May 26 - Going Home

So the picture is of my great grandfather, Joseph Arms Miller, and it probably doesn't belong in this blog of our motorcycle trip, but on the last leg home, I met up with my cousin Sue and we spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to collect all the Miller family pictures, diaries, stories, etc together so more of us Millers can get access to them and help identify who is who in the various pictures floating around out there. My sister Martha passed away this spring and a lot of my family information went with her. I have boxes full of writings and clippings she gave me before she died but I am new to family genealogy and Sue has been at it a while. I think we will be getting together again soon. Dave and I found a long lost cousin James out in Ohio, who moved out there is 1813, but for the most part, all of our people stayed around Vermont, so we should be able to put a lot of this together.

I headed north and just did the interstate thing and got home in a few hours. My odometer shows I went 2609 miles on this trip. My son Jacob is home from New Mexico so I want to spend a couple days with him before he goes back. We went to friends for a Memorial Day barbecue and then home.
So Dave and I are scheming another trip. Somehow we need to get way out west. Stay tuned!!

May 25 - Mandsfield PA to Vernon VT

Dave called Rene and they realized this Motel in Mansfield is the same one they stayed in a year ago and we ate in the same restaurant they did last night. A few bikers (Harleys of course, and Beemers, and an old GoldWing 1100 with 98K on the clock). This entire trip we seem to share motels with drill crews. There is a tremendous amount of natural gas drilling in these states. These guys put a lot of hours in so leave early in the morning and come in at different times at the end of the day. I am guessing they work weekends. We also passed several compressor stations, many with Duke Energy on their signs. As best we could guess, these pressurize the gas lines and burn some of the gass in turbines that run the compressors.

There are small oil derricks all over the states we visited. Some are rusted into the ground having pumped their last decades ago, Some are slowly pumping and some look like they may still be working, but are not running, maybe on timers so they pump once a day or something. You see them in little mountain valleys, in swamps, in the middle of fields so they appear to provide "extra" income for someone, or used to. We also saw lots of beautiful wind turbines slowly turning away providing electricity forever going forward.
We decided to do one big push and get back to Vernon. We swapped bikes for a couple hours. Dave's bike has more power and is lighter and is designed for on road, but can also easily do back roads. His is one of the most popular beemers and you see them climbing over mountains on back roads and loaded with gear on long highway trips as well. My bike is 17 years old and still runs like new. I have had it since it was new so it is like an old comfortable shoe. BMW makes really reliable bikes that last forever. My bike weights 621 lbs and Dave's weighs 504 pounds. I like the lighter feel of his bike but I like my nice wide seat (for my nice wide behind).
Ran into a Gold Wind guy who has been going to Americade in Lake George NY since it started. He said it used to be a nice small polite Gold Wing event and then "those Harley guys" took it over. I have found that most Harley guys are great and are secretly office jocks who don leather on the weekends. Harley guys seem to fall in 2 groups. The clean ones (nicely stitched leathers, clean bikes and an Irish Spring smell about them) and the real ones (a little too tan with a few too many tatoos and more a high school football team locker room smell). Both have bikes that are way too loud. Oh yea, the smelly guys have the babes, go figure?
We have been this last stretch so many times, from the Catskills to Vernon, that it is sort of auto pilot, but western Mass still is nice, especially this time of year. Just missed some rain and landed back in Dave's garage. We had pickled eggs, cold beer and a nice supper. Hot showers and off to bed. Dave said he clocked 2200 miles so not bad for 9 days on the road. Tomorrow I meet our cousin Sue to talk genealogy and then I head home.

