I rolled out Sunday morning around 11:00... I hoped to meet Joe and Britman and
them on the BRP South of Asheville... I got to the parkway and rode south for
a while, stopped at some overlooks and generally fooled around... I stopped
at the highest point, where many pictures have been taken and where Joe
is known to stop every time
... this was the first time giggling college
girls were playing on the sign (that I've been there) ...
I gave up on running into anyone (by about 15 minutes, but how can you know) and
headed towards Asheville. Right off the parkway at the Highway 25 exit (Ground Zero
was on 25) is a back road that also leads to Ground Zero. I took that, it was filled
with high end houses and old mansions and golf courses and sometimes speed
bumps. After that I just used 25 until today... when I left this morning I
skipped the line waiting to merge onto busy 25 and went past the golf
course again.
Joe was my roommate this year, I've never shared a room with Joe at
Inzane. If you share a room with Joe at Inzane, you also have to share
it with granny panties and this year there was plastic doodoo in
both of the beds
...
On Monday I led a ride with the BFGPS. The top part of the loop was crazy
...
There was a long STEEP downhill, it must have been a mile or so... narrow little
road in the middle of nowhere. Some tight off-cambers to try and charge through.
If you've ever been on the awesome stretch of empty mountain Interstate between
Asheville and Johnson City, these roads are the old roads that existed before
the Interstate there...
Joe led a bunch of us on a "turd hunt" on Tuesday, way up the parkway to
a touristy location where they have some kind of "mountainside rollercoaster".
When we got there about 500 other tourists were waiting in line and we
bailed. Valkyrie riders don't need no mountain rollercoasters anyhow
...
We went a little South on the BRP on Wednesday and left on a downhill twisty
little road, 151. We did our loop and returned to the parkway, uphill
,
on 151. Along the way we found some nice roads and ended up in the
cool small town of Marshall, where we sat in the shade behind a little
cafe and had lunch. The rock building is the cafe, and the umbrellas
are where people sit in back (we had a shade tree, no umbrella
)
I was saying "Robert E. Lee", not "Cheese". That's the way we do it in the South.
The Joes got confused and switched bikes...
On this twisty uphill, there was a SUV in front of us for a little while, but
he pulled off for us... he hit this stick and it hadn't settled down yet...
Wednesday night was the pie auction. Our table went nuclear on the pecan pie.
Lori makes a VERY GOOD pecan pie. I asked her how she got so good at it, she
makes 50 or 60 at a time sometimes around Thanksgiving.
Thursday me and Robert (2tonevalk) and Mike and his better half took another
BFGPS ride. I tried to sneak out of Asheville a new way, and I'm convinced now:
there's no way to sneak around Asheville, that place is the biggest spread out
conglomeration of traffic lights this side of noo york city... we hit the only
rain of the week and Mike bailed with his better half. Me and Robert used
my mediocre route and ended up in Marshall again for lunch. We found
a few good roads on the way back, but we probably should have followed
Sinkhead to Chimney Rock instead...
I was one of the losers who wimped out on the dinner Thursday night. But
when Randy got back to our room at 10 or 10:30 I knew I was glad I
hadn't been riding through the darkness for the last 45 minutes...
I got some chrome from Attic Rat and one of MarkT's "stays-on" jack
adapters for the Log Truck.
I wish the cooties hadn't messed up everyone's plans, but those of us who
made it to InZane this year had a good time. The organizers worked their
butts off and overcame all kinds of difficulties, let's hear it for them!
-Mike
