Day 14: Thursday 27th September – long rides, big pizzas

Now back in the US we have a long riding day to take us all the way to Pennsylvania, a distance of some 420 miles. Which meant an early pre-breakfast departure time of 6am, but despite last night’s beer drinking this wasn’t a problem and the group were in their usual high spirits. Dean’s dawn wake-up call of “Guess what we’re going to do today? Ride our motorcycles ALL DAY LONG!” resulting in a chorus of “SSHHHH!!!” as he was in danger of waking up the whole hotel. Not that the sound of 8 motorcycles starting up and riding off wouldn’t have done anyway!

A little further down the road we stopped off at Moody’s diner, another of the excellent family-run diners that the US is infamous for. On the menu was “Cheddar Wurst and Eggs” and intrigued I had to give them a try. Just as was the case with yesterday’s burger, I wish I hadn’t. The Cheddar Wurst was exactly what it sounds like – a wurst-style hot-dog sausage that oozed cheddar cheese when I cut into it. It looked like someone was squeezing a big sausage-shaped zit. But the eggs and home-made bread meant the rest of the meal was more palatable!

A long blast down the interstate saw us cover 330 miles before we arrived at Frank Pepe’s Pizza place in West Hartford, where Aaron had assured us we could get the best pizza in the US. He wasn’t wrong, the pizzas were excellent – huge great big slabs of pizza the size of a table-for-two cooked in massive wood-burning pizza stoves. We were joined for lunch by Aaron’s step-dad David and a friend of Dean’s (who’s name escapes me), and ordered 4 pizzas for the 10 of us but there were still plenty of slices left over for David to take home. I still ate way more than I should have done, though.

Following lunch was more dull uninteresting Interstate riding to Matamoras in Pennsylvania and the Best Western where we were staying. The best thing about this hotel was the guest laundry, where I was able to wash all my clothes properly (I’ve been washing my underwear and socks in the sink up until now). Still stuffed from lunch I went to the restaurant in the hotel with the others, skipped drinking anything but water and had a bowl of French onion soup for supper.

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