Day 2
May 16th 2004
I had set the alarm for 05:00. I woke up at 04:30 following a disturbing dream. I was dreaming that I was in southern California talking to another motorcycle rider about my ride and showing him places where I had been. After pointing out my route on the map, I realized that I had forgotten to go to Key West to get my first checkpoint. Man, was I bummed, because my 3 weeks wouldn't give me enough time to go back to Florida to get the checkpoint. Once I realized I was in Harrisburg, all was well again. Figuring I wouldn't sleep again, I watched the weather channel, which wasn't very optimistic for my route.
Within about 5 minutes of leaving the hotel, I managed to get lost. I headed south on I83 (rather than Southwest on I81) and the GPS was chirping away telling me to do a U-Turn and trying to redirect me. For a little while I was dismissive of the GPS, because I was sure it was I83 that would take me to the start of the Blue Ridge Parkway. After about 10 minutes of chirping, I decided to stop at an exit ramp and check out the paper map. You see I have one of those "road atlas" type maps that only let you look at one state at a time, so I had to open it to the Virginia page, where I quickly realized that the GPS had been right all along. It took me maybe another 15 minutes to get back on track (this time I followed the directions from the GPS)
At 08:30 I had finished all the boring Interstate travel for probably most of the trip. There I was at the entrance to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, the start of FUN STUFF. Even I couldn't begin to understand what was ahead of me.
So what was ahead of me, you might ask? miles and miles of twisties, an endless rollercoaster of perfect pavement, banked curves, surprisingly very light traffic and a sweet 22 to 25 degree temperature all along. Fittingly so, not long after starting on this highway I heard Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's rendition of "Dancing Cheek to Cheek" (I'm in Heaven... I'm in Heaven... And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak...) playing on my minidisk player. It was pure bliss. The only way it could have been better was if the pavement had been dry. While it was only raining in patches, the pavement remained wet, mainly because the trees that line the Parkway sort of meet each other above the road to form a sort of tunnel that "seals the moisture in".
There was one blissful moment in particular, where there was a particularly entertaining series of switchbacks, the canopy of trees, dry pavement and the very strong smell of wildflowers in the air. It was one of those moments where the hairs on your arms and neck stand up in recognition of how perfect the whole picture is. It was one of those defining moments in motorcycling for me.
One of the downsides to the cloudy / rainy weather was that the scenic views weren't too scenic. The Shenandoah National Park "Skyline Drive" isn't officially part of the 755 km long Blue Ridge Parkway, but is basically the same thing, sort of a prelude adding another 170 km for a total of over 900 km of scenic highway that rides the crest of the Appalachian Mountains. This means that you're riding on top of the mountains and have spectacular views on both sides of the road.
Yes, this is one of those "the pictures don't do it justice" moments.
Ah, you may say. Has Bob gone soft ? smelling flowers and such ? What about riding the roads ? Well, let's just say that those new road tires I put on, yeah the touring ones, are pretty grippy. They hung very well on the often wet pavement and never gave me any Heebie Jeebie moments. As I mentioned previously, most corners have banking, so you're able to take corners with a bit more gusto and not be scared to scrape anything. During the whole day with 700 km of those being 3rd and 4th gear corners, I only ground metal bits once.
More than once during this ride, I was thinking to myself that if we had just a 30 km section of road of this calibre in New Brunswick it would be so congested with bikes that I'm sure the government would put down some kind of law against riding on it. The only comparable roads in the Maritimes are a few short segments of the Cabot trail, you know, the real twisty ones where you turn around at the end to do that bit again, all 8 km of it...
For the first time in my riding career I ended the day with sore forearms. The constant braking before corners, shifting and gassing it out of corners was just a bit too overwhelming for my unexercised forearms. I'm used to just going for a ride, mainly keeping it in 6th gear unless you're stopping at a stop sign or whatever. I can finally appreciate how some fortunate people actually wear out their tires on the sides before the center.
This day also gave me some new appreciation for my bike, again re-enforcing the notion that for me, at this point in my life, I think it is the perfect bike for the type of riding I do. During the ride I caught up to a GL1800 Goldwing, which I find is a really cool bike. At first I thought the guy must be drunk, then I thought he must really be a novice rider because he was changing lines in mid-corner like there was no tomorrow. But geez, he's riding pretty fast for a "novice"... As I got nearer to him, I discovered what was going on; he was grinding metal and plastic bits into most corners, upsetting the bike and making it stand up. I followed him up some switchbacks, him grinding away, and me just riding at a slower pace than I had been previously, plenty of clearance to go despite my lowered footpegs. Maybe he had the suspension set too low or maybe he was really loaded with bricks in his saddlebags, but I felt a bit of "BMW pride" at that moment. Handling with 3 weeks worth of luggage and computer gadgets was very impressive.
Needless to say, today was a great day despite the wet weather. At least the heat makes riding in the wet that much more bearable.
Day Stats :
Total distance 955 km (Harrisburg, Pa to Boone, NC)
Overall Average 83.2 km / h
Total time 11 h 09 min