Pennsylvania to NYC

It was raining when I left the campground and started north through Baltimore to Pennsylvania. I had planned on taking a scenic route through Pennsylvania, but the rain sapped the fun out of it and I ended up slabbing most of my route. Early on, I found one thing I had forgot to seal up from the water: my ignition module. It had been smashed and rashed before I bought the bike, and was quite exposed to the elements. The problem first revealed itself when I stopped for gas after riding through a solid rain, and the bike wouldn't start back up. The engine would turn over, but it wouldn't catch. I figured it was related to water, and bought a can of WD-40 ("Water Displacement") and started spraying down the coils and other electrical components, hoping to find the one that was causing the problem. Eventually I hit upon the ignition module, and the bike fired back up. It did it again later that day, but I knew what to spray.

I had started heading north into Pennsylvania before I decided to just go straight to Philadelphia. Some time during the day, my speedometer cable snapped, so I no longer had a working odometer, and I had to rely on the GPS for speed. At some points, it was raining so hard cars and trucks were pulling off to the side of the road. I couldn't see through my visor no matter how much I wiped so I had to keep it flipped up and cover the lower part of my face with one hand to protect it from the stinging rain. I finally made it to Philadelphia and the rain subsided. I went and saw the Liberty Bell, which was smaller than I had expected.

After leaving Philadelphia, I entered Brooklyn, NY as my destination on the GPS and continued on. I called ahead to the friend I was going to be staying with and told him the GPS figured I'd get there around 7:30. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that it said 7:30 instead of 19:30. Around 8:00 I started getting suspicious of the route I was taking and zoomed out to see the route the GPS has planned out. As it turns out, it doesn't like crossing the bridges into NYC, and had come up with a ridiculous route which went northwest to the Great Lakes, then far north of New York, before finally coming south into the city. I had driven about an hour in the wrong direction as well. I put in a destination right before the George Washington Bridge into New York and it came up with a much more realistic route. The bridge is beautiful at night, but I was dumped onto a parkway immediately after crossing so I didn't get a chance to take a picture. I put my friend's address into the GPS and took FDR Drive to Brooklyn, another fun drive at night. I finally arrived around 10:30pm.

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