May 24- Elkin WV to Mansfield PA

What a beautiful day. West Virginia has some very remote, beautiful twisty smooth paved roads that glide through lush green valleys. The people seem not too well off here, but they live in a beautiful place. The place we stayed last night was a nice place, but was busted last year because someone set up a meth lab in one of the rooms. So it is not too popular and does not rent to anyone living nearby. So it was cheap and not crowded.
We headed east up over ridges and down into adjacent valleys. If you look at a topo map of this part of West Virginia and north into PA, it looks like someone (glaciers no doubt) scraped their fingernails in a curve down through here, leaving flat bottomed valleys divided by mountain ridges. There are not many people here so the roads are not busy and the towns are small and far between. Dave's GPS usually takes us on interesting excursions but today was a doozy. We spent an hour or 2 on a goat path over a mountain range, complete with washed out roads and lots of pretty good sized rocks and gravel. The only people up here were a few campers on 4-wheelers that looked pretty surprised these 700 lb road bikes were picking their way over these hills. Once back on terra-firma (asphalt), he set it to "fastest way" so we stayed on pavement the rest of the afternoon. The towns up here in rural PA as tiny so not much for motels. We hit some rain for a bit, donned our rain gear, and bolted for Mansfield, where here are lots of sleeping options. Quick dinner and straight to bed after wrestling those bikes on the dirt roads. Oh yea, we saw the most vivid rainbows (double no less) coming into Mansfield tonight. Wonderful day.

May 24 - Dear Mr Garmin

Dear Mr Garmin,
I am writing to ask about the details of warranty work as well as warn you of what I believe is a defect in your Zumo product. My brother and I ride our motorcycles cross country and have used your fine product for several years. Today, however, something unusual happened. At the end of the day today, my brother, who owns and uses your fine product, stopped to "use the facilities", while I stayed with the bikes. When he returned we found the Zuma gone from his motorcycle and, incredibly, we found it laying on the ground, broken, in front of a concrete wall, in what I can only assume was a case of "Spontaneous Self Destruction". I did not see anyone go near it (really), and must have turned away for an instant (I really did not hear or see anything, really). After discussing this unfortunate incident (which I still have no idea how it happened, really), and in piecing together the days events, we have some theories. It may have started earlier when my brother enabled the "shortest distance" option on your fine product. We had noticed that it sometimes took us a wee bit off the "main roads". My brothers bike is designed for more "off road" type travel while my bike is meant for strictly "on road" riding. Today your fine product suggested we turn onto what at first appeared to be a wonderful smooth paved road, with painted lines, which is certainly within the specifications of my "on road" motorcycle. The road narrowed and the painted lines disappeared, (again, certainly acceptable). The Zuma next suggested a road that while at some time in the past was paved, had since become a sort of hybrid paved/loose sand road. After several miles this turned to all sand/dirt followed by course gravel (< 3 cm) which is definitely not withing the specification of my motorcycle. It was at this point we met 2 gentlemen in the deep woods on this now well washed out, gravel (> 3cm) road who introduced themselves as U.R. Trespassing and U.R. SoDead, (Mr So Dead certainly did not look of Asian descent and I also though it odd they shared the same first 2 initials). When I saw the shirt bearing the GonnaKill U, what I trust is a local trade school specializing in the mechanical sciences, judging from the number of finely crafted firearms these gentlemen seemed to be carrying, I inquired if they belonged to any school sports team, as they looked very muscular, despite the obvious scars. With this, they seemed to hurry off to their cabin, at which point we decided to continue our dubious trip down the sorry roads your fine product had suggested we take. My suspicions about Mr Trespassing and Mr SoDead being athletes was validated when I saw them running behind us, shooting while they ran, obviously training for some sort of biathlon. They waved us on with their fists (in obvious pride at their sport) as we proceeded the many miles down the gravel road, as instructed by your Zuma product.
So I would first ask what the cost to repair the broken Zuma (which I again have no clue how it got broken, really), and would also like to point out that the recommended roads your product sent us on most definitely do not meet the acceptable road specification for at least my motorcycle and I would presume several others. A disclaimer should surely be in order.
  Yours truly (and dusty dirty and tired),
    John and Dave

