Day 6 - Piggy's Last Day

It's a sad day here in Connecticut as the pig has passed on to Rhode Island - the runt of the New England litter. Before piggy left we took him through the capital (Hartford) and showed him the sights. We could have had him pose in front of each insurance building in the city (Hartford is the de facto Insurance Capital of the World) but really, who cares?

First stop was the historic Mark Twain house, where the author penned his famous novels, thereafter making grade schoolers miserable for years to come (until the advent of Cliff Notes, anyway). Actually one of those trivia things they show before movies recently told me that Tom Sawyer was the first novel to ever be typed on a typewriter. True story.

Here's piggy posing around the house:







Next up, the memorial to soldiers from Hartford who gave their life in the war for the Union (that's the Civil War to you Rebs - you know, the one WE WON):









And lastly, our capital building, which was clearly built by Russians:





There was little time left for sight-seeing after that as we had a long trek down to the Rhode Island shore to meet up for the handoff.

I'll miss that little bastard!

Day 5 - Local Sights

I was hoping to get the pig out for some sight-seeing today, but there were thunderstorms through the area until late afternoon. Despite that, we got out for an hour or two before it got dark, taking in some local sights under stormy skies.

The other thing that Connecticut is famous for (besides Foxwoods) is growing the shade tobacco leaf that most cigars are wrapped with. Most of those tobacco fields are right near my house, so we stopped by some to take some pictures.

These here are the tobacco fields, the big barn is where they hang the tobacco leaf to dry at the end of the season - there are a few barns next to every field.





True to the name, at some point in the season they drape huge tents over the fields to keep the leaves in the shade.

Next up was the sycamore tree nearby my house which is the largest tree in Connecticut. Certainly not the largest in the country, but the largest in the state.





And last but certainly not least, since this is a motorcycle trip for the piggy, I thought I'd take him on some of the hilly wooded back roads that are so prevalant here in the Northwest corner of the state. This is what I'm going to miss most when I move to Florida, for sure:







Weather permitting, tomorrow I hand off to Rhode Island. There are a few more places I'd like to take the pig before the handoff, but not many. This is not a very happening state.

Day 5 - Of cooooourse.

Good news: my back is feeling better, well enough to ride.

Bas news: Thunderstorms are blanketing the area for the rest of the day. Radar shows a possible break in a few hours, so if that happens I'll head out for a few photo ops, otherwise it'll all have to happen tomorrow morning before the handoff (assuming thunderstorms don't much that up as well).

Day 4 - Grounded

I am grounded today, and the weather is beautiful. I hurt my back yesterday and can't stand up straight let alone ride. SO frustrating.

Hopefully I'll be better tomorrow, got big pig plans.

Day 3 - Nothing to see here

Nothing planned for the pig today. I have an emergency visit to my chiropractor, then a lunch with a few business associates, and then another doctor's appointment. Lots of riding around in the rain, in other words.

The forecast for this weekend had been SUN. YAY!

Now the forecast has changed to thunderstorms all weekend.


I'm thinking about taking the pig to the Podunk Bluegrass Festival on Saturday, and then around to some other local must-see areas (a New England covered bridge, some tobacco fields, the Mark Twain house). We've scheduled a tenative hand-off in Westerly RI for Sunday, when the pig will be taking leave of me and moving along.

Day 2 - The Connecticut Shore

Big day for the pig today. We tried to hit as many of the coolest places in the state that we could in order to try to make up for the fact that Connecticut is probably the lamest state in the country.

Piggy was nice to me and my back knowing we'd be riding a lot today, and picked the BMW over the Gixxer:



I stopped by and picked up my dad, and we headed down Rte 2 towards the shore. Connecticut is world-renowned for... nothing... except for the fact that it is wrapped around the indian property on which the world's biggest casino lies - Foxwoods!

We found a sweet spot in the garage:



...and then wandered through the casino looking for photo ops. Unfortunately they were pretty humorless about me using my camera in the gaming rooms, so we only have a few outdoor shots to show for it:



The casino is ridiculously big, and looks different every time I go there. This is the main hotel at the casino:



...and this is the lobby. Note the blue-hairs. They are EVERYWHERE at the casino. They quite literally bus them in.



From Foxwoods we headed southeast to Groton, which is home to a decent-sized naval base. There was some talk about closing the base last year or so, but I stopped following the news shortly after that so all I can tell you is that it's still open now.

And they have a submarine museum:



The sub base at Groton is home to the USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine.



Happily, it is also a FREE to tour, so we went onboard. Piggy was a bit alarmed - he's not worried about being eaten by real humans, but stuffed humans are an entirely different story.







