The day started just as the very first day of our trip. The sun was shining and the temperature was pleasant. I told Mike first thing in the morning “Well, we made it!” Our ride has reached one of the most major milestones of the trip. We placed the front wheels in the Atlantic Ocean today, which makes our “Coast to Coast” ride official.

Just like the start of the ride, Mike and I have to let everyone out there know that there are two people that we have to give sincere thanks. Carin and Brenda, our wives, have given us the support and blessings to make this ride become a reality. We miss them a great deal no matter what it may sound (or is that read?) like out hear, they are on our minds a great deal. The kids too! I miss Anthony and Nicholas as much as Mike misses his daughter Amber.

I know that we said that we owed you both big time at the start of this ride but now that we are getting close to the end, remember we said not to hold us to it!

Also, We need to thank the HRCA and Charlie Keller for all of their help and support during the trip as well. Charlie hooked us up with some great people and we can not thank him enough!

Today, our ride started at the water. Not the Ocean quite yet but the James River which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay and then into the Atlantic Ocean.

We were met at the Jamestown/Scotland ferry by The Honda of Norfolk Chapter of the Honda Riders Club and the ride was attended by a large group of 24 motorcyclist’s. Now it may seem impossible to miss such a large group of folks but Mike, Steve and I managed to actually ride by the whole group as we were looking for the ferry! After we made it to ferry entrance, we were approached by a couple of riders that told us that our welcoming committee was back up the road a bit. We followed them and could not believe that number one we rode by them and number two that there was such a large group waiting for us!  

Among those meeting us at the ferry was Dave Hunter from Honda of Norfolk who has been with this dealership since 1968 and so many others that regrettably, we did not all their names. Everyone was extremely friendly. Some thought we were nuts while some wished that they could have done the same thing!

We all lined up for the ride on the ferry and chatted while we waited to load on. After we were all on the ferry, we talked about all sorts of things with everyone on the boat.

After we got off the ferry, HRCA Chapter #45 President Jim Martino led us down Route 10 towards Virginia Beach. We got split up but this HRCA chapter has their stuff together! We were brought back together and took breaks on the way to the touch down point.

All the bikes were sharp as tacks and there was everything from a CB450K1 (very rare) to GL1800’s with everything in between!

One of the Chapter members, Ed Baughman had an issue with his 1997 Valkyrie. He said that it did not have enough mileage indicators on the odometer! He has ridden his bike over 122,000 miles since he purchased it and the speedometer only will read to 99,999.

The weather was perfect and the 30+ people that joined us on the ride to the water to attend our bathing of the front wheels had plenty to talk to us about. We put our wheels in the water at exactly 12:00 noon and the bikes had a total of 3787 miles on them. The Local HRCA chapter from Honda of Norfolk had a nice ceremony to complete our Coast-to-Coast portion of the ride.

From there, we rode back to Honda of Norfolk where the dealership had a great set up of food and beverages for all to enjoy. Mike from Service did a great job of cooking up the meat and making sure that everyone had plenty of beverages.

There were another 30 or so people waiting for us at the store and it made for a wonderful gathering. We passed out Pro Honda Clean up packets and Posters celebrating Honda’s 45 years in the United States.

We had a long ride ahead of us so we packed up and said our goodbyes and thanked Dave and his crew of Service folks, Cameron, Jay, and Johnny for the great hospitality that they provided to us.  

We were led out of town by Dave Mcgill riding his Valkyrie and followed by a couple of other club members as well. We rode more than we really had planned and our ride ended in Burlington North Carolina.

We rode a total of 337 miles at the end of the day, our second highest day total of the trip and also broke through the 4000 mile barrier and now have 4042 total accumulated miles since the beginning of the trip. We got to the hotel pretty late and we knew that we would be in for a long night updating the web site so we ordered a pizza. Normally, this would not be such a big deal but when we ordered “give us the biggest you got” from the local pizza place, this is what we got!!

Tomorrow, we make our next to last stop at Cycle Center, in Asheboro North Carolina before we get to the Honda Hoot. Oh, if you are near by Knoxville and have a vintage ride (OK, heres a challenge for all you VJMC folks!!!), be sure to join us for the Cycle World Rolling Concours! For more info, click on the link.

Check back again for the next installment!