Nice 5 Hour Ride in the Country

Yesterday was a very nice ride day for me. After being on the road for several weeks it was really nice to get a chance to take a longer than usual ride. See, most of the time I ride an hour or two and that's it. That is due to having to ride at least an hour to get to the good locations. Yesterday was a different story.

The weather was awesome! At the start of the ride, the temp was around 60. I ventured out around 0930 and headed southwest to Uwharrie National Forest. I have been through there before and I have always enjoyed it. Most of the trip is long and peaceful country roads. Throughout the trip, I road through some very small towns that I had never even heard of. It was actually pretty fun to post my stops using my Loopt application and tell let those that were following me know where I was at. The funny thing is, they had never heard of the towns either.

Once I got into Uwharrie National Forest I took a several roads off the beaten path. Mainly because I got lost. I really didn't mind getting lost. I got the chance to see some very nice roads and scenery that I would have never gotten to see. Besides, on a bike, if you have plenty of gas, you are never lost. I call the off road events "exploring".

After traveling through small towns like McGlead, Pee Dee, Denton and Wadeboro, I headed toward home. On the way home temps reached near 87 and getting a little toasty, but who cares; with the sights and sounds of small hometowns, country roads, fellow bikers and beautiful landscapes, how could I complain.

Below is a map of my route. If you get a chance, take a trip on the same route. I am looking forward to repeating the same route in the fall when the leaves change. Now that will be worth the 5 hr trip again.

Until next time and remember, don't be so busy making a leaving you forget to make a life.

Pappy

Big Red and VTX Upgrades

This weekend was a nice relaxing one. I did a little riding but best of all my son Jordan and I had some upgrades made to our bikes. My upgrade included having my new Garmin GPS mounted and hooked up on Big Red. I have always wanted to have a GPS system for the bike, since I enjoy getting lost so much. My Garmin was purchased about a month ago but I had to have an electrical plug installed in the left pocket of the bike. So, as always I went to my trusted biker buddy Craig for the upgrade. Craig can do just about anything on a motorcycle. He installed the electrical plug for the bike in about 20 minutes and my GPS was ready. Actually had don't most of my upgrades to Big Red. Below are a couple of photos of the new GPS.

Afterwards, Craig started working on Jordan's VTX. His upgrades included have a new ignition switch put on the bike. Craig had no problem with that. The fun part was when the VTX was going to get a new backrest. There was more to putting on backrest on a cruiser and it was the first time Craig ever installed backrest on a cruiser. Craig had to basically take the whole seat apart to install the backrest (now I see why not a lot of cruisers have backrest). Once the backrest was install, Jordan tested it and loved it. It looked pretty nice too. Jordan wanted to get a new backrest because he heads to the beach in 2 weeks. Now he is set. Below are couple of photos of Craig and Jordan installing the switch. You can see the backrest too.

Craig did a great job on both bikes. I tell everyone I know if you have a bike that needs anything installed or repaired, Craig is the man and I trust him more than anyone with my Goldwing. He is good with VTX's too. He can fix just about anything.

Until next time and remember, don't be too busy making a living you forget to make a life.

Pappy

Tail of the Dragon Ride Photos

Below are some of the pictures of our ride at the Dragon's Tail at Deals Gap. I thought I would share them. Enjoy the pictures because we enjoyed the ride.

Until next time and remember life starts at the end of the off ramp.

Pappy

The Dragon and Cherohala Hwy Trip

Jordan, Kevin and Pappy

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Well, I just got back from my planned trip to the Dragon’s Tail in TN and Cherohala Hwy. Jordan, Kevin (brother-in-law) and I took a nice little 670 miles trip and it turned out pretty well, except for some rain on the first day, the Holiday Inn in Cherokee was the worst I have ever stayed at, the service at the hotel was crappy, and Jordan lost $70.00 buck at the casino. Besides that, it was awesome!

Jordan and I started out on Saturday morning around 11:30. The original plan was to leave around 8:00. We decided to hold off on leaving early due to some pretty heavy rain in the local area. So we actually didn’t get to leave until 11:30. We headed west to meet Kevin off of interstate 40. Of course, it was raining, but not too bad. As we reached Kevin, we decide to fill up the bikes. Gas was a big issue on this trip. There were storages of gas all over the state and we knew that was going to be a big issue. The gas station where we met Kevin only allowed a $20.00 fill up. That was not a problem, since we have bikes. I think Jordan and I only put in about $8.00.

After we filled up the bikes, we headed west on Interstate 40 to Maggie Valley and the Wheels Through Time museum. Of course, we did not leave the gas station until 1:30 and we knew we were not going to make it before the museum closed. By the time we got to Maggie Valley and Cherokee the rain began, again. This time rain was pretty heavy and we decided to get more gas near Cherokee. So we stopped at a little store to fill up the bikes. I pulled into the station and as Jordan and Kevin followed me, there came about 12 other bikes. Some of those bikers needed gas; others just wanted out of the rain.

Early Morning in the Smokies

Taking a Quick Break

Country Roads Take Me Home

Kevin's New Harley

Speaking of rain, it was time for Kevin to put on his new fancy-mancy rain gear for the first time. Kevin had to find a dry place to put on his rain gear (it took him 10 minutes). Actually, his rain gear was a nice, biker sexy skin tight rubber suit he bought from somewhere. The funny thing was Kevin had a little problem getting the suit off when he did take it off. Another thing he had trouble getting off was his new gloves. His new gloves just happen to shrink up when they get wet. But Jordan and my favorite part was he was not wearing a full-faced helmet. Those of us that ride understand, half helmets aren’t that cool in the rain, unless you like to feel like sand is hitting you in the face and you can’t see. Of course, Jordan and I got a kick out of that. I think Kevin will be buying a new rain suit, gloves and a full-faced helmet soon. One bright spot is he did have some cool water-proof boots that worked well. It was too bad the rain suit got his pants wet. Oh the joy of riding in the rain.

