Waterford

In Virginia. Lovely place. I discovered it three months ago while riding the Guzzi and went back there three times already.

I really like this picture of the Guzzi. But I have to post one of the Yamaha... I'll try to do it next week. By the way, our Fall ride with Steve has just been postponed. He got promoted and he has to spend the whole month of October in Dallas.. Oh well, we decided we would give it another try in April.

That's after the big rains and floods last June in Maryland. There were so much trees and debris carried by the river that they all piled up against this old bridge. Luckily, it was sturdy enough to withstand the pressure. They were about to close if for a couple of days to bring a big crane and clean the mess.

Antietam...The scene of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. I like to go riding around Harper's Ferry, Sharpsburg, along the Potomac. It's my favourite ride from where I live. You can feel the presence of history which is great for some eurotrash such as me.. Here is the Guzzi a few weeks ago near Antietam train station. Special trains were set up from Washington DC after the battle for relatives to come and identify the deads or get the wounded back home. "23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing after twelve hours of savage combat on September 17, 1862. The Battle of Antietam ended the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia’s first invasion into the North and led to Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation" that's from the official site http://www.nps.gov/anti/.
It is actually not very different in shape and outcome from the battle of Solferino three years earlier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Solferino which sealed Italy's independence. This was the time when the world was really on fire. War in Europe, War in the United States....

Harper's Ferry nearby is of John Brown's fame: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1550.html. Victor Hugo the French writer, poet, political leader, led the campaign in France for John Brown not to be hanged. He left some beautiful drawings about it http://www.artseensoho.com/Art/DRAWINGCENTER/hugo98/hugo3.html. International Human Rights campaigns are not a new thing. In the case of John Brown, it didn't work.
Anyway, I loveAmerican History and it's very much right here, in Maryland and Virginia that some of the defining moments took place.