Once I assured him that he was safely on our side side of the security glass, he relaxed a bit and even started posing again for some photo ops:





My dad listened to the audio tour, but I guess it wasn't all that interesting because he didn't end up sharing much. Up scope!



Outside of the museum was a kick-ass anti-aircraft gun:



...and what we could only guess is a big-ass torpedo tube (it wasn't labelled or antyhing):



Next stop was in Essex, where they have a working steam train that runs along the Connecticut river. I found that the pig is a real ham (ha!), and loved posing every chance he got:



Hobo pig!



The train pulled in with a full load of cars shortly after we got there, so we got some cool pictures of that.





I couldn't get near enough to the working steam engine to get a picture of the pig on it (the engineer yelled something to us about the pig when he drove by but I couldn't make out what he said), so he posed on an older one:



Here's me with the pig:



Our last stop for the day before heading for home was Gilette castle, which is nestled on a hilltop overlooking the Connecticut river.



It was originally a private home built by some dude named William Gillette, who had made his fortune playing Sherlock Holmes on stage. When he died, he left it to the state and it became a state park. More specifically, he willed it NOT to fall into the hands of a "blithering idiot", so the state took it over so that it could be enjoyed by everyone.







The view from the castle is beautiful, which is why Gillette picked that particular location to build his home. Piggy concurred.



We couldn't have asked for better weather and had a perfect day. We're going to need to take a few days off from riding around because, quite frankly, I'm exhausted.

We'll be back on the road this weekend to wrap up the sights. There isn't much else going on in this state worth seeing, so another day or two should do it!

Day 1 - The Handoff

The handoff had to occur between Scranton PA and Hartford CT, so we tried to pick a nice central location. Newburgh, NY was the exact halfway point, but it's not nice. So I suggested Cold Spring, NY instead, which is a quaint little hippy town nestled right on the Hudson river across from West Point academy. Bugdrvr (who had the pig) agreed, and he had a few extra miles to travel (and had to pay some tolls), so it worked out well. For me.

I got to Cold Spring a little early, so I snapped some pictures of the Hudson:







After some mild confusion about which Main street we were supposed to meet on, we finally made the handoff. Here's bugdrvr, the pig, and our bikes:



We had a nice little lunch outdoors next to the MTA / Amtrak trains that went screaming through every 10 minutes, and then took the pig around for a few photo opportunities.

While I was waiting for bugdrvr (I was early he wasn't late FYI), I struck up a conversation with an 83-year-old man born and raised in town. If you ever want to learn about a small town, find an old-timer. He'll be pleased as punch to tell you everything he knows, and I learned a whole lot about the area. For instance this cannon:



...is a replica of the cannon that were manufactured in the area during the civil war. Unlike the other cannon the pig has been photographed with, this would be one of the ones that WON the war. Piggy looks triumphant, no?

Mack (the old timer) also told me that during the Revolutionary War Cold Spring was the site of a massive chain that was stretched across the river which was used to trap British boats on their way up the Hudson. A fort nestled in the forest along the river would then open fire on the boats, sinking them in the river.

By the town's High School is a huge rock (deposited by glaciers WAY back in the day), with a bell on it (originally used to call workers back to the factories) and a link of said chain. After a brief run-in with Cold Spring's finest (who seemed to decide that two out-of-towners on motorcycles couldn't be up to any good and followed us), we found the rock, and piggy posed:



That's the chain to the right of the pig. We headed back up to 84 (and I almost decapitated bugdrvr when the visor of my helmet inexplicably flew off and went flying back down the road) where I headed east and he went west.

Piggy likes to ride fast, so we made good time getting home. I wanted to stop and take a picture of him posing in front of the "Welcome to Connecticut" sign, but it was on the median and there was a cop there and I didn't think he'd appreciate that I was breaking traffic laws for the INTERNETS.

After I got home and washed the road off of me, I rang up my riding partner (my dad, who drives a Bergman scooter) and we went out for dinner. Piggy liked the Gixxer, so we took that to dinner instead of the BMW:



Here is the piggy riding bitch, waiting to go to dinner - and the two most improbable Suzuki riding partner vehicles:



For the ride I strapped him in. He looks smooshed, but I assure you he's most comfortably secured - just look at his smile:




We went to dinner at the most New England restaurant in the area, the Saybrook Fish House:



The pig approved - no pork on the menu.

My dad managed to get tomorrow off (and I'm currently between jobs) so we've got a big day planned. Some gambling, submarines, beaches, trains, and castles. Maybe even a big fuck-off tree.