Mondays Ride Map
Well that was a long weekend :-). We really didn't plan anything for the weekend, just the usual bits. Saturday I worked over at the shop (Scooter Superstore of America in Norcross). However, after work, I had to go to see my daughter's first game as a cheerleader. The problem, the game is on the other end of the world. Welcome to Atlanta. It is 68 miles from the shop to the game, from Norcross to the far side of Kennesaw. It doesn't help that home is in between the two, about 10 miles north, and that the games starts at 7:30PM.
Weather was good, but the ride really showed how bad the face shield on my trusty SyMax has gotten over the last 2 years, I got there just in time for kickoff. But whew, that was a tough ride, in traffic, on some of the very worst roads in terms of poor driving and a lot of threat analysis dealing with alot of incoming roads and traffic. Personally, I find in-town driving with many lights and intersections to be less stressful than 45-55mph roads with many ingress/egress points, but few lights, and a left turn lane in the middle. Too many points of threat to monitor easily.
Fortunately, other than the usual boneheads on cell phones, it was an uneventful ride over. The ride home, at 11:30PM however, was in the dark, and was not 'uneventful'. It was a wonderful ride with about 3 minutes of stark terror involved. You see, around here, deer present almost as big a threat as cars. On the way home, experience saved my bacon. Coming across, I was using a route that takes me across one of my favorite roads, but experience with that road and the area had me doing 45 instead of the normal 55+ and scanning for deer, well off the road. Even with that, I only sighted the adult female as she was road bound about 20 yards to the right and 40 yards in front. A liberal application of brake brings me to a complete stop about 3-4 feet from where she passed, but that's not the scary part. As I come to a rest and catch my breath, another 2 females pass directly in front of me before a buck, easily 10 points, probably 12+ rather casually appears out of the darkness, to stop and look at me like I am a threat. It was an intimidating moment, fortunately, he decided that I presented no threat and wandered off. Good thing I was close to home.
Sunday, I did not even touch the bike. We ran some errands, I installed an invisible fence for the dog, worked a bit on the retaining wall I'm doing in the yard, bought a new helmet (HJC SyMax II, I'll do a full review on TWJ in the coming weeks as soon as the new Site is live) and took the kids out to dinner.
Monday however, it was a day to ride. 268 miles, 3 mountains, breakfast and lunch both on the road, perfect weather with mid 80's at low altitudes, and mid 70's at high. The day provided an opportunity to start shooting pictures for my next project, a photo journal that will be going on TWJ of the major stops for the Motorcycle community around the southeast (and wider if I can swing it). Bear in mind, I am not Steve Williams, I make up for my lack of skill with quantity, and the hope that I'll get lucky with a few :-).
This day, we stopped at two of the more popular locales. The first, is the hiker's station at the top of Blood Mountain on GA-129. With a nice mix of bicycles, cruisers, tourers and sportbikes added to the cars and hikers, the traffic through the stop is impressive and mixed. From there, we ran across GA-180, Wolf Pen Gap Rd (one of the best roads in GA in my opinion) to stop at one of two big MC stops on the same corner: Dale's, and TWO (Two Wheels Only). We hit Dale's, I will get more pictures of TWO at a later date. From there, it's over to Ellijay for Lunch and across Fort Mountain on GA-52, before heading south and towards home with a final run across Burnt Mountain between Ellijay and Jasper.
So, yeah, the weekend was just a touch shy of 500 miles of scooter riding wrapped around some yardwork and honey-dos, it was a good long weekend. Too bad I had to come back to work today :-).