I was getting ready to leave about 9:00am Friday. All I was going to do was check the tire pressure
and take off... rear had just 20 lbs in it
... I spent a few minutes looking for a nail or something, nothing...
Then I sprayed some water around the new patchboy valve stem... it was bubbling out from the core...
I tightened it, and took off...
The ride plan was to some down from Knoxville to Tellico Plains, go over the Cherohala Skyway, do
the Dragon, and come down 28 -
the Hellbender... so I picked a totally different way to go to
Knoxville... I took out from Oconee, to Pickens and then up 178 to Rosman, NC. Then up 215 to I40,
up 209 to Hot Springs and then head west to Knoxville. Not only did it work really well, but I found
an awesome road - instead of using I40 to hook 215 to 209 at Canton, NC, I used a road called
Crabtree mountain road, an awesome steep road with lots of switchback (some were 1st gear for me),
and when you get to the top you bust out on an amazing panorama... no picture this time, but it will be
on my mind next time... the weather was great on Friday...
Showed up at the motel 6 and we all stayed up till midnight. A group of guys from a club called
Darksidemet us there, they all ride VTXs with car tires, some of them came from pretty far away, Florida, Ohio...
Big Al (on the meanstreak) and Wimp showed up Saturday morning, and soon we were down the road
at this waterfall... we could see that the clouds were on the way...
We reached the clouds up on the Cherohala Skyway...
I don't know the names of the roads we took next, on the way to Deals gap, but they
were all good...
Then this scary guy got in between me and some of the other guys at a stop sign...
What's in these pipes?
A steady light rain was falling by the time we got to Deal's Gap, and it only picked up from there on -
it is still raining now...
Here's what's at the end of the Dragon now:
I split up from the group at Deal's Gap and headed down 28 towards home, rain was steadily getting
harder, but still not bad, the Hellbender was fun... near Franklin I had to stop, a tree had fallen in the
road and the emergency guys were cutting it up with a chainsaw...
Then a JCB came and made short work of the tree:
By the time I got to Franklin, it was coming down hard, and I was getting cold...
A little further, and I was real cold, and it was hard to see...
Clayton, Ga, to home was tough, but I'm here safe... hope everyone else is OK - they had
to go back over the Cherohala to get back up to Knoxville...
-Mike "the JCB Song is awesome in high fidelity..."