May 23-Ashland KY to Elkins WV

Not many folks in the motel last night, I am guessing because of the train noise but we both slept great. Our farm growing up had a train track nearby and it actually brought some nice memories back. Plus my hearing is not so great, so all in all a good nights sleep, and the price was right. The continental breakfast was more a territorial breakfast and Dave noticed one of the egg omelet things had a bite out of it, so it was a pretty light breakfast. We decided to cross the river into West Virginia and follow Rt 2 up, but somehow we ended up and hour later in Ohio. So GPS to the rescue and it took us cross-lots across West Virginia. We pretty much followed Rt 33 all the way, which makes it real easy. The roads were in good shape but I bet my tires are triangle shaped tonight from all the turning. You have to be on your toes, or rather brakes, because some of the turns are not labelled and quite honestly, there were so many, you stop looking at the turn signs which tell you the turn is a 25, 35, 45 MPH turn. But beautiful sunny cooler day, perfect for doing this. We had lunch at a real local place and then more twisting and turning all afternoon. We called ahead to Elkin WV for a motel and the first 2 were full. We realized that it is Memorial Day weekend so we tried another that suspiciously had plenty of rooms. It turns out, this place is a pretty nice motel but some shady dealings got into the local papers so they are not too popular. We will report back in the morning (we hope). Pretty tired tonight from turn, turn, turning all day. Good stuff!!

May 22 - Toyota Tour - Georgetown KY to Ashland KY (Stone Throw from WV)

The hotel last night was sooo nice, they throw a guest party on Weds night with free beer and nibbly things and trivia. The woman running it was of course over the top getting perfect strangers to participate, but, like all those talented folks who do that stuff, she had us all wracking our brains to remember who the kid in Lost In Space was and who played the part (my brother knew, smarty pants). It was touch and go with the plant tour. We did so much bobbing and weaving yesterday that we got into town too late for the tour, and then found out you need reservations. (Can anyone say poor planning). But we just rode up there anyway and another barrier appeared as we hit the parking. The dreaded tour bus full of blue hairs just unloading and pouring into the tour center like rats into Columbus' ship. So we pretended to be on the tour and shuffled in with the poly clad masses. Being Ellwyn's boys we of course couldn't lie so told the nice lady we were just smelly motorcyclists from Vermont hoping to get a tour. We were wait listed, behind the geezers, but lo and behold a gregarious guy with Toyota attire got us on the last shuttle, and he was great.
Toyota does what is called Lean Manufacturing and they are the kings. And this plant has been doing it since 1988. Bottom line is they make a car in 54 seconds. If any tiny thing is wrong with materials or workmanship, any employee can stop the line so they can determine what caused the problem. This makes problems, even little ones, get fixed really early and quickly.
Today they were making 484 cars on one line per shift (2 shifts per day) and about that many on the other line. So 2000+ cars per day. There is never more than 4 hours worth of materials in the building, which means 700-1000 trucks per day show up and deliver stuff. They start from rolls of steel and truckloads of raw plastic, and end up with cars at the other end. They stamp weld and paint everything and mold almost all the plastic parts right there. Teams of 4 employees and a team leader work at any given station for 2 hours, then switch to another task for 2 hours, then lunch then 2 more 2 hour stints at other tasks. So they do not get bored and the are cross trained on multiple jobs. They play basketball, pool, foozball, etc during breaks to keep them selves moving. Amazing!! And they treat visitors like gold. Everyone waves to the visitors and the culture there is positive and excited. The employees can submit suggestions for improving things and they get payed if the idea gets used. From $20 to $25,000! We asked what idea got the $25K and were told that one guy went home, got a seat out of his boat, welded up a gantry thing so he could rotate in and out of the cars to install the console the whole time sitting down. He got $25K and we saw those seat thingies all over the plant. One employee told us his wife got $10K the first year she worked there for a number of good ideas she had. Awesome culture and great people, all on the same team. Go Toyota.
  So after that we rode back roads through horse country. This area has huge horse farms with giant fenced in estates. These people are also genetically bred to mow their lawns. The whole state loves mowing, Yards, roadsides, whole fields, herringbone patterns, the works. Dave set his GPS to "anything goes, shortest distance" and it got ugly fast. I have not seen darker hollers' or tougher neighborhoods. Single lane paved roads looked like interstates compared to some of the gravel jobs it tried to send us down. The locals in their old  trucks stared at us as they passed us on the way to their Dentu Cream auditions. We finally had to just ignore most of the suggestions and made it to West Virginia at 5:30 or so.

