Hi Folks,
I set out on Saturday June 17th from Charlottesville, Virginia to Natchez, Mississippi. I stopped first in North Carolina to visit some cousins, taking the Blue Ridge Parkway from Virginia into North Carolina. The slope repair in Roanoke is completed (!!!) so that section is now open. Hooray!
One can always find a Baptist church to park at and get a rest:
Then down into North Carolina, and rain all through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Miserable camping and miserable riding. But the skies cleared in Alabama, and I followed the Tennessee River, stopping at the Guntersville Dam in northern Alabama. These dams are amazing, considering they were built almost 100 years ago!
That's the Tennessee River below, from a bluff above.
I continued along northern Alabama, with clear skies and great riding. This sign has a cautionary tale written on it...
Where else but in Alabama can you ride the Tammy Wynette Highway?
Unfortunately, most of the small towns are disappearing in the USA.
I camped out in Mississippi along the Tallahachee River. It is also dammed for "flood control".
I loved the campsite, so left my tent up and took a ride all the way west to the Mississippi River. However, the inevitable happened. After 40 years of accident free riding, I came around a left curve, just like the hundred others I rode that day, and it leveled out on the top. I went wide to the right and got into some gravel, and I was down, face planted on the road, riding into a ditch. The big C ring "wing" on the side of bike took most of the force, thankfully, but my leg got pretty beat up, as did my left arm. I was wearing a kevlar mesh shirt with armor and kevlar lined jeans, which saved me a lot of road rash, but not bruising. The EMTs came out from Old Miss in Oxford and declared me of sound mind and body and just put two bandaids on me. Told me I was very luckly. The bike is torn up on the left side. Mirror, turn signal gone, windshield cracked, the mid body work all torn up. Even the left rear pannier interior was all cracked up. But the bike started right up and I rode it out of the ditch back to camp where I licked my wounds.
I decided to ride back into Kentucky on less challenging roads, so got on the Natchez Trace Parkway and followed it up through Mississippi, Alabama, then into Tennessee. It's not a challenging road, very pleasant to ride, and no stop lights. No gravel either.
I then rode into Kentucky, and took some really back country roads. One in particular, route 89 between Livingston KY and Winchester KY is about 90 miles of in-the-hollow back roads. Calling it a road is probably an exaggeration. It's more like a path with some pavement. Gorgeous!!!
I make it back into Virginia, following the Greenbriar River on route 10 for quite a while, and was back in Charlottesville after 2500 miles over 12 days of riding. I'm pretty sore, but I took the bike apart and discovered a lot more broken than I assumed... about $1300 in parts to fix it. That bike is amazing. It took that crash and ran eagerly and flawlessly for days of tough riding through Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. It's definitely worth fixing up and getting back on.
The bike stripped of all its broken bits.
Overall, I rode 2480 miles, and got an average of 66 MPG. It is a testament to Honda engineering that it could get torn up and keep going without issue, getting me home safe and sore.
I set out on Saturday June 17th from Charlottesville, Virginia to Natchez, Mississippi. I stopped first in North Carolina to visit some cousins, taking the Blue Ridge Parkway from Virginia into North Carolina. The slope repair in Roanoke is completed (!!!) so that section is now open. Hooray!
One can always find a Baptist church to park at and get a rest:
Then down into North Carolina, and rain all through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Miserable camping and miserable riding. But the skies cleared in Alabama, and I followed the Tennessee River, stopping at the Guntersville Dam in northern Alabama. These dams are amazing, considering they were built almost 100 years ago!
That's the Tennessee River below, from a bluff above.
I continued along northern Alabama, with clear skies and great riding. This sign has a cautionary tale written on it...
Where else but in Alabama can you ride the Tammy Wynette Highway?
Unfortunately, most of the small towns are disappearing in the USA.
I camped out in Mississippi along the Tallahachee River. It is also dammed for "flood control".
I loved the campsite, so left my tent up and took a ride all the way west to the Mississippi River. However, the inevitable happened. After 40 years of accident free riding, I came around a left curve, just like the hundred others I rode that day, and it leveled out on the top. I went wide to the right and got into some gravel, and I was down, face planted on the road, riding into a ditch. The big C ring "wing" on the side of bike took most of the force, thankfully, but my leg got pretty beat up, as did my left arm. I was wearing a kevlar mesh shirt with armor and kevlar lined jeans, which saved me a lot of road rash, but not bruising. The EMTs came out from Old Miss in Oxford and declared me of sound mind and body and just put two bandaids on me. Told me I was very luckly. The bike is torn up on the left side. Mirror, turn signal gone, windshield cracked, the mid body work all torn up. Even the left rear pannier interior was all cracked up. But the bike started right up and I rode it out of the ditch back to camp where I licked my wounds.
I decided to ride back into Kentucky on less challenging roads, so got on the Natchez Trace Parkway and followed it up through Mississippi, Alabama, then into Tennessee. It's not a challenging road, very pleasant to ride, and no stop lights. No gravel either.
I then rode into Kentucky, and took some really back country roads. One in particular, route 89 between Livingston KY and Winchester KY is about 90 miles of in-the-hollow back roads. Calling it a road is probably an exaggeration. It's more like a path with some pavement. Gorgeous!!!
I make it back into Virginia, following the Greenbriar River on route 10 for quite a while, and was back in Charlottesville after 2500 miles over 12 days of riding. I'm pretty sore, but I took the bike apart and discovered a lot more broken than I assumed... about $1300 in parts to fix it. That bike is amazing. It took that crash and ran eagerly and flawlessly for days of tough riding through Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. It's definitely worth fixing up and getting back on.
The bike stripped of all its broken bits.
Overall, I rode 2480 miles, and got an average of 66 MPG. It is a testament to Honda engineering that it could get torn up and keep going without issue, getting me home safe and sore.
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