Lago di Como, meet Lake Winnipesaukee. Passo dello Stelvio, say hi to Jefferson Notch Road. Autostrade Uno, I give you I-93.

It’s good that we get to know each other. Because this Connecticut Yankee is going to traverse King James’ old colonial court aboard his very sleek, very Italian motorbike, searching for la dolce vita in the lush, green corners of a New England summerscape. You might think of it as a sort of Mille Miglia of the late-middle-aged soul.

For the uninitiated, the actual Mille Miglia is a legendary automotive endurance race hatched in the early 20th century, and conducted along 1,000 miles of Italian public roadways.

It was most recently immortalized in the movie Ferrari, dramatizing Enzo Ferrari’s preparation for the 1957 edition of the race (fun flick if you haven’t seen it). Today, it’s still “run” as a retro road rally by well-heeled antique car nuts.

Course-wise (and when they were actually racing) drivers would speed south from the Dolomites through a daisy-chain of towns and cities along the the Adriatic (or “calf” side of the country, if you prefer to think of Italy as a boot), bottom out in Rome—the race’s southernmost point—and then tear north through Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, and ultimately to Brescia, ending the race where it began.

I like to think of this particular ride as my own private Mille Miglia. A thousand-mile New England barnstorm from sea to mountains and back, not so much a race as an emotional reconnaissance mission undertaken to mark (and contemplate) several internal and personal milestones, chief among them:

• The conclusion of a joyful and productive 38-year Madison Avenue advertising career
• Liberation from the formal necessity to work (a fortunate blessing, I know)
• Graduation from most (though not all) parental obligations, having launched three delightful, responsible, gainfully-employed, tax-paying young adults
• Completion of EMT school and Connecticut and National EMT certification (a nagging and long-deferred life-goal, finally realized the summer after “pretiring”); and
• The august occasion of my biological odometer turning over from an ego-sparing 59 (“hey, fifty is the new forty…and I’m still in my fifties!”) to the roundly sober and chronologically blunt 60.

As the Italians say, Chi vive vede molto, chi viaggia vede di più — “those who live see a lot, those who travel see more.”

Thus, my own Mille Miglia New England.

It seems appropriate that my particular bike for this Mille Miglia would be a relatively-new-to-me Moto Guzzi Guardia d’Onore, an Italian mid-sized ADV model manufactured at their century-old factory on the shores of Lake Como. The “Guardia” appellation denotes its use by the Reggimento Corazzieri, a mounted Carabinieri unit and “Honor Guard” for the President of the Italian Republic.

I’d like to think both Cotton Mather and Georgia Meloni would approve…

One final sidebar before departing.

Unlike other normal, well-adjusted “retirees” who throw a party and then spend the next several months playing golf, day drinking, and binge-watching Netflix, I had to spend my first post-work summer with my head up the sigmoid colon (left lower abdominal quadrant) and my nose buried in Emergency Care 14th Edition Revised, studying to get certified as an EMT (bucket list goal noted earlier)…

This happened to culminate with my State Practical exams, which I took just 24 hours before departing for this ride. They’re a series of nerve-wracking emergency skill assessments where you’re tested and timed on proper CPR and AED use, airway clearance, patient ventilation, a trauma scenario, a medical scenario, bleeding and shock treatment, and limb immobilization via splinting/slinging/swathing.

Pretty much everything you’d encounter with, oh, say, a motorcycle accident?

😐

So while I was about to embark on this two-wheeled walkabout with no schedule, no time limit, no work emails to check, and no job to come back to (!) I also happened to have inline c-spine stabilization and DCAP-BTLS very fresh on my mind (click the link to learn more about that unhappy mnemonic.)

Smile for the mortality camera!

Thus, with this fresh on my mind, I and my beautiful Italian motorbike pulled out of the driveway and headed for I-95, with the first hundred miles becoming a sort of psychological mind-wash, cycling me through a full and very mixed load of emotions.

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Connecticut

Just outside of Westport, CT, a gentle mental pre-soak of second-thoughts and self-doubt commenced.

Why was I undertaking something so obviously dangerous—a rando, meandering, 1,000 mile tour of New England—in the first place?

Why can’t I simply enjoy more mundane pleasures like pickleball, gardening, or golf?

As I tried to settle in, I felt a little stiff and uncomfortable, having not done a longer ride in many months. How was I going to endure doing this for another 200 miles today, and for three days after?

