Cold blast and the long way home

Friday I took a professional day from work to attend a biodiversity workshop at the PPL Susquehanna Riverlands Environmental Preserve which is located adjacent to the Berwick "Steam Energy Facility" (read as Nuclear Power plant). I was happy that Friday was a "Nice" day because I was wanting to take the bike. I do not get to commute to work daily because of dropping my oldest off at her aunt's house before school, so getting to ride on a weak day was a nice change.

The weather was cold, about 35 degrees when I left Robesonia and headed north. Because I was not sure how long it would take to get there and I had to be there by 8:30 I decided to take "highways". So I took 419, (a two laner) to 183 (another two laner) to 81, I took 81 north for about 15 miles, then 193 (another two laner) and finally 11 (guess what? a two laner). Ok so not really highways, but they moved fine.

Leaving at 6:30 AM it was still dark and cold. Predictably as I headed north it was getting colder and even as the sun was rising it got colder still, I passed a bank in Berwick that had the temperature at 23 degrees. Yikes. Of course this whole time I was beating on myself for not dressing my feet properly. I usually would wear my waterproof boots for a trip like this, the water proof rubber lining has an insulating effect and my feet generally stay warm enough with just regular socks. But because I was going to have to do some walking in the woods I wore my AlpineStar lace up boots. I forgot something about them. There are perforated.

So leaving home in regular socks it soon became apparent that my feet were going to suffer. Usually my K1100RS puts out as much heat as the nuclear power plant I would be visiting that day, but Friday it decided that it would stay just above freezing. So the ride up was cold. But I enjoyed it anyway.

The ride home was just as nice except that I did not have time pressure to get home by a certain time, so I set the GPS for scenic and south and went that way. I do not remember the specific roads I took, but I know that I was only about 4 miles off from the way up and the diversion off of 81 only added about 20 minutes to the trip home. One really fun siting I had was along the side of the road about 10 miles south of the power plant. I looked off to the left and spotted a herd of deer grazing in a field. Usually when I see deer there are 3 or 4 together, but this herd had at least 20 head, I lost count at 18. But they did not seem interested in crossing the road, so there were no issues there.

There were two other riders at the conference that rode, but neither rode that day. In chatting the one guy was from north of the plant and he commented that he was worried about ice. (Legit concern, I did see some where trucks were pulling into and out of a quarry and water was leaking from their tail gates. It was not a big deal and easy to avoid, but I understood.) The other guy said that he never rides once the temperature goes below 65 degrees. I looked at him and said "You ride a Harley don't you?" and he did, and he had no idea how I knew! Funny stuff.