So without further ado, here we go.
My wife and I live in Jacksonville, FL. If you want a decent road, you will have to road trip it for quite a while before you get to anything interesting. Being that it is Florida, many of the roads here are going to be straight, vast expanses of level ground. As someone so eloquently put it on SVrider.com; "Florida's Tail of the Dragon...11 turns in 318 miles." As sad as it is, I could not agree more with whoever said that. I wanted to test my wife's mettle, so we packed up the bikes and headed up north. It was pretty cold when we left, but nothing we had not dealt with before. Temperatures might have been in the low 40's when we set off. It warmed up nicely as the sun came up though. Of course there was the obligatory stop at Chikfila for breakfast and coffee. Our check in point was a place called Whitewater Express. We had stayed there on a previous trip and really liked it, so when we saw the groupon for them again, we had to take advantage. It's right on the southern Tennessee/North Carolina border.
It took us about 8.5 hours to get up there. No problems whatsoever, which is always a good thing. Our stay this time around was going to be very short, so if we wanted to knock out the dragon, we had to do it the same day as the trip up there. That meant humping it 8.5 hours, checking in, unpacking at the cabin, then jumping back on the bikes for another 1.5 hours to get to Deal's Gap. Since my wife was on unfamiliar roads, she took her sweet time and it took us much longer than anticipated to actually reach the dragon. An oversight on my part, I suppose. We finally reach the start of US129 around 6 pm and my wife is already kind of panicky just from the roads to get there. I told her if she could tackle the roads earlier, she would do just fine. Just look through your corners and avoid target fixation at all costs.
We set off and I realize it is slow going right away. Those that have been on this road know that bikes will literally eat it up and it's super fun to ride on. Since my wife was spooked to begin with, there was no spirited-ness about this jaunt at all. There were a few times where we had to use the pull-offs so CARS could pass us by. I started to get frustrated, which rather kills the mood for both of us. Just before the overlook to the gap we were lucky enough to catch the Killboy photographer as he was packing up. We were the last set of bikes he got shots of before he took off. After getting to the overlook, we get off so my wife can relax a bit and I can be grumpy. She managed to get one of the funniest pictures while we were waiting to get back on the road.
Also, as the trip was short, you can see that our packing set-up was quite light. We were also wearing backpacks for stuff we wanted to keep on our person the whole time. We get back on the dragon headed north so we can finish it out. I take off because I was getting antsy. I reach the end and it's nearly a full five minutes before my wife comes petering down the road. We still have to go back to the cabin for the night and I was hoping we would make it back before the sun went down and it got cold. Maaaaaaannnn was I wrong about that one. Due to everything taking much longer than anticipated, the sun was almost already down by the time we finished 129 going south. My wife wanted to get a picture with the metal dragon they have there at the resort and we were going to get some stickers, but the gift shop had closed maybe 15 minutes before we got there. I will make a note to get her some on this upcoming trip.
Aside from the cold and riding for probably a solid 12-13 hours that first day, I'd say we did pretty stinking well. Both bikes performed admirably and operated without a hitch. The rest of the trip consisted of whitewater rafting on the Ocoee river and paintball on a mountain side. We also made an aside to Nantahala Outdoor Center for dinner one night as well. As always, Killboy knocked our action shots out of the park!!!
The trip back took us a bit longer. We stopped at a gas station after we had gotten out of the mountains in order to do a spot check with maintenance, lube the chains, check oil levels, etc, etc. Since we take very good care of our steeds to begin with, they treated us just as well on this trip. Neither bike needed much of anything aside from a spray of lubricant on the chain. After a quick breakfast and coffee at Dunkin Donuts, we scooted on back to Jacksonville in roughly 9.5 hours.
This next trip will be done all by my lonesome again, but I don't mind the solitude at all. Ever since becoming a teacher, silence and time to myself is something that is hard to come by. I wonder if I will appreciate the upcoming tour more so because of that fact. We shall see!
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