Under this cloud of insicurezza, I piloted the Guzzi first east to New Haven, then north onto I-91. Around Hartford, I encountered the infamous and chaotic tangle of entrances, exit ramps, and interchanges where I-91, I-84, Route 2, and Route 44 intersect like a bowl of asphalt spaghetti, with this two-wheeled meatball wedged between tractor-trailers jockeying for position.

And it was here is that the second emotional cycle kicked in: paranoia and fear.

Caught between tractor one and trailer two, my mind spun: is this when my 20-year lucky streak finally runs out, and I get crushed under the wheels of a semi, or rag-dolled across three lanes of traffic? Will my demise be violent and painful, or over in the blink of an eye? Did I actually labor for 38 years to have my life conclude on day one of retirement?

All of these swirling negative emotions…and we’re only at mille centocinquanta.

But I survived that clustertruck and my own self-torment (even though it’s also a form of self-preservation) by keeping calm, keeping a cushion of space between the two thundering behemoths until the asphalt spaghetti unwound, and counting on my Guardia angel for safe passage. And so it passed.

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Massachusetts

Less than an hour or so further north, I’m passing through Springfield, Mass, the birthplace of basketball and home to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Just beyond that, the landscape quickly becomes more bucolic. In the “Mass Hamptons” (Southampton, Easthampton, and Northampton), traffic starts to thin, the doom fantasies start to fade…and a mental rinse-cycle finally commences.

I motor along at a steady 75, the Guzzi’s twin cylinders churning contentedly between my knees. I flip my visor up, and feel the summer air course through my helmet, across my face, and out the vents, cooling and calming my overheated brain. I start to pass orchards and dairy farms, the sweet smell of cut grass caressing my nose, the August sunshine warming my cheeks.

I ride vigilantly but relaxed, calmer and confident, and I actually start…

enjoying myself?

The sensation of joy strikes like the tolling of some unseen bell, a head-clearing, heart-lifting “G-O-N-G” as I recognize (not so much in my mind as my stomach) that I’ve actually crossed one particular finish line in life (the conclusion of a long professional career), and was now entering the very first miles of a new, deliciously aimless sort of “race.”

This called for celebration. So I marked the moment with a hot open-face turkey sandwich and Diet Coke here at the Bluebonnet Diner in Northampton.

I even had fries. It was divine.

Belly filled with food and contentment, I saddled up and pressed on through Deerfield and Greenfield, before crossing another New England border into Vermont.

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Vermont

The virtual line between Massachusetts and Vermont always holds a kind of nostalgic personal significance for me, as crossing it marks passage to a long-beloved, “home-away-from-home” (if you’re curious why, check out this post: Vermont Is a Place I Love).

Long story short: Vermont is where I spent my Pernod-soaked college days at UVM learning to write (Pernod seemed like the most Hemingway-esque of drinks, first clear and then cloudy, bitter but also sweet); it’s where I met the lovely young Connecticut girl who’d later become my wife; and where I also met my other life-partner for many of the two-wheeled moto-adventures I’ve blogged about here on Longitude&Gratitude: the intrepid Jonah Houston, aka The Brotherman (our last (mis)adventure here.)

Vermont, it’s always great to be back in your delcious green embrace.

But today, Vermont was only a waypoint en route to the White Mountains of neighboring New Hampshire; I’d be revisiting Vermont properly on the tail end of my Mille Miglia loop. So I continued up I-91 along the Connecticut River to White River Junction, where I picked up I-89 and crossed the bridge to the Live-Free-or-Die state.

This border crossing is always a bit curious to me, given the two states’ proximity and striking physical similarities (they’re literal topographic and geometric dopplegangers of each other).

But despite fitting together like puzzle pieces of perfectly equal size and shape, their orientations could not be more different.

Vermont is all eco and techno-crunchy. It’s Bernie and the Microbreweries wrapped in a sustainable microfleece blanket, topped with Cherry Garcia and doused with cruelty-free Real Vermont^TM Maple Syrup.

The state doesn’t allow billboards (along with practically any other form of modern commerce). They have an acute housing shortage, but they’re almost militantly anti-development. It’s got great skiing, but almost all of the folks with the resources to ski (and own ski homes) are out-of-staters from Connecticut, Mass, New York, and (gasp!) New Jersey.

