Day 6 - Tuesday April 17th, 2012

Day 6 – 04/17/12

St. Thomas

I woke up at 04:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was excited to go on another island ride, one that was supposed to be the most technical of the rides. It was also an early start day. We were to meet at Deck 2 forward by 06:45. We had breakfast with Dave and Annette at 06:15 then headed downstairs. Everyone worked together to get the bikes ready to go then we sat. We had to wait for clearance from the US Virgin Islands authorities. We waited for almost an hour to be cleared.

Once we were finally cleared we headed over to the gas station for fuel. I hadn’t used much fuel but they filled me up again. We’re not supposed to have more than a quarter tank at the end of the rides. I had been ending with about a half.

We also met up with our escorts, the local motorcycle club and a police officer. The local club members and the officer would be running interference for us all day; blocking intersections and traffic lights.

We headed out, on the left side of the road. We started out pretty flat but that didn’t last long. Soon we were going up and down hills and around corners. St. Thomas is a very hilly, curvy island. There’s also little to no shoulder. Our first stop was a place called Mountaintop; 2500’ above sea level. It was an overlook above Megan’s Bay.

From Mountaintop we dropped down to Megan’s Bay in less than 5 miles. It was a real screamer for the engines and brakes; especially the switchbacks. Megan’s Bay has a beautiful beach where we hung out for about an hour. We left Megan’s Bay and headed up a steep hill. Near the top I went to downshift and the bike hit neutral. I had to stop to restart in first causing the line to slow. Luckily the bike behind me went around or it could have been a real mess.

We rode for awhile, up, up, up, down, down, down, around and around. We finally ended up at our lunch spot, Iggies. It is supposedly a secret hot spot where famous people like Stevie Wonder and Dave Mason have been known to pop up. It had a nice beach so after lunch we pulled up chairs and napped. It was wonderful.

We left Iggies heading for a hill known as Donkey Hill. It was supposed to be a treacherous, super steep hill where we were instructed to use only first gear and high revs. After we all passed the hill and ended up in the port we were all wondering if that was it. It wasn’t that bad. I think everyone was in second for the hill…we were on the little Honda. 

Back in the port we parked the bikes and went shopping. Great deals on watches and booze. Soon enough it was time to get back on board. We rode to the ship, did the nitrogen thing, were inspected by customs and then pushed the bikes back on. Things were complicated by fresh paint in the storage area but we worked around it.

Back in the room we were lying down when we heard all of this cheering and whistling going on outside of the ship. We were pulling out and all of the noise was coming from a neighboring ship where they were cheering our departure. Still not quite sure why.

The evening was pretty sedate. We dressed nicely for dinner so we decided to have our picture taken by the ship’s photographers. We’ll see how they turn out tomorrow. Otherwise it was business as usual…a great meal then off to bed.