We only have to travel a couple of hours (on good roads
) to get to
Robbinsville, so we left after 2:00 sometime... here's the bike all loaded for
two... my "ready to go" pictures will never be the same after hurricane Irma,
we still have some piles of stump chips to move away and need to get some
loads of ground mulch put down, it's basically just a dirt hillside now... at least
I got the "water log" rebuilt - it is pouring now, but the hillside isn't eroding...
As far as the-dog-ate-my-camera situation goes, I have a $150 gopro session
camera now... it makes crappy photos, but OK videos. I can take a frame
from a video and have a way-better photo than a "real" photo. I think
that the (unconfigurable ?) shutter speed on the photos is too low. I hope
I can get it figured out.
Here's a photo, me and Carolyn leaving South Carolina on 76:
Here's a frame from a video:
Anywho... we got there, and a bunch of us went down to The Hub and
had ribs and stuff. Then we all sat around the various fires... up top
we only made one fire, usually there's two, and each are usually crowded
with people. We pretty much filled up the motel again, I don't know
where everyone was, but if they weren't by the fires, they missed out...
we crowded the one fire plenty
The next day Joe led a big group out to The Devil's Triangle, a pretty
long (and good) ride. I've been there a few times, and didn't follow that
group. As the morning progressed, me and a few others fell into a pretty
good ride that was also kind of unusual... Carolyn and Kristie and Theresa
took off in Kristie's truck and went to a mountain festival in search of apples.
So me and Binkie and Sinkhead and Jig and Flask and Eric/Taylor took off
on a ride.
We left the motel and headed towards The Dragon - but (of course)
we didn't go to that congested place... right before you get
there on 129, you can turn on Yellow Creek Road, a
really goodroad that connects back over to 28 after a while. Besides all the good
curves and middle-of-nowhere-ness that you get from Yellow Creek, we
got an extra good show on one short stretch of it... first a dog runs out
in between us, then a horse, then some puppies, and finally a bob cat.
I missed the puppies and the bob cat. However, I mashed the wrong button
on the new gopro, and got a video of the dog and the horse... you can
see the horse's pal, a pony, off the to side, he's upset that his horse
buddy is out in the street running with motorcycles...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZxTXp8KVpII don't normally make videos, so I also don't have much experience
editing them. I used a Linux program called Pitivi and when I loaded
them onto youtube, they were terrible. Then I googled around some
and found how to use another program called ffmpeg to
refromulate their formats over to something that youtube dealt with
better... so... the videos look great on my computer and kind of suck
on youtube... hopefully I can get that figured out. Windows Movie
maker worked easily for me in the past, but I don't have that
any longer...
The whole time we were going down Yellow Creek, I was sure my
wheel bearings were going out or something... I kept hearing
a rhythmic squeeking sound... finally I realized I was hearing
Flask's stereo...
After a while we got to 28 and headed toward Franklin. I was happy to
get an indication that the young folks (Eric and Taylor) were not being
bored by us old guys at the intersection of 28 and 74... listen for it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BabynNM1PFMHere's another video frame... check it out! They've freshly paved all
the curvy parts of 28 on the way to Franklin! No more tar snakes
Since the gopro was on video and not "crummy picture every five seconds",
it filled up by the time we got to Franklin. We circled around in Franklin a few
times (I was leading by then
) until we found Wayah Road. They've paved
that too! It has always been a good adventure road, lots of turns and twists and
ups and downs and it is really in the middle of nowhere. And now it is fresh
smooth pavement almost all the way from Franklin to back up near Topton.
Only the last few miles are still being paved, soon it will all be done.
We got back before Joe's group, and me and Jig went down to the mexican
restaurant. I have learned that if you are burned out on enchiladas and
"normal" mexican stuff, that you can get dishes with seafood that are
really good... Jig got a piaya plate with fish and shrimp and squid and
scallops, he couldn't eat it all and then LuLu showed up and ate the
rest...
After a while everyone was safely back and the fires were ramped up again
and the evening progressed. A fellow from Canada (Loyd, I hope I'm spelling that
right) brought a mason jar of brown moonshine that he shared, people liked
it.
DDT Roger brought a mason jar of clear moonshine that said "140" on the outside.
People kind of shied away from that
... I drank one beer each night, I think I'm
glad I don't drink moonshine
...
We all signed up again for next year, who knows if everything will work out... we
collected money to send flowers to Miss Reba in the nursing home... I'm afraid
that stuff won't stay the same at The Phillips Motel when her family is no longer
running it... Joy was there with us, and the rest of the staff kept everything
ship-shape this time around, I sure do like The Fall Color Ride!
-Mike
