Day Forty Six - Final day of our Tour!

We finished our tour today!

We would start the day leaving the hotel at 6:54 AM. The hotel "breakfast" was minimal, so we opted for just coffee and a snack, plus we had made plans the night before to meet up with Richard - a snowbird friend of ours from Florida who summer's in Agawam. We figure we'll meet him and have breakfast there.

Day 46 Track

We head up I-91 to make the 15 miles or so into Chicopee. We did have to go right through Springfield MA, but it's early enough that the traffic there wasn't bad at all. We manage to not have to go into downtown Chicopee because we were fortunate enough to find this sign on the way in:

I've Been Everywhere Man - Chicopee

From here, we head back down I-91 for a short hop to get over to Agawam where we get our needed post office photo, including name and state for the "a" in Team for the TS30GT. Richard pulls in just a few minutes late and we greet him. He tells us some interesting trivia about the local area, including the fact that the zip code for Agawam - 01001 - is the lowest number zip code in the continental US. The only lower zip is in Puerto Rico!

Agawam, MA - the "a" in Team for the TS30GT

From there we follow Richard in his car over to West Springfield to a favorite place of his - Memo's Coffee Shop - where we will spend an hour eating a very hearty breakfast and catching up. The place was right across the street from the "Big E" - the Eastern States Exposition which is a huge fair that my grandfather first took me to when I was just 8 years old! I know he would have loved to show us around a bit but we have places to go and are itching to finish out our tour today, so we finally head out.

So, we are back on the road at 9:06 AM, headed back down I-91 and ultimately I-81 for a long leg (175 miles!) across CT, NY and into PA for our next checkpoint. As we are rolling into NY, I realize that my fuel is down to 3 bars, but I am hoping it will last until we get to PA because the gas prices are so darn high in CT and NY. When my low fuel warning light comes on at 298 miles on this tank, the computer starts a countdown of miles to go to empty  - which varies based on the fuel mileage you were getting just prior to the low fuel warning light coming on. It says I have 61 miles to empty. The GPS says we have 53 miles to the exit in PA... That is not much of a margin so I am on heightened alert. I decide to run 3 miles and see if the spread changes (between the computer countdown and the GPS distance to exit). I do find a uhaul box van that is running right at the speed limit, so I tuck in behind him to get a draft. It is working, because the spread is increasing ever so slightly. At the best point it got to be a 12 mile difference. I am still nervous about running out and discuss the situation over the CB radio with Larry - who votes that we got for it - of course.
Well, when the computer gets down to 15 miles out 0 the display blanks out entirely - sort of a "you;re on your own now" signal. We're still several miles from the exit and coming into a construction zone. That really makes me nervous because, while slowing down will conserve some fuel, if it gets to stop and go, that will suck it up big time. Fortunately, it never got to stop and go, and the last mile was down hill, so I managed to roll into the gas station at the end of the ramp without running out! She did take 7.154 gallons, which is the largest fill I've ever put in her so I know I was cutting it REALLY REALLY close. Like Larry often says, if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space. :-)

So we re-fuel and take a bio break and then head down the road into Milford, PA to get the "m" for Team. Don't you know when we get there, another post office with no city or state markings.This is beyond frustrating. Fortunately for us, right back up the road where we got gas, is the town of MAtamoras, PA - AHA- the M we need! So we backtrack there and go into town and voila - we are rewarded!

Matamoras, PA - the "m" in Team for the TS30GT

It's now 12:25 PM so we decide to stop in town here for lunch. After the huge breakfast I had, I wasn't all that hungry, but did manage to chow down a nice bowl of Bean & Bacon soup. We then headed back out onto I-81, westbound for our final checkpoint of the day - PNC Field in Moosic, PA - home of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders Baseball team

PNC Field - Home of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders - Baseball Tour

So, here we are, having captured the final checkpoint of our tour - for a total of 180. It's 2:07 PM and we've got just 108 miles to get back home to Larry's house. We get back on I-81 westbound (though it actually heads southwest) and burn fuel to get home. It's a bit of a hassle getting through the Wilkes Barre area due to the major road construction in the area, as well as the resultant 55 mph speed limits. Even after that, this stretch of I-81 is in pretty poor condition. There were several sections of miles of single lane road due to surface resurfacing and/or bridge repair/replacement. Despite that we were doing OK until we came up to a state police car sitting off the road with his lights on. Turns out there was a temporary road closure up ahead - while the construction crew moved some barriers. We sat for a bit, and then slowly began creeping ahead at first as the traffic was choked down to another single lane but eventually we worked through this and were back at speed again. It amounted to about a 20 minute delay. Oh well, that's the cost of doing this riding business!

We arrived back at Larry's at 4:37 PM. Sally had a nice dinner waiting for us and we basked in the glory of having completed a very challenging 16,705 miles ride (not including home to start or finish to home for me), over 46 riding days.  

I still have another two day's ride to get back home to Tamps, but am sitting out today in PA due to the heavy rain moving through. Hopefully, it'll clear out over night and I'll have a couple of nice weather days to make it home. There's I'll likely post up some additional stats, summaries and details of the ride not yet shared.