switch them both out at the same time for consistancy's sake though, so I guess it doesn't matter. I did check out the price of a new rear tire only at Bob's BMW which is pretty close by. They want $215 plus $49 to mount it on the wheel if I take it off the bike myself. Ouch. The one I ordered cost $125. Not a reasonable difference if you ask me.

July 24, Friday

We made reservations for the Newburgh/New York City KOA campground for Sunday and Monday nights, with a bus tour of NYC on Monday, then spent most of the day in downtown Annapolis. We wandered around a bit, window shopping, then went for a great 2 hour sail on the Schooner Woodwind, a 74 footer that is a beautiful sailboat. This only cost $34 apiece, and was well worth the ride out into the Chesapeake Bay. That evening we headed towards the Bay Bridge. It took us about 45 minutes to get the last 1/4 mile to the toll booth due to very bad traffic. Poor Bear was beginning to flash the overheat signal at me with about 3 cars to go ahead. Finally we made it through, just to be in more traffic jamming up the other side of the toll booth. I worked our way to the far left, then cut between some traffic barrels and into the " EZ Pass" lanes which ran across the bay on one lane of the westbound bridge. A short conversation with a cop who was standing beside the barrels and who waved me down ensued, but I think due to the traffic, he gave me the " that was dangerous" (which it wasn't) and the "that's a $500 ticket you know" lines and waved me on. After a pleasant ride through Delaware and into Rehoboth Beach we started looking for a cheap motel. Hah. I forgot it was July, and Friday night and at the beach. What a dummy. $99 was the best deal to be found, so we took it while there was still a room available and made reservations for the Cape May / Lewes ferry for the morning.

July 25, Saturday

We made a stop at a post office in Lewes to ship home goodies and replaced t-shirts, then took the ferry across the Delaware river. Once ashore in New Jersey, we ran along little two lane roads, wondering about how many cars could line up for how many miles heading towards the beaches, and happy we were going in the other direction ! We pulled into a state forest campground, but were attacked by mosquitoes before we even came to a stop, so discretion being the better part of valor, we decided to ride on, to be bit another day. Just short of Trenton we found a truly cheap motel - not necessarily meaning price, and again stopped for the evening.

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Part of trip: Wandering the Americas 2009

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