Never trade the thrills of living for the security of existence
I got another early start this morning and got a few sunrise runs. Once again I was greeted by turkeys. This time I ran into two of the little buggers. I just don’t understand why they love standing in the road so much.
I still could not get Mark to do a sunrise run and he slept in. It really would be smart for me to sleep in once in a while on these rides but I just can not bring myself to do it. I feel guilty if I sleep in because I feel like I am sleeping away my trip.
I set my watch for 7:00AM and did a sunrise run of the Gap. Sunrise is the absolute best time to ride the Gap. There is nobody on the road for 1 to 2 hours after sunrise. It is like having your own personal road. The only downside to it is sometimes there is a little debris on the road because the traffic has not blown it off yet.
It is something how you come up with the idea for a ride in the middle of winter and it seems like the date you set is so far off in the future. The next thing you know, you are packing the bike wondering what happened to all the time. I have been very fortunate this year and have done a lot of riding and seen a lot of things and this ride would be the final big ride of the year. It almost made me sad to start knowing that this would be the last one until next summer.
I really was not planning on doing another update until after the big ride, but I got an email from Rick in Houston, TX. He is a big fan of the Gap which is understandable, but for some reason he seems to enjoy this web site as well. This indicates to me that he might not be real stable mentally so I don’t want to do anything to piss him off. He has a video his friend took and needed a place to post it, so I told him to send it to me and if it does not suck too bad I would post it. It turns out it does not suck any worse than any of the videos I have made, so here is Ricks video.
I also heard from Brent in Atlanta. Turns out he was at the Gap during Labor Day while I was there and he saw my bike, but did not see me. He seems like a nice guy even if he does have an ugly motorcycle. So if anyone sees me or Mark down there this weekend give us a shout!
The update from the Labor Day trip to Deals Gap is posted here!
I am starting to think this site needs to be changed to “Ride with Tank to Deals Gap”. Next year I do not think there will be as many trips to the Gap because I have really burned up my vacation time this summer. Even so, we leave for the Gap this Saturday. This will be the final big ride of the year and we really are not exactly sure yet where we will end up. All we know for positive is that we are stopping at the Gap, going to the Barber Museum, and Graceland. We might slide in a little side trip to New Orleans.
I have decided to take Missouri off of the list of places I hate. St. Louis made me angry earlier in the year and it was decided by me that Missouri sucks. Thanks to two kids from Missouri that were in the room next to us I am taking them off the list. The one kid crashed twice in two days! He was seriously lacking in riding skill but was a good kid so Missouri is off the list. I never got pictures of them or their bikes, so hopefully if you guys check out the web site you will send some to me.
I have done a big update to the videos page. I have links to all the videos that are scattered around the site now, so check it out to see if you have missed something interesting.
