I Am On The Laptop Using the Internets from I-85

Because vacation can't just end when I start my homework! The GPS on the phone says we are four hours and some change from home, but we just got caught in the I-85 rush hour, so it may be much longer than that.

Google maps says there is a Pizza Place about 20 miles from here. We are going to hit it and then continue with the last half of the trip.

3...2....1 blastoff!

1100 hours rolled around and it was time to hit the road. I finished up dishes, dumped trash, and secured loose articles before we hit the water pump to fill up the tank once again. We severely underestimated our water usage, as we had to fill the water reservoir three times since leaving on Tuesday!

Right now, we are cruising up Black Mountain. 6 Hours to go and then we are home.

(Blog posted from my mobile phone using AndroBlogger. Pictures from the camera will come later.)

Saturday, a Day for Rest

Despite the long ride we took on Friday, we still got up and took a parade lap down the Gap at noon. The rear tire on the R1 was completely flat and the front tire was deeply in need of replacement. We decided it would be best to take my Ninja 250 down the Gap with the group. We all stopped off at the Overlook for a large group picture and then took off to go our separate ways. We huddled down in a corner and got some great shots of Graves and McCoy blitzing through the corner before the Overlook. R1Buttercup, R1HotRod, Johnny, and I went back up the Gap and grabbed a bite to eat at The Deal's Gap Grille (aka The Crossroads of Time). R1HotRod, Johnny, and I took the Gap passed the Overlook and up to the 11 Mile mark where US 129 has been closed since the rock slide back in April. We rode the bike back up the Gap and then took a break to the campsite for showers and sleep before dinner.

The Yamaha dinner was amazing as usual. Different varieties of pasta salads, barbecue, vegetables, and dessert were served before McCoy thanked our sponsors and gave out prizes. Up for grabs were a couple of helmets, three sets of tires, carbon-fiber engine cases for an R6,
autographed 2008 Team Yamaha yearbooks, and a PowerCommander exhaust. Johnny and I won big last year, so we figured we couldn't luck out two years in a row. I was honored with the Ironbutt Award (to the dismay of many wives) for withstanding a 500 mile trip as a passenger on Friday. I got a convention T-shirt afterall!

We spent the rest of the night in the wilderness watching Motorhome Massacre and eating popcorn in the Home One (as we call the Rogue Leader when we park). What a vacation!

(Blog posted on mobile phone using AndroBlogger. Pictures will come later.)

Friday Fast Lane

Bright and early at 0800 hours, we met up at Hellbender's Gas Station in front of Fontana Village with the group to venture on a ride down to Georgia to pick up streetbike legend Chuck Graves (think Graves Yamaha). We took off in a pack of 20 bikes, 19 of the riders in full knee-draggin' leathers, and only Johnny and I rode two-up.

We rode through the twisted mountains of southern NC, whose road pavement plans must have been pulled from a preschool writing tablet for practicing the letter "s". I don't think we saw a straight road until we were well into Northern Georgia. We stopped off at a gas station after an hour and a half of riding to give all 21 of us a rest break. The mountains were cool and breezy, but the afternoon sun of the open Georgia four-lane began to wear on all of us. The guys in full leathers were just starting to feel the intense Southeastern summer heat and 20 minutes in the shade was just enough ease the numbness in the throttle hands and then it was time to gear up and continue on.

The YZFR1 performed solidly as we ripped up I-85 toward Atlanta. The Interstate resonated with the sound of prime street-tuned custom R1s, the dry-clutch rattle of a race replica Ducati, a sweet sweet 1198, and a single Suzuki (courtesy of our friends at SportBikes4Hire). Heavy traffic on I-85 couldn't slow our steady travel for too long and we hit the I-285 bypass toward Augusta within the 45 minutes. Before long, we were on the heels of I-20 toward Conyers, Georgia, where our fine friends at Mountain Motorsports awaited our arrival.

We rode 190 miles expecting to pick up a second group of riders and head to another Yamaha dealership for lunch, but there ended up being a problem with the ancillary dealership. At Mountain Motorsports, we were introduced to the mechanical ingenuity of Graves Yamaha before we met the man himself, Chuck Graves. We marveled at his fierce track-ready bike for over an hour before we charged on through Blood Mountain on our way back to US 129.

This time, we traveled through the stop-and-go traffic of Suwanee, Georgia. Construction to widen the roads also held us up and before long, we were a group of famished and exhausted riders. We stopped off at a Wendy's about 18 miles from the top of Blood Mountain for a quick bite to eat and a half-hour of rest.

Heat and fatigue barreled down on us as we climbed to the curvy peak of Blood Mountain. As scenic as the mountain-scape was, we were unable to absorb all of it because the curvature of the mountain roads required expert skill, proficiency, (and since we were riding two-up) synchronization, teamwork, and 110% of our already-exhausted concentration.

