Ride Report: Blue Ridge Parkway, Oct 9-11, 2010

[Switch]

Alright, I'm going to start this thread and update it as we go. Just a place holder for now. For now, though, I'm going to eat a lovely sandwich and take a poo, then get a shower. After said shower, I will write up my report.

Here's a view from Monday morning, around 8am on the parkway:


And this is what I made when I got home, and what our breakfast SHOULD have looked like:

[derf]

As opposed to what breakfast did look like

[Trip]

All my pics are on facebook, I will write something longer later cause I am tired now.

Ride the BRP....check
Camping in a redneck filled camp ground....IT'S QUIET TIME AND I AM NOT A WOODSMAN!!!
Spend a weekend making homosexual comments towards kyle....check
Fully test the capabilities of the Sena headsets on a long trip....check....badass rating
Kyle getting the most annoying songs stuck in my head....check
Term for passing is now shitville MAN!....check
Having headsets to help the follower pass in blind turns....WIN
Having derf and kyle almost hit me....check
Annoy 90% of the people on the BRP and in the GSMNP....check
Take a shower in a sink and have an old man almost catch me naked....check
Watch a FZ1 with Pilot Power 2CTs man handle a dirt forest service road....check


It was a good weekend

[derf]

Trip, squirel hunter extrordinaire

[Trip]

Originally Posted by derf

Trip, squirel hunter extrordinaire

just don't tell the park ranger...lol

[derf]

She got pretty serious when the topic of squirel hunting came up,

[Trip]

Originally Posted by derf

She got pretty serious when the topic of squirel hunting came up,

As far as scenery, Virginia sucked. I don't know if I would that section again (unless it was like a moving rally) after seeing NC. NC just got better and better til you hit asheville. I could take it or leave it after asheville.

[derf]

Yeh I feel pretty bad for Va now, it was pretty dumpy

[Mr Lefty]

sounds like I missed out.



shitville MAN huh...

[Switch]

Day 1, from my point of view:


As with all good trips, my ride started with planning. I had already made a checklist on Wednesday and packed everything I needed. This was new to me, as I typically just go off the top of my head. Friday is when I got the consumables. Eggs, Dry Ice, Bread. Hannah came home that night from college. She knew I was leaving the next day, so she wasn’t too disappointed when I went to bed early that night.

7:15am, Saturday, Oct 9th. My phone is making the most annoying sound I could find in the presets for the alarm. I roll out of bed and take what will be my last shower for the next three days. I feed my two dogs, Bowser and Holly, and pack my cooler on my bike. I packed everything else the night before.

I kiss the fiancé goodbye and head out on the road. Just a few miles up the interstate and I’m at Nick’s house. I make the usual loud entrance, which is quickly stopped by Nick telling me to, “Shut the hell up,” as Andrea is still asleep. In the garage, we finish the packing. Nick pulls out his headsets and asks if I have a lighter outlet on my bike. Of course, I don’t. He considers not bringing them now, but in the end we figure “what the hell, might as well.” Thank God for that. Those headsets were a lifesaver.

We depart Lenoir City and make our way through Knoxville. We ride down I-40 for a while, then we hit I-81. Our headsets are filled with meaningless banter, windnoise, and typical “guy talk.” We recollect old high school relationships and tomfoolery. We talk trash about every car we see, and try to freak out our fellow interstate travelers. The range on the FZ1 is nowhere near the GS’; only 120 miles for me on the interstate, so we stop. I don’t remember the first place we stopped, but, I do remember the second.

I really had to do number 2, so I run inside and start my business. Not 2 minutes later, some random country song comes on the radio. This doesn’t surprise me, as we are in rural Virginia. What does surprise me, however, is that the man in the stall next to me starts singing along. I tell Nick about this over Google Talk, and he tells me to join in. I would have, except I don’t listen to country.

We carry on, down the road, and eventually end up at the BRP. Sometime between where we turned off and where we needed to turn on the BRP, our headsets cut out. If you’ve ever ridden behind Nick, you know he doesn’t use turn signals, nor does he come to a slow stop. It is abrupt and without warning. Our trip was almost cut short before it began because of this. Thankfully I was able to brake without washing out the front-end (thank you Trackdays!).

We get on the BRP and take the mandatory pictures of us standing at the “Start of the Blue Ridge Parkway” sign. After this, we hop on our bikes and head down the road to the first campsite. About 10 minutes in, we start seeing what the BRP is all about: the amazing views. We pull off the road to check it out at Raven’s Roost. We walk out to the precipice in full gear, amongst the other tourist. We drew some looks, but most of the attention was focused on the view. We notice there are climbers here as well, and joke about cutting their support lines.

We carry on after the pictures. 20 something miles later, we stop, finally, at Montebello Campground: mile marker 27 on the BRP. We arrive at the site and find that Fred is nowhere to be found. The only trace of him is a decrepit tent, hastily put together, with the wrong length poles.

Nick sets up his tent and we ride our bikes to the local store. The store is definitely interesting. It has the feel of a General Store of days gone by. We get some firewood, marshmallows, and bug spray. Nick requested I get him chocolate, so I obliged since he was sharing his tent with me. The cashiers were a team of a sweet older lady with gray hair in a denim vest and a younger woman, mid-30’s, with a long blonde braid and a plaid button-up shirt. Neither of them seemed to fit in with the landscape. Perhaps transplants from another life, just trying to “get away from it all.”

We get back to the campsite and start our fire for dinner. Fred meets us, finally, and shows up with a 12-pack of Yuengling and a 3-man tent. We decide, after much argument, that I will share the tent with Fred as his tent is bigger than Nick’s. We change out of our riding gear and start dinner: Chili Dogs. We filled the Dutch oven with water and cooking oil, threw the Hebrew National hot dogs in, and put the lid on. Nick opened the chili can and set it on the grate above our fire. 10 minutes later we were feasting on the best chilidogs I’ve had in my life.

After dinner, Nick took a shower. Fred and I shot the shit and roasted marshmallows. After Nick got back, I decided to take a shower. When I got in, I was alone. After I finished my shower, which was more of just a rinse since I had no soap or shampoo, I hear this voice , “Are you done?!” I think it’s Fred and I respond “yeah.” The raspy voice then questions “Is there any hot water?” I now know it isn’t Fred and become very short. I respond with a simple, “Yes.” The stranger replies: “Oh good, cause I’ve been in these places where there is no hot water!” I do not reply.

I grab my towel, dry off, and put on my clothes in the stall. I walk over to the mirror to dry my hair and make it somewhat presentable. The stranger walks out of the stall from taking a dump, wearing no pants, no shoes, only a t-shirt, and walks right into the shower. I found this strange, to say the least.

I return to camp and know that I have to sleep well tonight, so I take a couple Benadryl and wash it down with a beer. We talk some more, and are interrupted by a dog running through our camp site. This is shortly followed by a somewhat distant female voice saying “I swear, your only job was to was to watch her! You can’t even do that right! Go find her!”

A man appears shortly and I say, “Your dog is down there,” pointing in the general direction of the dog’s path. Later, the same man asks if we have any extra “fire starters.” I tell him that we used pine needles, which are abundant all around our campsites. He replies with “Well, good God, I’m not a woodsman!” I am instantly disappointed with his manliness. We later see, what I presume to be, his son spraying some kind of flammable aerosol on their fire and saying “I GOT IT STARTED!” Way to go kid.

After this excitement, I go to bed. I toss and turn all night, and my face is cold throughout the night. I may have gotten 6 hours of sleep, but I am constantly woken up by the campsite noises. I wake up the next morning with back pain and a headache.