Girl Meets World on FZ-07 Motorcycle: Chapter 2, Part 19

Heading south now on our Yamaha FZ-07 and Yamaha FZ-1 , our next stop on the list was Cape Cod, the childhood home of the one and only Ari Henning ! Ari had given me a thorough itinerary of must-sees on the cape, and I was excited to meet his parents and see the place that made him such a weirdo, haha.

The Henning garage was like a museum of race bikes, and the cape was beautiful and serene. We hung out at an old abandoned air force radar station nearby, exploring dark and dilapidated rooms that looked ripped right out of a horror movie. (Fitting, being there right before Halloween. I'm 99% certain that place had to be haunted). The base was perched on cliffs that overlooked the sea, so we climbed over some cut up fences to admire the Atlantic from the cliff side. Beautiful.

On the way back, we turned off onto Old King’s Highway, another part of the itinerary I was told was not to be missed. The road started out pretty flat and smooth, but pretty quickly started getting more and more sandy and uneven. Ari had warned me that the road ended descending in a soft, sandy hill, but I still wasn’t quite prepared for HOW sandy it was going to get. Not sure how to deal with terrain that soft and deep (assuming there’s any good way to deal with sand on street leaning dual sport tires), I flailed down the hill all catawampus before predictably ending up sitting on top of my downed bike. Dammitall. I HATE SAND SO MUCH.

Hollywood helped me leverage the bike back upright with no damage to speak of (The only good thing about crashing in the sand) and got it down the remaining 500 feet of hill. I’ve got a lot of practicing to do before Baja, I suppose. We veered back toward the coast again and hiked down a sandy cliff side to the shore. Getting to touch the Atlantic again kind of made biffing it in the sand to get there worth it. Sort of. I guess.

He headed toward Province Town for dinner where a police officer came up beside us, and stopped to tell us how cool he thought our bikes were (I’ve always dreamed of getting stopped in traffic purely for being too awesome. Achievement unlocked!). He rode an F800GS when he wasn’t in a cop car, and was confused by what the hell my bike even was. I’m surprised how few people know about the FZ-07 (although I suppose mine looks a bit different from stock, so maybe the confusion is warranted).

The next day, we took a walk down to the other side of the cape and explored the beach a bit before huddling inside to wait out some bad weather and wait for some new gear to arrive. My crashed Dainese gear wasn’t quite as functional as it used to be, so I had decided to give Rev’it a go, and this was a rare moment where I had an address to get things to. The Ladies Neptune jacket and pants seemed to have a huge array of features, and I was excited to give them a try in this increasingly cold weather.

Then it was Hollywood’s birthday! It’s really hard to find ways to make the day more special when you spend every day on the road, seeing amazing things, meeting incredible people, and just experiencing life every day as something totally new and unexpected, but I did the best I could! We hunted down a movie theatre where I attempted to chauffeur my travel buddy two-up (which is way more difficult than it looks, especially when your passenger weighs more than you do and it’s a blustery day) and found an incredible dinner (complete with an obligatory embarrassing restaurant serenade). I considered it a job well done.

We woke up the next day finally ready to head out. We said goodbye, figured out a way to transport some big boxes of gear on the back of our loaded bikes to a FedEx location to ship back my old gear (I’m glad I travel with paracord and a dude who knows how to tie a lot of different knots), and made our way to Rhode Island.

Hollywood had family south of Providence, so we hung out for a few days with his adorably plucky daughter, Rosemarie, and her mother and friends. They were all fun and down to earth and it was interesting to see another side of Hollywood’s life after having traveled with him day in and day out for the last 5 months or so. We saw a huge array of mansions and old stone fences, visited a historic lighthouse at a place called Beaver Tail, went trick-or-treating (I now know what it’s like to be the adult on Halloween; It’s definitely not quite as glorious as being the kid on Halloween), and took a few more days of R&R. It may sound silly to need vacation from what’s kind of an extended vacation, but motorcycle travel is exhausting when you do it long term.

On one of our last days in Rhode Island, we got to meet up with another part of the Motorcyclist family, as Marc Cook had moved out to Rhode Island to work for Twisted Throttle, where he gave us a tour of the facility. It was awesome to catch up with someone who has such an amazing wealth of knowledge, stories, and experiences in so many different facets of motorcycling. There's something indescribably special about getting to run into familiar faces when you're so far from home. I felt sorry for our waitress, because it was really hard to stop talking long enough to look at the menu, and actually order food.

While I haven’t been doing much camping since I got to this side of the country, getting to see all of the old historic buildings and structures and cities has kept it every bit as interesting. That said, it’s finally time to start heading down and back west to knock out the few remaining southern states, so let’s hope we can keep riding this high note!