We rode up the east side of the river past the Ashland refinery (the size of a city!), now run by Marathon, past coal stocks being dropped of and shipped to who knows where by endless trains and river barges. Decided to call it a day in Ashland at a motel near the train tracks (had to sign a disclosure saying we knew the trains would make noise all night), got some mexican salads in town, showers and bed.
Great day!!

May 21 - Lancaster OH to Lexington Ky

We grudgingly left our luxury accommodations in Lancaster after the continental breakfast thing, loaded the bikes and headed toward Georgetown KY where Toyota has a plant that makes Camry cars. They have a tour which I am very interested in and so that was the goal. As it turns out, they we were too late to get the tour today, and we may or may not get to go tomorrow, depending on how many other people sign up. But goals are good, so we told Daves GPS we wanted Georgetown, and it obediently got us here. Because the GPS is set for shortest distance, it finds some of the most interesting back roads and side streets, and today it treated us with some really really out of the way, back roads, all of them at least 70% paved. This corner of Ohio gets more rolling as you go east or south since we are heading back toward the Appalachian Mts. Everything is green, the corn is planted (they do no-till planting, which means no plowing, but seeding right over last years corn stubble. Took us a day or two to figure that out but we saw the tiny new corn sprouting between last years rows. There were some roads that you could swear were in Vermont. I have to say, I enjoy the flatter, slightly rolling country we are leaving. The towns are small and self contained and seem healthy and happy. The other thing that became obvious is that over a period of just a few hours, the accents went from good old northern Yankee / Ohio to down south thick y-all accents. Amazing. By the time we crossed into Kentucky, the accents were thick. The other thing we picked up today were horses. This part of Kentucky is rife with big old horse farms with beautiful big estates and fences everywhere.We are just down the road from where the Kentucky Derby is held in Louisville and you can tell that this is big business here. 

We called ahead for a room and the buzz is the big hail storm they had last Wednesday and the one that is just hitting tonight, like right now!!. Should be a stormy night. Tomorrow we have to call to see if we can get a spot at the Toyota plant for the tour.
We are not sure where to go from here on out. I need to be back by next Weds so maybe we will start swinging back northeast. Maybe West Virginia, maybe north back to Ohio. Right now, we are going to watch this storm come in. Big excitement in Ky.

May 20 - Canton OH to Lancaster OH

Actually got a good nights sleep. My head is swollen from out-moteling the master. I promised that tonight we stay in a real chain type hotel. I think we saved enough to stay in the Ritz. So we worked on a "when to not stay somewhere" clue list. Chevy on blocks in the motel parking lot is a bad sign. "No refunds after 5 minutes"is a bad sign. Grey towels is a bad sign. Full sized refrigerator in the room is a bad sign. RotoRooter magnets on above refrigerator is a bad sign. Cars with no plates in the parking lot is a bad sign. Vans with "GO AHEAD AND HIT MY TRUCK SO I CAN TRY OUT MY NEW GUN" stickers is a bad sign. Broken concrete flower pots in front of the lobby is a clue.
Today we asked and found the place where locals get breakfast. Pete's was great. The goal was to find out long lost ancestor who moved from Dummerston in 1814 to Ohio. We started in Millersburg OH and checked the town offices. They very nicely pointed us to the genealogy canter at the Millersburg library. The lovely women there helped us find some basic stuff, but something was not adding up. It turns out there is a "Miller Township" in the next county (Knox) just south of Mt Vernon. They gave us the address of the library over there, which we found, and after an hour of pouring over the obituaries, town history and census books, we hit paydirt with an Ohio Cemetery book. We found a small cemetery listed with James Miller, his wife Sarah and a Henry Miller who was born in "Dunerstin VT" We got the address, punched it into Dave's GPS and half an hour later found a tiny old cemetery in the middle of a field on Miller Road.