But all this said, the state is undeniably, almost heartbreakingly beautiful…so long as you don’t look too closely at their opioid crisis (which is just plain heartbreaking), dwindling population, or struggling businesses.

(And I say all this and I’m still a Vermont superfan.)

New Hampshire, on the other hand, is hard where Vermont is soft, right where Vermont is left, and growing where Vermont is shrinking.

The “Live Free or Die” State apparently includes freedom for outdoor advertisers, so its natural beauty—equal to Vermont’s—is, sadly, often pockmarked by ugly billboards and signage. New Hampshire also seems to attract more than its fair share of coal-rolling pickups with gun racks, techno-bedroom-commuters from Boston’s “Silicon Alley” (along Route 128), and tax averse retirees wanting to shield their nest eggs from Uncle Egg-Sampler. There’s no state income tax, no state sales tax, and no estate tax. Unsurprisingly, this has yielded enviable economic growth.

Taken together, Vermont and New Hampshire are not unlike the Roman God Janus, the dual-faced god of both beginnings and passages, the deity of change. They’re a reductive reflection of where we are nationally: a house divided, trying to reconcile our messy history, present ambitions, progress, and shortcomings…all while we fight interminably about the right path towards a more perfect union.

If you’re interested in exploring the origins of this “duality” further (before we get back to motorcycling), check out Vermont and New Hampshire, Geographic Twins, Cultural Aliens a short essay from the Harvard Gazzette. The authors looked at “the number of Birkenstock dealers (per capita, Vermont has twice as many); vegetarian restaurants and hemp product dealers (Vermont is ahead); Harley-Davidson dealerships (New Hampshire wins); and Dairy Queens (Vermont, the land of Ben & Jerry’s, has none).

These differences alone failed to account for the divergences between the two states, which have become more acute in just a few generations. So they came up with a concept called “idio-cultural migration,” where “inter-state migrants move for cultural reasons, and not just for economic reasons, as commonly thought. And that this cultural migration has reinforced two diverging portraits — an upscale counterculture Vermont and a blue-collar New Hampshire.

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This, my friends, is the kind of shit I think about while riding motorbikes. So with all this in mind I motored east on I-89, and then picked up a series of blue highways meandering northeast into the foothills of the White Mountains.

I arrived at my destination, Campton, where I was staying at a tidy little AirBnB on the ground floor of a family farmhouse (I’m not sure what they farmed, but they had a few shed’s-worth of tractors, plows, and other agricultural machinery lining their driveway, like a mechanical welcoming committee).

For dinner, my hosts suggested The Common Man (how New Hampshire) in Ashland, which, unbeknownst to me, was part of the beloved Common Man chain of restaurants, diners, bars, spas, inns, and accommodations across the Granite State.

I know it’s not really ATGATT (All The Gear All The Time for non-moto friends), but after a long ride in armored gear, I sometimes indulge the guilty pleasure of wearing “civvies” to grab dinner. So I took advantage of the soft summer evening to ride 10 miles to Ashland in flagrante delicto, cheating on my Rev’It riding suit, but delighting in the silky August air puffing around my polo shirt.

I arrived to a parade of flags. Here’s my Italian Stallion, proudly waving il Tricolore alongside the Stars and Stripes on Main Street. An uncommon bike bearing a common man, to an uncommonly delicious and rewarding quarter-Mille Miglia meal at one of New Hampshire’s Common Man establishments.

They didn’t have Peroni, so I settled for this.

I dined outside, basking in the setting New Hampshire sun, grateful for having lived free—but not died—on Day One of my circuit of New England.

Then I rode back to Campton in the waning light, me and my Italian sidekick one-fourth of the way through our Mille Miglia New England, and one full day trip into “retirement,” before kicking off my boots and retiring for the night.

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New Hampshire

Day two started (as I try to start most days) with a little physical activity, partly to lubricate my joints, partly to slow down and take in the sights, and partly to appease my lovely wife and cardiologist.

So I tootled around until I found this fine dirt road, and set off on a five-mile hike.

One of the greatest joys of moto-exploring is not knowing where you’re going, and even not knowing where you are when you get there. I wound up on a delightful dirt road that wound its way through the forest and across a primitive wood bridge, straight out of Billy Goat Gruff. The only thing missing was the troll.

It was a bracing morning walk…

…but we came here to ride. So I packed up, saddled up…

and headed up to the White Mountains.

