Sometimes everything comes together and what starts out as a short local ride becomes a ride you want to last forever.
That's what happened to my wife Debbie and I on Wednesday night.
I got home from work around 5:45 and Debbie informed me that she wanted to go on a motorcycle ride for dinner. So after having one of those where do you want to go? I don't know where do you want to go? I don't know where do you want to go conversations, I changed clothes and we decided to just jump on the bike and see where we ended up.
What a perfect night.
When we left the house the temperature was around 85 degrees, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We headed west out North Landing road to Centerville, down Centerville on our way to Moyock. When we were almost to Moyock I turned to my wife and hollered how about Mel's Diner for dinner? There was an immediate reply of "sounds good". Now that we had a destination we both sat back to enjoy the ride.
Because it was the middle of the week and it was now after 6:00 there was no traffic to speak of. We had the open road on a crystal clear night. We road south on 168 and then 158 to Grandy NC. We arrived at Mel's around 7:00 pm.
For those who may not know, Mel's is a diner with atmosphere. It's decorated in a 50's theme with Elvis pictures and advertisements for cars, appliances, and movies from the 50's. There is music from the 50's and 60's playing continuously and all-in-all it is just a cool place. Mel's gets pretty crowded over the weekends in the summer with all of the folks heading to and from the Outer Banks, but since we were there in the middle of the week it was pretty empty. Burgers, fries, and milk shakes are what Mel's does best and they didn't let us down. Good food, good service.
It was still light out when we left but it was getting late and the sun was starting to set. Debbie pulled a sweatshirt out of her saddle bag but I didn't have one and besides, it was still around 80 degrees. It was around 7:45 when we headed home. A nice easy ride north. As we got closer to Moyock the sunset on our left was awesome. Once again, I didn't want this ride to end.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end at around 9:00 we pulled into the garage. 105 miles round trip, not the longest ride we have ever taken but one that will be remembered for some time.
Note to self 1: Put the camera in the saddle bags and leave it there
Note to self 2: Wrap the camera in a sweatshirt and leave them both in the saddle bags.
