Tourist

There are days when I feel a little out of place when I'm riding the back roads. But not today.

The Summer Classic Has Arrived

I stopped at a little restaurant in Renovo for a late breakfast on Saturday. Blueberry pancakes, a side of bacon, and a cup of coffee—my usual road trip fare. It wasn’t until I was ready to pay my bill that I noticed the jugs of tea brewing in the window.

Sun tea always reminds me of summer. You couldn’t go to anyone’s house after Memorial Day without seeing a gallon jug brewing on the back porch. Sweet, lemony, and strong, and when mixed with just the right amount of Kool-Aid, it became a deadly combination of sugar and caffeine. It was the high-octane mix that fueled our summers.

My taste for sweet drinks has lulled over the years. A good drink on a hot day now means a slice of lime, a jigger of gin, and a little tonic. Let the kids suck up the sweet stuff. I’ll keep cool with the other summer classic.

Mail Pouch

This is what the old guys at camp chewed.


Nearly every back road of my childhood had one of these signs on the side of a barn. Renovo has two. Painted on downtown buildings, the advertisements have nearly faded out of existence. I miss advertising like this.

Old Dogs

Old bikes, like old dogs, have a way of telling you that they don’t want to do what you want to do on a given day.

My original plans for last Saturday was to hop onto PA 144 and head out to Renovo, take in the Flaming Foliage Festival, and have what was sure to be the last funnel cake of the year. The bike had other plans.

I pulled into a gas station in Milesburg where I usually gas up before heading north. The air was a still cool, so I drank a cup of coffee and warmed myself in the sun before getting back on the road.

The bike started right up, then died as I began to pull out of the parking lot. No problem, clutch, break, feet down, try again. Nothing. Worse than nothing actually, it backfired—loudly. There is nothing more conspicuous than sitting in the middle of a gas station parking lot with a dead bike after a backfire.

I pushed it off to the side of the parking lot and moved it onto its center stand and waited. Hoping that in a few minutes it would change its mind and want to go to Renovo. I tried again, more sputtering and a backfire.

Eventually, I pulled out the tool kit and started running down the checklist of things that go wrong on an old bike. It’s a long list so I stuck to the simple ones. The ones that I understood. Things like spark plugs. The right one looked like it had just came out of the box; the left had some carbon build-up. I’m not sure, but I remember reading somewhere that on boxer engines, like those on my airhead, the left plug tends to dirty quicker since the bike leans left when on the kickstand and not the center stand. By now that little piece of trivia didn’t matter. I had a dead bike.

When I made the decision to buy and old bike, I expected something like this to happen. The bike, for whatever reason, would one day decide it didn't like what I was doing and want to head home. Eventually I did get her started and we rode back home. We took time for lunch at Mr. Hot Dog, and coffee at Cool Beans. However, it looks like I'll have to wait until next year for the Flaming Foliage Festival and fall funnel cake.

First Ride

I woke up shortly after sunrise on Saturday and rode to Renovo, Pa. It sits on the west branch of the Susquehanna above Lockhaven. A blue collar town with an old boxcar factory and a past built on timber. A town of churches and (at one time) bars.

It had a movie theater, a hardware store, a grocery, several outfitters, and a men's store. The usual business line up that populated the main streets of small towns in the middle of the mountains. It also had a YMCA with a restaurant and a counter. My father and I would stop there for breakfast on the way north. The building is still there. Breakfast still costs less than five dollars. I had blueberry pancakes and a cup of coffee.

I love these places.