I took I-93 through the White Mountain National Forest, the granite peaks becoming increasingly higher and more dramatic as I ventured north.

I pulled off at Franconia Notch State Park, site of the (once famous) Old Man Of The Mountain, whose stony visage graced both the side of Cannon Mountain’, and one side of New Hampshire’s state quarter.

That is, until the Old Man’s face fell off in 2003. So now it’s just…a rock face.

Fortunately, this old man’s face remains generally intact.

It was a little weird visiting an attraction that is, well, no longer an attraction, because it no longer actually exists. Perhaps this is a metaphor for the rearward-looking face of Janus, as New Hampshire’s other face faces…the future?

My next destination, also recommended to me by my AirBnB hosts, was Jefferson Notch Road. I love notch and gap roads, as they’re generally only open during the summer months, are lightly travelled, and have ADV-friendly dirt or gravel sections at their highest points. My hosts had actually never explored Jefferson Notch Road before, and were unsure what kind of ride it would be.

But I took this as a (very favorable) sign.

It was.

The road turned out to be an ADV bike’s wet dream. Miles of solitary dirt, scrabbling its way through the White Mountains, and topping out at an ear-popping 3,000 feet.

Another notch for the ol’ riding belt.

The Guzzi was in its element, and I had fun playing around with Fuoristrada mode, which lets the rear wheel spin a bit. Here, I salute the Moto Guzzi V85 in its entirety: a fabulous motorbike, capable of comfortable highway cruising, back road bimbling, and off road exploring, all while it carries you and all your stuff confidently and without complaint.

And che bella! What a superb riding companion…

After descending down to paved civilization, I plotted my second diversion for the riding day. Yep, the mother of all New England mountain rides…

The Mt. Washington Auto Road, sponsor of the most popular SUV (nee family station wagon) bumper sticker in all of New England.

I’d actually ascended Mt Washington once before, but on foot. I hiked it maybe 20 years ago in the summertime (a long, hot, gratifying slog), only to be greeted by 50 mph winds and temperatures decidedly unfriendly to hiking shorts and a tee shirt at the summit.

So from the base, even though it was a little cloudy, I figured I’d be good with a full ADV touring kit, this being mid-August.

But once again, as I climbed the ribbon of asphalt, the clouds thickened, then it started to mist, then the fog settled in, limiting visibility to about one car-length. I used the faintly glowing taillight of a minivan in front of me as a navigation beacon, doing my best to remain on the roadway, which I could hardly see.

To make the ride even more enjoyable, it started pissing rain. Cold rain. Hard rain. Cold and hard enough that I worried it would become sleet or snow, which would not be ideal on a motorbike…

But I finally arrived at the parking area below the summit, and was happy to see that I wasn’t the only lunatic who’d ventured up that day on two wheels.

I donned my rain gear, which was now necessary for the short hike to the very top.

So having ridden to the highest point on the entire Eastern seaboard of the US, where on a fair day you can see Canada, I was treated to a viewing distance of…approximately 15 feet. C’est la vie.

But on the way back down, the weather gods smiled, the clouds parted, and the views became increasingly longer, brighter, and more spectacular.

Here are some various Italian supermodel poses from the descent.

Once I ducked below the cloud ceiling, the view opened up in all its undulating glory. Not sure about Canada, but you could easily see all the way to Maine to the east.

And sure enough, 20 miles and some spectacular riding later I arrived there, entering the fifth state of my Mille Miglia New England motoloop.

Hello Maine. It’s good to be home.

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Maine

I crossed into Maine via Route 2 around Gilead, and passed through one of my favorite western Maine towns, Bethel. It’s home to Gould Academy (which my riding pal Jonah had the dubious distinction of being expelled from), the Sunday River Ski Resort (the largest ski area on the east coast), the Mahoosuc Public Land Trust (fabulous hiking and river swimming at Frenchman’s Hole).

And arguably the best roadside barbecue in all of Maine, Smokin’ Good.

I stopped here for a delicious, dripping-hot pulled-pork sandwich, and searched AirBnB for lodging somewhere up around Carrabassett. And between mouthfuls and chin-wipes, I contemplated what keeps drawing me back to Maine, winter, spring, summer and fall…

Part of it is that Maine is almost incomprehensibly vast, so no matter how much time you spend here, you barely seem to scratch the state’s surface. It’s at least a six-hour drive from bottom to top, and Maine actually has a coastline longer than California’s, thanks to its erose seaward edge, with literally thousands of miles of inlets, coves, peninsulas, and outcroppings.

