October 16
The Reid-Sampson House, Blairsville, GA
A beautiful fall morning, 32 degrees. I was the first person downstairs, and wanted to get out to the bike for something, but all the doors were locked, and I wasn’t sure if there was an alarm, so I cooled my jets until Peggy stirred around and let me out. The aroma of coffee wafted through the house. We sat around, read the paper, talked, and salivated as the smells of breakfast mingled with the coffee. Breakfast had been scheduled for 9, but didn’t get started till around 9:30, so we ate around 10. Nobody cared. The food and the company was wonderful. Eric and I finally cranked up and left around 11. Our first goal…cash. The B&B was cash only, which had just about wiped out my supply, and Eric had left home with very little, so we started looking for a bank. The one we found would not accept my ATM card, but Eric was able to transfer some funds, pulled out $500, and we were set to go. Tonight we were supposed to meet Lana and her parents at her brother’s house in Greensboro, NC, and we wanted to hit some twistys on the way. I had studied the map earlier, and set up a route following 69 into North Carolina, then up some secondary roads through Haynesville and a little community called Tusquitee. I liked the name, and thought it would probably be pretty. We found the road, and heaven. This little ribbon of asphalt, littered with fall leaves, snaked through rolling Appalachian farm country, the hills blazing with autumn color. It was tight, it was curvaceous…it was gravel. Or at least it became gravel. We were probably 25 miles up this road, and it went to gravel. No telling for how far. We turned around, and came up on a little general store, where a couple of locals were sitting around a weather-beaten table, doing nothing in particular. One of them saw the map in my hand and started to laugh. Yep, they told me, 7 miles of gravel. Not indicated on the map. It seemed like they had done this before. Anyway, they directed us back out to US 64, and said that we would enjoy the ride up to Franklin. We did.
A good place to get directions.
Once we got to Franklin, we looked for a road that I had heard of last spring, but had never found…NC 1001, through Ellijay. Well, we found it, and what a find it was. It was showing some damage from Hurricane Ivan, trees down, mudslides, and the like, but, man, what a road! We pulled over for a break and I asked Eric what he thought of the roads in this area. We had ridden lots of wonderful roads in the West over the past few years, but this was his first taste of eastern mountain roads. He was loving it. He felt that the roads here were more challenging, since they were so narrow and curved to tightly.
North Carolina 1001
We finished 1001 and headed north on 107 to 23, where we angled east to join I40 for the run to Greensboro. On 23 we saw a Honda/Yamaha shop and HAD to stop (it’s hard to pass a motorcycle shop) and Eric bought some gloves. I almost bought a hooded sweatshirt with the Yamaha emblem on it, but the $50 price was about $30 too much. After our brief shopping spree, we hit I 40 and made a speed run to Greensboro, trying to get there before dark. All of our wandering around on backroads had eaten up a lot of time. At a gas stop I called Lana and got an estimate on how far out we were. It looked like we were not going to make it. We saddled back up and cranked up the speed a little more. We entered Greensboro in diminishing light and fairly heavy traffic, made more interesting by a truck pulling a trailer that started fishtailing wildly in front of us. I don’t know how it all started, the first thing I saw was a sea of brake lights blaze up, and the lights of the trailer swinging back and forth. Disaster was averted, and we turn off of the interstate to wind around dark country roads, looking for Gary and Dulcie’s house. After a few wrong turns and turnarounds, we found it, right where it was supposed to be. Lana and her parents were there, Gary had purchased some good dark beer, and Dulcie had a big lasagna-and-chili dinner ready for us. We ate and ate and ate, then sat out on the back deck and killed a few beers. We were in bed by 11.
Stats: 326 miles, moving average 57.3, moving time 5.41, average speed 40, maximum speed 88