As we left the gas station we headed to Cherokee to find our hotel and the casino. Slick had given Jordan $20.00 to blow and he brought $50.00 worth of quarters in a plastic bag with him. Of course, casinos don’t like real money. So Jordan had to get a players card. As we walked around the casino looked for that big pay out machine, we got to experience the sights and sounds of people putting all their hard earned money in the slot machines. My favorite part of the casino is the wonderful smell of smoke in the casino. Of course very few people win at casinos and others get nothing. I knew I could make some money up there if the casino was let me sell T-shirts that said “I Visited the Cherokee Casino and All I Got Was Cancer”. Anyway, Jordan was done gambling in about 15 minutes. Actually, it took him about that long to get his new players card.

Our next stop was the hotel. I screwed up and pulled into the wrong Holiday Inn. I was told our hotel was about 2 miles south. So after Kevin finally got his rain suit off over his new boots we headed to the correct hotel. And what a joy that hotel was. As I checked in I asked if they had gotten me a roll away bed for Kevin. Of course they didn’t. The room looked clean but looked like crap. I believe the hotel was not originally a Holiday Inn. After looking at our wonderful room we decided to get some chow in the restaurant in the hotel. The waitress tried to get us to get the buffet, but it didn’t look that great. So we ordered from the menu. Of course, all of the stuff on the menu was a little steep for us so we all ordered their $9.00 burger. The burger wasn’t that bad. The problem was even though we had 4 different people wait on us, they would not give us the check so we could leave. And get this, we were the only people in the dining area. After about 45 minutes, we were finally out of there and headed back to your penthouse and get view of the parking lot.

The second day of our trip was the best part. With the rain behind us we could start enjoying the best part of the trip; Deals Gap and the Cherohala Skyway. As most bikers know Deals Gap is where the Tail of the Dragon starts. The route is 11 miles long and has over 300 curves. It was an awesome ride. You do have to watch for idiots on other bikes. Luckily for us we didn’t run into any stupid bikers on the route. However, there were a lot of bikes all over the place. The curves on the Dragon were awesome. There are a lot of tight turns, but none of them were that difficult if you did the route safely. Kevin did awesome! The guy just got is first bike; a Harley, and did great. He has only been riding for about 3 weeks and tackled the Dragon. He did it like a pro. After the Dragon I told the guys that we can now officially wear our ‘I Survived the Dragon’ t-shirts we bought. Those that know me know how I feel about guys that get t-shirts and really haven’t been there and done that. That is just not right.

Just Arrived at Deals Gap

The Tree of Shame at Deals Gap

Filling Up...Again

Fontana Dame off of 129

Don't You Just Hate Tourist?

After Deals Gap, the 3 of us headed toward Cherohala Hwy. To get there we had a few options. One was to head west and take hwy 441 and then south. Instead we took a scenic route; route 360. It was a great decision. Route 360 is about 40 miles long and takes you directly to the Cherohala Hwy. 360 was the best scenic route I have been on. It was my type of route; county, scenic and very little traffic.

After exiting 360 we hit the Cherohala Hwy. I had heard a lot about it. It was great. We just needed to remember to fill up the bikes before we started on it. The hwy is about 50 miles long and there is no gas on the route. You either get gas before or after. With all the gas stations being out of gas we were not going to take any chances. The highway was a lot like the Blue Ridge Hwy or Skyline Drive. I think I actually like it better than either one of those.

Bikes Were Everywhere

Scenic Views Off Cherohala Skyline

One incident did cause us some concerns. Jordan’s bike was having an issue with the headlight. It would turn off after he cranked up the bike but would later come back on. That was a concern because we realized that Jordan and I were not going to make it back home before dark. That meant we had to start heading back early. By the way, I totally miscalculated the amount of time it would take us to do my original trip. So, we decided we would make plans for another trip.

Time for Some Lunch

Jordan Getting His Headlights Checked

As we exited the Cherohala Hwy, we head back east on hwy 74 toward Ashville NC and eventually on Interstate 40. We had been riding for about 2.5 hours. Once I got on Interstate 40 I was looking for a rest area, but I couldn’t remember where one was. So I kept riding, and riding, and riding. Finalize as we got into NC, I found one. It was about 20 miles from where we were going to stop anyway, so I kept riding. Of course, Kevin and Jordan were not too thrilled with the idea of all that riding without stopping. For some reason they kept complaining about their butts being sore. I don’t get that.

Once we did stop at where we originally met Kevin, we tried to get gas. This time the gas station was out of gas. That presented a problem because Jordan was getting pretty low. Fortunately, we found a station with gas the next exit down the highway. We were pretty lucky on getting more gas and most of all that Jordan’s headlight stayed on all the way back home in the dark.
All-in-all the trip was great. Yes it did rain a little and we didn’t get to see the museum, but hey; that is just another excuse to ride back up there. The weather turned out nice on Sunday and it was a very nice ending to a great trip. Jordan and I put on a total of 670 miles. We are looking forward to our next great trip.

Until next time and remember that life starts at the end of the off ramp.

Pappy