The northern half of the state—about the size of Ohio—is a vast undeveloped expanse of dense forests and private logging land to the west, and endless potato farms to the east. I did a ride up to the Gaspé in Quebec back in 2020 (see Alone, Stinking, and Trying to be Unafraid); somewhere around Millinocket (near Baxter State Park) I thought, “man, we’re getting up there…I wonder how much longer til I pop out in New Brunswick?” Turns out I had another two and a half hours at full throttle to go.

Besides its raw and rugged coastline, its gelid rivers and silvery lakes, its imposing mountains (13 peaks over 4,000 feet, and one—Katahdin—over 5,000), and its endless supply of Class 4 dirt roads (over 44,000 miles of them, though many are private), the thing I like best about Maine is its laconic, live-and-let-live ambivalence.

In Maine, no one really one cares who you are, what you think, or what you do, so long as you leave them be, don’t talk too much, and don’t ask too many questions.

The state’s got hippies and hunters. Bushes and bushwackers. Cat ladies and Lobster men, off-grid doomsday preppers, backwoods militia members, deadheads, sled-heads, potheads and oyster beds, blueberry farmers, whoopie pie bakers, lumberjacks, lumbersexuals, registered Republicans, registered Democrats, registered Communists, and LL-effing-Bean.

Their official state license plate says “Vacationland,” but I think it should adopt my unofficial Maine motto: “You be you and let ME be.”

I finished my pulled pork, licked the sauce from my fingers, and searched my phone for a suitable destination for the night. I decided to head up to the Carabbessett Valley, near Pan di zucchero (aka Sugarloaf), which would mark the apogee of my Mille Miglia ride. Then I headed out for the last hundred miles, which turned out to be a true Maine joy ride.

I followed winding, undulating Route 142 through thick forests and around shimmering lakes, in and out of tiny one-block towns. It turned out that I was heading for one of them.

Kingfield, Maine is basically an intersection. And my AirBnB was a second floor apartment over the intersection’s art guild, a spacious, creeky, oddly charming space in this 19th century wooden mill building, which backed up to the Carrabasset River.

I was too hungry to change, so I threw on my “diner jacket” and headed north.

In keeping with this ride’s theme, I wound up at an Italian restaurant that was way better than it had any business being, for being in the middle of nowhere. It was called Tufulio’s.

Apparently all the locals know this, as it was already packed on an early Sunday evening. I stuffed myself into a banquette, and then stuffed myself on veal marsala, a great salad, good Italian bread, and a creamy, dreamy Tiramisu, with one beer to celebrate the successful conclusion of secondo giorno of my New England Loop.

Then back to the Arts Guild, falling asleep to the dulcet sound of 18-wheelers downshifting and brake-hissing deep into the night (that’s what you get when your bed is over a busy, blue highway intersection, deep in the bosom of Maine.)

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In the morning, after, a semi-good night’s sleep, I took a 5 mile “constitutional” to walk off the tiramisu and explore the stony, sandy Carabbassett. Pretty river.

At this point, I was near the apex of my Mille Miglia ride, about 500 miles into the northern loop, with another 500 to go on the descent. Today’s destination would be Vermont (this time in earnest) via New Hampshire, a roughly 300-mile day heading southwest. So I headed out early.

While I’ve skied all over New England, I’d never been to Sugarloaf Mountain, the highest ski area in Maine, which was a dozen or so miles north of Kingfield. So I motored up to the base lodge for breakfast, me looking like an interplanetary visitor among the Sugarloaf summer set, a helmeted, space-suit clad alien floating between the golf shirts and tennis skirts.

I can’t say I’m exactly drawn to the gated-community conformity that seems to comprise so much of “retireeland.” For me it always recalls that scene from the 1984 film Repo Man with Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez:

“Ordinary fucking people. I hate ‘em.”

But this time, for the first time, my reflexive snark was met with reflective recognition, and the sharp, slightly unpleasant understanding that, besides the superficial outfit differences, “they” were now “me,” and “I” was now “them.” A sixty-something former professional, now liberated from career-duties and the multi-decade acquisition cycle, empty of nest and open of calendar, free to putter around a putting green (or on a motorbike) for as long as I’d like. At least until my wife called.