The stones were old and hard to read but we found James (the flat one falling over), his wife and one of his children (Dana Miller). But no other Millers. The library had an excerpt saying that the Millers disappeared after 2 generations. So maybe they kept going west, or gold rush, or?? Anyway, we can understand why they moved here. Not a rock anywhere and lots of open farmland. I bet the letters home to Vermont were rubbing in how long the season was and how easy it was to farm.
So we did maybe 150 miles with all the library hopping but it was a neat day. Beautiful weather and bright green rolling farmlands on lost 2 lane paved roads. Stopped early in Lancaster for a "real" hotel. We agreed we could do this for a long long time.

May 19 Towanda PA to Canton OH (365 miles)

Slept late and had coffee and light continental at the motel. A lot of places around here have pickups and there is so much gas drilling (fracking) going on that we assume field guys are staying at these small (cheap) motels. This place was actually pretty nice.
We had perfect weather today, cool enough to warrant a couple layers but never too cold. We found and followed Rt 6 across Pennsylvania, a really wide state and although the official map said it was "scenic", we saw a lot more scenic stuff getting lost on small side roads. Dave put "closest distance" into his GPS and that sucker shoved us down every goat path it could find. Today's goat paths were nicely paved with no traffic. Where is really wigs out is when you go through a medium sized town and it takes you down side alleys and through backyards if it thinks it is 50 feet shorter. Yesterdays goat paths were closer to real goat paths with rough and dirt roads. Our goal was Millersburg OH where some of our ancestors moved back in the early 1800's but we only got to Canton, a half hour short. Found what even Dave thought were the worst motels we had seen and picked the one that did not have the room door stoved in. Only catch is there is no refund after 5 minutes so you have to check the room out quick! No roaches so we found a salad/bbq place and ate something green for a change. Insanely bad wifi so this may or may not post.

May 18 - Vernon VT to Towanda PA

We left Rene's B&B complete with steak dinner, cold beer and breakfast thrown in. Nice chance to catch up and hear about how great retirement is. I am the last brother to yet retire and these guys are making my life miserable. We  went west and south down into western Mass, into New York and crossed the Hudson  in Catskill. Route 23 goes just over the Catskill Park and then caught 30 down through the rolling hills and valleys. The north east part of Pennsylvania is, I hate to say it, almost, but not quite, as pretty as Vermont. They have Maples so we saw a lot of sap lines and old milk bulk tanks in the woods and beside the road. Dave pointed out the local Penndot Indian tribe that instead of operating casinos, does all the road maintenance. He is always quick with this kind of info. Hmmm.
We ended up in Towanda PA at a local motel with a Mexican restaurant attached. So good first day and west to Ohio tomorrow.

I Need a Little Vacation

I need some vacation!!

So my poor brother has had me calling him over and over and hearing, "I can't go next week, how about June", then "Nope good for next week", then, "Nope, not next week". So  things settled in and here I am at my brother Dave's, picking the strawberry seeds from my teeth from Irene's awesome strawberry rhubarb crisp after a couple cold ones on the sunny deck. It is time for some vacation.
My boy came home from New Mexico and we had a chance to catch up before headed south on the beemer and he headed to Maine to see friends in Portland and also visit his sister (and probably return home with a dump truck load worth of her stuff from college). The original plan was to go down last night (Friday) but it poured so we pushed it back a day. I loaded my little bad with a couple days worth of spare clothes, electronical stuff, and the usual rains gear and warm gear. This is so easy now having done this a few times, and as my brother says, "you can buy anything you forget".
Over the mountain to Jonesville, down Rt 2 (potholes with short interruptions of stone (BMW RT's do not like stone), and the interstate to Putney. I stopped at the cemetery Dummerston where we buried my sister Martha a few weeks ago to see if all was well. The grass is coming in and the stone looks good. I'll miss your stories Sis..
The to Vernon on a lovely sunny warm afternoon (VERMONT IS BEAUTIFUL!!). Dave was getting the intercom technology working and after pushing every combination of buttons we could come up with, we got the Bluetooth working so we can chat. "Chicken and Biscuit place at 2 o'clock".
Rough plan is to head to PA and then to Ohio. Off to bed and start the trip in the morning.