Boxer Shorts, August, 2004 - 2 of 4

Editor's Pillion  
  Victor Cruz

What Makes a Good Ride Great? Four Rides: July 2-5.

YOU HAVE YOUR BIKE. You have your weather. You have your tarmac. You have your riding skills and judgment. How is the road quality? Cracked or freshly paved? High on the list is the number of curves. You may have heard of Deal's Gap, a.k.a. the Dragon's Tail in western North Carolina. This is US129, and it claims 318 curves in 11 miles. You could call this a technical ride. Or you have broad sweepers or casual affairs, a mixed bag of straights with a handful of benders. High on the list is scenery. Mix casual affairs with scenery, such as the rock walls on Connecticut 169, south of The Vanilla Bean, throw in clear, sunny 70s, a holiday weekend, and you have a good ride. Pack a camera and stop to snap photos and you have a very good ride.

The premier spring 2004 issue of Motorcycle Escape magazine collected 10 rides in a feature dubbed "10 Great Getaways." This top-10 list began its count-down with Calif's Mendocino Coast, Pacific Coast Highway 1 just north of San Francisco, and ended with Florida Everglades to Key West route. At number 9 was a local New Englander -- Route 7 Connecticut. I had to try it.

On Friday I left at 10:30 a.m. for the Mass Pike. I took I-84 to Danbury, CT to pick up Rt 7. In short, it was not a great ride. The route only gets interesting once you cross into Mass! Once in Mass., I took 57 east to 8 north (a beauty!) along the river that spills out of the Otis Reservation, then 23 east to Westfield, a hilly road full of benders and much fun. Tar snakes notwithstanding.

Using Microsoft's Streets & Trips mapping program, I noticed a series of snaky roads running through the upper west corner of Rhode Island, at George Washington Memorial State Forest, and being July 4th weekend, it made patriotic sense to try it, not knowing at the time that the road was gravel. Take 44 east from Chepachet; after the park entrance find Border Trail, though I would not advise it, unless you like to cross floods that span the entire road, negotiate gullies, cut through soft mounds of gravel and bypass large rocks while standing on your pegs going downhill.

Lost, I started down a hilly and hairy power-line field. That's when the gravel turned into waves: high narrow bumps set too close to each other, like a kid's one-dimensional drawing of the ocean. Down, up, down, up, down, up. It was like riding a 50-cent mechanical pony at Wal-Mart. What kind of fool would try this? Riding a new $16,000 motorcycle through this narrow stew that never saw a grader was stupid of me. I vowed that if I survived this tiny tongue of Iraq without dropping the 500 pounder on top of me I would never do as dumb did.

I immediately turned around, realizing that power-line fields can cross an entire state. Leaving the Park after 30 minutes and escaping without injury to bike or body, I headed straight home. I was exhausted. I had flecks of mud on my glasses. I did crash, but on the couch.

Sunday July 4 was a perfect weather day. I had no place in mind when I set off early afternoon. I figured I'd go west. I somehow found myself at the Vanilla Bean, Rt.169 CT and what a charming road that is. And it only gets better. If you like the scenery of miles upon miles of stone walls, farms, village squares and perfect 200-year old houses, then you'll love 169. At Jewett City I started my return to Dover by doing I-states all the way. 395 to 6 east to 295 to 95 North. Rt. 6 east in RI is a desolate stretch of road with nothing but beer stores, garages and rough necks.

By far the highlight of this July 4th weekend ride was done in the company of Dana and Kathy Lewis and my pillion princess Vicky Straley. For the last few years Vicky and I have made it a point to shed away the March winter blahs by attending the Bayside Expo's annual flower and garden show. There Vicky picked up a card from Mike Mazur of Earthworks, a landscape designer whose house on 16 Rattlesnake Gutter Road in North Leverett, Mass., is a garden portfolio and worth a drop-by.

From Bolton we took 62 and met up with Dana at the hilltop green square of Barre. Dana is a savant of central Mass and we followed him on numberless backroads to Everett and Rattlesnake Gutter Road, which quickly turned to gravel and was blocked by a gate. Sitting on a pair of GS's, we were tempted; the bikes could've easily sidestepped the gate, but since we were with our law-abiding better halves, we decided against it and forged a retreat to the local co-op food store at Moores Corner for snacks and directions, in that order.

Upon asking for directions we were given the proverbial, "ye can't get dare from ear," minus the Maine accent, which Dana conjured up on behalf of the store's cash-register operator, a guy with his beard handing low in braids. A look around revealed that we were in a crunchy-granola, quasi-hippie enclave. A place where peace signs hang from barns and old Volvos, where the young people living there appear like graduate students from U-Mass Amherst, only 10 miles south.

"You can't visit Everett and not see the Peacepagoda," the braided beard wagged. Our brows frowned in unison. "What? You never heard of the Peacepagoda!?" Not wanting to appear ignorant, I did not reply with my immediate thought, which was, "What the hell is a frick'in Peacepagoda?" I'm sure my face said as much.

We visited Mike Mazur's stone gardens and marveled at the slabs of flat stone used to build levels and seating areas around his manicured backyard slope. Bring your china tea-set picnic basket and lounge in the greenhouse against a trellis of tri-colored passion flowers. There was garden sculpture, a copper bird bath, iris and lilies and plants arranged in delicate, orderly fashion. I was enjoying the serenity when Dana shouted, "look, a cat!" And sure enough, there was a cat.

Before leaving for a late lunch at Turner's Falls, we stopped to see the mandatory Peace Pagoda. A dirt road with a small easy-to-miss sign points the way. There is a Buddhist dormitory where Japanese and American Buddhist monks and nuns eat, sleep, and pray for peace. Students from Smith College visit for religious studies. Dana noticed a stable of luxury cars parked about. A Jaguar, Volvo and a few Mercedes. "These monks sure like their cars," he said.

We walked up this long dirt hill to the summit, when the Peace Pagoda appeared. A giant white dome with leaf shapes on the perimeter made me think of a large bud, maybe the bud of a lotus, a symbol for emergence. It also featured four sets of characters painted in gold leaf and facing north, south, east and west. A man and a woman, a sleeping Buddha, one standing, and one meditating. Pagodas are built to house relics of the Buddha and are common in China, Thailand and Vietnam, which together have 207 million Buddhists. This one was built about 20 years ago by young Americans led by Japanese monks of the Nipponzan Myohoji order of Buddhism.

Nipponzan Myohoji is unusual among Buddhist orders in that the ordained are not seeking personal salvation or enlightenment, but the removal of all weapons from the face of the earth. Their weapon of choice for this battle is prayer. These members once walked 550 miles from here to Washington, D.C., in a 30-day traveling prayer vigil for peace in Central America. There's a new temple, modern in design, under construction and being built by volunteers. What a sight, and here in Leverett, Mass, a nowhere hamlet with no town nothing.

We had overcast drizzle weather; we didn't pile on miles; we didn't venture out of state; the roads where as easy going as the scenery. Things that make for a traditionally great ride were not in ample abundance. I learned something new. Once on the mount, I rarely stop. Visiting "attractions" takes you off the bike. The trip proved to me that it pays to stop and smell the Peace Pagodas. This together with the company shared made this one great ride.

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