So I quieted my inner asshole by invoking my inner Mainer, and did my best internal Down East accent, deadpanning: “You do you and let me be me.”

So me and my Guzzi finished our breakfast burrito, saddled up, and headed out for a three-state fandango. I’d never been up to Rangeley, a name that was seared into my boyhood brain from flipping through the pages of the LL Bean catalog and lusting after the rugged boots and over shirts that bore its name. As it turned out, Rangeley—the town and lake—was decidedly less idyllic than I’d imagined. A little ramshackle and commercial right up to the lake. Lots of truck traffic. Lots of pickups.

But further south and west, this all dissipated, and I was back to solo riding bliss, pit-stopping only for gas, or to pee.

It was a long and winding ride through New Hampshire and then south through VT. I crossed into the Green Mountain State around Wells River, and then riding south on Route 5.

I grabbed some dinner tacos from Trail Break VT, just across the famous Queechee Gorge Bridge...

Then with the sun setting on the mountains, I rode down some dirt roads in the dark, searching for the farm in Windsor where I snagged a cottage room for the night.

And found it.

Glad I didn’t run into any of these guys on my way in.

Now somewhere around 750 miles into Mille Miglia New England, with a belly full of tacos and a cold-frosty in hand, I fought to stay awake for a virtual chat with my deer friend. 10 minutes later, it was lights out.

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Vermont, take two

There is absolutely nothing—nothing—finer than waking up on a warm summer day on a farm in Vermont, and not having a goddamn thing to do other than enjoy it. Che freaking bella. And on this fine morning, you could just as well be in Tuscany.

The smell of sweet grass and manure. Sunlight warming and drying the morning dew. Cocks crowing, crows cawing, cows lowing, horses braying…

And flowers popping. It’s positively fecund.

I lucked out landing a spectacular AirBnB on a working horse farm in Windsor—the Birthplace of Vermont. It was nestled between two steep ridges, down a dirt road in a gentle valley.

Besides the guest cottage where I stayed, the farm had a stately main house (and delightful owner)…

a horse barn…

lush green fields…

an apple orchard…

hiking trails…

and its own secret swimming hole.

Like many farms in Vermont, this one had been here since at least the early nineteen century, and still had some fabulous original structures, including this old cider mill…

The side of the mill had a plaque bearing this piece of Yankee wisdom:

Or said in a slightly different way, acqua passata non macina più. “A mill cannot grind with water that is past.” It’s sort of a metaphor for riding: tutte le strade migliori sono ancora davanti a te… “All the best roads are still ahead.”

And with that in mind, I loaded my Guzzi and rolled down a Vermont country road on this warm August morning, the sun on my back, a contrail of dust rising from the wake of my tires, the air abuzz with a chaos of insect life, and me embarking on the final leg of my Mille Miglia New England.

At the urging of my AirBnB host, I headed west to the little town of Brownsville, in the shadow of Mount Ascutney, for a five star breakfast at the Brownsville Butcher & Pantry, a decidedly under-the-radar, high-end bakery, coffee bar, butcher, and wine shop, all rolled into one. They made a cappuccino to rival anything I’ve had anywhere (including Italy), and a bagel with lox that puts to shame many of the same I’ve spent close to $20 for in Manhattan.

My flagship before the final 200 or so miles home. Since it was such a pretty day, I took backroads heading south down to around Putney, then picked up I-91 through the bottom of Vermont, through Massachusetts, and finally atmospheric reentry into the nutmeg state, Connecticut.

Allora: a thousand miles, five New England states, four days, two Italian cylinders… and one soul-searching, post-career ad-guy rolling towards whatever’s next.

A few closing-of-the-loop observations

1. I. Love. New. England.
2. But I still think I love Maine the most
3. Early days…but aimless, idle time may be the single greatest gift of “retirement”
4. Moto Guzzis are macchine della gioia, pure and simple
5. Not having to check email is weird but nice
6. Not having a job to come home to is weird but awesome
7. You can get drunk on the summer smells in New England
8. Every ride without incident is a blessing
9. Who needs cruise control on a motorcycle? You do
10. Just as Max from Where the Wild Things Are discovered, after an adventure, there’s nothing like coming home to a home-cooked meal with your lovely wife.

“And it was still warm.”