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.
We took a ride down 28 and stopped by the Fontana Dam. I had never been down there and it was interesting. In the picture above you can see the spillway. The water comes down through tunnels and exits from the holes in the picture above. The water comes out at 95 miles per hour. To prevent erosion of the river there are concrete aprons that direct the water up into the air. Since the water is moving so fast, the water goes 150 feet up into the air and does not come back down until it is 400 feet downstream. Some day I would like to be there when that is happening!
We stopped by the Friendly Fields general store and they sure are friendly in there. It is a nice place to stretch the legs, get something to drink, and eat a candy bar. They are much nicer that the guy up at the Punkin Center Mountain Supply. Maybe I should not judge based on one visit, but the guy at Punkin Center was a real dickhead the one and only time I ever visited it.
My bike started running funny when we stopped at Friendly Fields so we stopped by Wheelers to see what was wrong with it. Wheeler really is a motorcycle genius because as soon as he touched the bike it started running fine again, so I headed back to the Gap to make a few more passes.
We decided to make one last run on the Gap and then come back and eat dinner. Problem was, once we got back the restaurant was closed! Sometimes you forget how things down there close earlier than they do up here and then you are stuck with nothing to eat for dinner! We went ahead and rode into Robbinsville for dinner and ate at the pizza shop. Mark earns a helmet sticker for talking me into putting on the rain gear for the return trip to the Gap. I thought the rain was all over with, but it turned out there was a lot more rain to come. We rode in a pounding rain all the way back to the Gap and I owe Mark big time for talking me into the rain gear.