Hi Oss
Anywho...
As the weekend approached, I watched the weather. I've been in, and seen, some
torrential downpours recently. It looked pretty much like it was going to rain all the
way there, all the time there, and all the way home.
I woke to rain on Friday and just submitted to it. It rained all across the part
of South Carolina - Hwy. 11 through Oconee, Pickens and Greenville counties -
that I needed to use to get started up the hill to Pikeville, Kentucky.
The rain kind of eased off by the time I got to the logjam that makes up the
roads leading into and out of Asheville...
And it never rained another drop (on me) the rest of the way up there
...
Lots of folks were already at the motel when I got there...
We hooted and hollered like usual through the evening... we had a big storm right
after dark that turned the whole parking lot into a lake, it rained up on the sidewalks
on one side of the motel, but we were safe and dry on the otherside... a real gully-washer.
The next morning a bunch of us noodled off in the drizzle to the biscuit place we
had scouted out on the previous scouting ride, and met back at the motel to
head out with our rain-suits on for a ride up 194. I had picked 194 off the map
as a good curvy road that was easy to get to, went a long way, and was easy to
get back to the motel from...
Apparently, the rain really picked up at the motel as we left, the folks that stayed behind
said it poured. We quickly rode out of the rain, though, and stopped at this Exxon
right before we got onto 194, and peeled off our sauna suits. Check out Floyd's
trike... he fabricated it from the rear end of a mustang, he didn't build it from
a kit. Not only the functional part of it, but he fabricated the body work too. It
rides really good, he said... I wish I had more than these low-res gopro pictures
of it...
So 194 turned out great!
We passed a coal mine...
Here it is from the air...
We weren't the only turkeys on 194 that day...
There were some places where the road kind of caved away into the holler...
We came to a place where 194 merged into another road. I stopped there for a second to let
everyone regroup, and ________, our Canadian cohort, zipped around to the front to take our
pictures as we went by. I hope he posts them...
We stopped a little later at one of the "chicken out" places where it was easy to head
back to the motel. It had been dry the whole ride, but still, we were all willing to
chicken out
... rain was all around... there's just as much or more 194 waiting to
be ridden next time...
We got back to the motel and the folks we had left behind said it had rained hard
the whole time we were gone. It stopped when we got back, we were dry the whole
ride, and we brought the dry back with us
...
I took a nap after the ride and went to the steak-house for supper with the Indiana
folks. We hooted and hollered again that evening, and I sat for a while with
Larry and Lisa and Curt and Theresa and the motel cat.
It rained through the night, and we all woke up to drizzle. I put on my rain pants and
headed home. 23, the road in front of the motel, goes south to Kingsport and turns
into I-26, which goes all the way to South Carolina. It sure is easy to navigate from
the motel parking lot through Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and
back to South Carolina. And the rain stopped almost right away, I went all the
way dry
... Most of the way the road is good enough to be a motorcycle
destination road, especially the always empty section of I-26 through the mountains
from Johnson City to Asheville...
Another great ride! Almost NO ride-time rain, and no soakage. The motel coffee was better than
average, so we all sat around and talked each morning as we charged up on caffeine.
Inzane is just a few weeks away, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again soon!
-Mike
