Well, another great trip south is over. I stayed at Deals Gap from 09/01 and left on 09/07. I took three days going home and got to ride the Blue Ridge Parkway and visited Shady Valley.
What a great trip it was. I was kind of worried the THP would take a lot of the fun out of it, but I managed to avoid them and had a really great time. I really can’t say they affected me at all. The times when they were out the road were so busy it would have been hard to enjoy the road anyway. While I was there they did seem to be pretty decent. I kind of forgot about them on Friday on my way out and came around a turn to find two of them pointing right at me in a pulloff. I looked down and found that I was going over 50mph. There was no response from them. I think you draw a lot less attention to yourself if you have a quiet motorcycle and you are not spinning the engine up. I suspect if they can hear you coming from a mile away it kind of gets them all worked up. Even if you are riding slow they are going to nail you because they have been anticipating somebody who is riding really fast.
I switched to a Metzler Tourance again for this trip, and I did miss the sticky rubber, but the Tourance will last a lot longer and I am going broke buying tires. The first week of October I plan to get with Fat Tommy and get a new front tire. I’ll let everyone know how it goes.
We have a two day trip planned to Virginia at the end of the month. If you don’t know about it you are not on the mailing list so click here and send me a message and I will bring you up to date and add you to the list. This is going to be two days of the most spectacular riding you have ever done. It looks like we might have a pretty decent turn out for this one.