Nice Day, but no Riding

My friend, Mindy, needed a ride to the Baltimor/Washington International Airport, this morning. Well, she needed me to drop her off and bring her car back as it's cheaper than paying for parking. I had stayed up pretty late, last night, so slept in then did not get ready until just before she came by.

After dropping her off, I went to breakfast at Daniel's, a biker hangout next to Speed Cycles on Highway 1 in Elk Ridge. The Highway 1 exit was very convienient to BWI airport. I order, and open Niel Peart's "Ghost Rider" to continue reading, while sipping a diet coke and waiting for my food.

The book tells about the author's travels across Canada, and in the part I'm reading now, he is in the North-West of the United States. He describes spending a pleasant afternoon and night in Boise, then getting up the next morning, eschewing the latte places with parking lots full of pickup trucks, and heads out.

He ends up eating, and I can't believe my eyes, at a family diner in Weiser (pronounced wee-zer), Idaho.

Well, that was where I spent many years, growing up -- a hometown to me a friend who I often visit in New Jersey. He didn't name the restaurant, but he said it was just outside of town, so that narrows it down to either the Beehive on the South East, or May's Shack on the North East, at either end of the where the truck Route cuts across the eastern part of town -- East 7th, if I remember correctly from my paper route days, delivering papers in the winter on an 80cc Yamaha with knobby tires.

I have a coffee cup, purchased from the Beehive, during one of the high school reunions. May's Shack was redone, and I remember a very good meal there. It was hardly the dive roadhouse that I remembered from high school days when we use to spend hours drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and occasionally playing guitars to Seranade Edna, an elderly waitress who was always good-humoured and a friend to many, who in later years found themselves with bad habits and less and less oportunity.

I turned to the guy next to me, at Daniel's. "What a coincidence," I told him. Then I explained about the book and Weiser. That turned into a pleasant discussion of our own about the dream of having enough money to just go riding -- and the notion that some people get around the world on motorcycles without much money.

I dropped by Bob's BMW on the way home, bought a bulb for my rear brake light. I've read that one should always have a spare. It was a small thing -- less than $2.00 -- but a positive step toward the next time when I can go down the road with no fixed end date.