| Ted's
House - Motorcycle Trip Reports Georgia, 1996 |
DAY
1 Work...The very concept of the word is just so unpleasant when
the world outside is this warm and inviting. I awoke Wednesday morning with an unusual
vigor that saw me sitting down in front of my computer before 7:00 am, a new record I
think. I hastily I rushed home, packed the bike and was merging into traffic on I-66 west out of Washington DC before it even hit me...This was to be my first long distance ride on a motorcycle, my first motorcycle rally, heck my first time heading out of town and not expecting to return before dark. I got as far as Lexington on I-81 South before I slowed down a little, realizing I had didn't have to be anywhere anytime soon and nobody was expecting me to do anything except show up in Hiawassee, Georgia sometime Thursday. Lexington, and its companion town Buena Vista are where the Blue Ridge Parkway really starts to be an exciting road. Before I had even made the choice to abandon the superslab an unseen force that governs the decisions we make and never know why decided that I should go to Buena Vista, gas up, fill up, and hop onto the BRP for the rest of the trip down. I stopped at the first Exxon/Burger King I had ever seen, and after polishing off two heart-attack burgers and waving to the local gawkers I pushed on past that little brown "BRP - 2-Miles" sign. I was soon rewarded with some amazing views, views befitting a town named "Buena Vista." No coincidence there! As I out the camera away I suddenly noticed that I hadn't seen a single car pass in the short fifteen minutes I had been on the BRP. Lets see, it was warm, clear, the K was purring happily (well, whining happily), everything was in full bloom and there was no traffic..how much better could this get? The BRP is something to behold - the grass had just been cut and if I didn't know better I'd swear that my old neighbor had been up there with his 5-hp gas push-edger making sure the road had no grass offending its clean lines. Unlike Skyline Drive, the BRP looks like a freshly paved driveway leading up to a grand country home that will suddenly around the next bend (except where the road has been hewn out of the side of a mountain, or where that was not possible, where the engineers built curved and banked elevated causeways 5000+ feet up. The first sign of life I (almost) ran into were a Tom Turkey and several
"friends" hurrying across the road. If you have ever seen a flock of
turkies in full trot I am sure I spent the next five hours slowly getting used to the fact that there were no other vehicles sharing the road, only the occasional bunny that would hold still till the last moment then spring along the side of the road until the great leap into the bushes. They must all go to the same school for this, the ones that flunked out brought in the occasional stubborn blackbird for a roadside roadkill feast. As darkness began to fall I started to think about finding a place for the night. I stopped in Floyd, Virginia for a good small-restaurant home-style meal only to find the only place open was a Burger King... After a less than satisfying but quite filling meal I came out to find a gaggle of high school girls from a school tennis trip clustered around my bike twisting the throttle, pushing the buttons, switching the switches and generally doing what curious non-riders do when they come across a motorcycle and no rider. I gave an impromptu 5 minute lecture on the virtues of a Bimmer, then lit out when the coach (or was it Nurse Ratchet?) stormed out to see what the nasty man in the dark grey stich was trying to do with her girls. About ten miles down the road the moon suddenly broke out from behind the clouds that had been chasing me all day and lit up the whole countryside. Looking down I could see my moon shadow racing along side and I was sorely tempted to use my european headlight switch for a little while. The ride was so smooth and the bike so quiet I felt I was riding on the back of a great bird gliding effortlessly through the greyscale haunts and hollows of the BRP. Then I saw my first deer in the road so I lit back up and decided that it was time to find a motel (the woman at the BK obviously had gotten into the routine of just telling travellers to push on to Fancy Gap for motels instead of waiting to be asked.) A too-short thirty minutes or so later I arrived at Fancy Gap and checked into the Lake View Motel for a whopping $22.00. I couldn't find the lake but the sheets were clean, the TV worked and there was planty of hot water. When I asked for a wake-up call, the proprieter smiled and handed me an alarm clock -- "Sorry, no phones in the room ." I mosied over to the payphone and checked in with the 1-800 number for messages from Dave Keuch and crew and Mike Schen and his crew; Dave I would later learn had not yet received his MOA new member packet and didn't know of the 1-800 service, and Mike had been left with no one to ride after both of his friends bagged out at the last minute. I left a message for mike to set a meeting place for the morning and headed back to the room for a nice long shower after which I retired to the plastic chair in front of the door to my room, lit a cigar, and had a sip of Wild Turkey. All I could think was, "This is good." On to Day 2... |
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All Photos and Text Copyright©1996-9, Ted
Verrill |
finished up what needed finishing and fired off the requisite
E-Mails giving a number to call in case of emergency and a dire warning not to use it. 
you were as amazed as I was at how all the turkey's heads move in
exact cadence, like a school of herring that dart back and forth in a fluid unison.