George Dickel

Forgot my shoes on the bike so I paraded through the “free continental” breakfast area with my knee-high motorcycle boots.  The wayward tourists on lay-over for the Labor Day Weekend gave me nary a second glance.  I packed up and left Scanton, PA in the mirror.  I programmed the GPS for a thril ride, but it navigated me through the suburb neighbors in Scanton.  After the tenth stop sign, zig-zagging through residential streets, I noticed my arrival time was going to be 3:52pm, it was only 8:30 am.  Seven and a half hours to go 194 miles!  I quickly pushed the “cancel route,” I found myself back on I-81 south towards Harrisburg.  After droning on in mind-numbing interstate purgatory, I decided enough, let’s try this again.  How about this button? Avoid interstates.  After getting of the interstate, I found myself on some three digit, numbered highways that looked promising.  This was more like it, going through little quaint, picturesque villages and nice twisty roads through Pennsylvania farm country.

I saw a sign for Gettysburg, that would be worth a stop.  Now I have visited there numerous times before, but it is always great to see that hallowed ground and appreciate where those men sacrificed themselves.  I stop at the location where Lincoln gave his four minute address (something modern politicians should learn—brevity).  After a quick tour, I progressed down through the back country of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and finally, West Virginia.  Imagine that, three days to get through Montana, and today I crossed four states lines in less than two hours.

I arrived at Dave’s house and achieved the answer to that mystery, what was at the bottom of the bottle of George Dickel Rye left on the counter for me.  The neighbors must have smelled Dave’s fresh, out-of-oven jalapeño concoction, because they drifted in like homeless to Thanksgiving meal at the shelter.  By time it got dark, there was no objection from us homeless to Dave’s nacho plate that was gone within seconds.  Us homeless attacked it like a pack of wolfs to a fresh snowy, white, cute little lamb staked out for lunch.   Finally, stuffed, drunk, and exhausted, I crashed.