The group split off as Chuck Graves and Shane McCoy raced a different speed and route down the mountain and back to US129. A close group of nine of us stuck together through the tight spiral down of Blood Mountain. There were several curves where the bike got squirrelly and a chicane which nearly claimed us. A brief sprinkle of rain had cooled us down some, but left the roads slippery and the painted lines wet. We came in hot to a right-turning corner and almost immediately had to bear a sharp left with the curve. The front tire hit the wet line in the road and started to wash out. Immediately, Johnny's motocross instinct kicked in and he slid onto the tank--covering my forward-momentum braced hands-- and stuck a foot out to stabilize the bike. His brilliant dirtbike maneuver saved us with about a quarter-inch of sidewall on the tire left for lean room and we continued on for another twenty minutes for tanking up.

It was then, at that gas station just before the end of that mountain, that one of the riders in the pack informed us that our slow-leaking rear tire had gone flat. It's highly likely that we took the downside of the mountain with a flat tire and definite that the pressure in that tire was beyond low for performance travel down a mountain! I have to give credit to Johnny-- it takes intense skill and experience to ride down a tight, curvy mountain, let alone with inadequate pressure in a tire AND a passenger.

218 miles later, we arrived at Fontana Village just in time to see the rest of the party and be assured that everyone in the group made it. We got some victory ice cream after the long ride, then set out for another 27 miles back to the campsite to turn in for the night!

Altogether, we put 500 miles on the bike that Friday. I won the Ironbutt award for riding passenger the whole way (I knew that butt was good for something!) Man, was it sore the next day!

(Blog posted from my mobile phone using AndroBlogger. Pictures from the camera will come later.)

Boat Party Was Shorebound

There was a problem with the boat, so the group got together up by the cabins. We stayed long enough to be included in the head count--there we're only a quarter as many of us as last year! I guess many of us were either out on deployment or feeling the effects of the economic recession.

We turned in before 2200 because nothing could prepare us for Friday's early morning....

(Blog posted from my mobile phone using AndroBlogger. Pictures from the camera will come later.)

Afternoon Ride on The Dragon.

We hit The Dragon with our friends, R1Buttercup and R1HotRod. It was a great first ride for our second season here, though it rained again. Tennessee has new signs up through US129 warning, "Ride at your own risk. Limited Emergency Services Available."

We are headed back to camp now (approximately 25 miles from Fontana Village) to do dinner and then its back to Fontana for the Boat Party.

Let's Ride!

Got to the campsite last night/this morning

Arrived and set up camp after midnight! What a long drive. No hope for live blogging though, we are far out of cell phone signal range. We are sitting in the Fontana Resort Lodge, enjoying the AC and the Wi-fi.

Using AndroBlogger to LiveBlog the Deal's Gap trip.

All posts from here until Monday, June 14, 2010 will we sent from my mobile phone. This app works great!

Here we go... On the Road Again

It's time to find out what our hard work (most of it has been published here, but a few retro-updates should cover the rest) is made of! We have literally spent every single free minute of our lives (and some stolen minutes too!) over the last four months preparing for our Deal's Gap trip for the R1/R6 Convention. We spent all weekend touching up a few things in the Rogue Leader--cleaning and sanitizing the interior, putting the new cushions in, making sure and double-sure that all running lights work, filling up the on-board propane tank, and securing belongings in the camper. Our departure from Chesapeake ran right on schedule at approximately 2234 on Tuesday night. We planned to drive until 0300 hours and stop off at the nearest Walmart, but detours along Interstate 40 put the targeted Hillsborough Walmart about 14 miles off our plotted course.

While in the Hillsborough Walmart parking lot, we noticed that our weary hitch engineering work had collapsed to unusable condition. Prior to this trip, Johnny cut off the useless hitch that was originally welded to the frame of the Rogue Leader because only half of it was precipitiously held to the camper's frame and the other half was missing. Since the old hitch was welded to the frame, cutting it off left no place to mount a new hitch to the RV. He decided to put down a single 4 foot 4x4 in the exterior storage compartment to mount the new hitch to and two 6-foot 2x6's on the interior of the RV beneath the foldout bed for reinforcement. We were unsure as to how well the mount would hold because the structural integrity of the exterior storage compartment floor had been compromised by 30 years of improper maintenance. Our wooden beam solution was the most effective and most affordable solution we could achieve with the tools and resources we had. Our 400 mile drive wore on the RV and the mildly rotten floor fell through on us. The floor literally dangled a foot and a half from. RV. The hitch and trailer were held on securely by the reinforcement beams beneath the bed and there was no tension in the safety chain so we were not completely in critical condition. We needed to fix the mount before we proceeded any further because the steep grade of Black Mountain and the Great Smokies was just 200 miles away.Fortunately, the Walmart we stopped in was in a shopping center with a Home Depot. We finally settled in with the intention of waking up at 0800, catching a few hours of shuteye, eating Subway breakfast (also conveniently located in the Hillsborough shopping center. We, honestly, couldn't have planned the stopping location better!), picking up groceries, gathering supplies from Home Depot, executing our hitch fix, and hitting the road before 1100.

At approximately 1318, we left the Home Depot parking lot with a $70 securely-rigged hitch, $160 down in groceries, and exhaustion. We anticipate arriving at our Cheoah Point campsite at approximately 2200.