Category Archives: gear-head

This post is nudged by the inestimable IronDad, who has a great post up about ride-to-work day and the thrills, challenges, and misconceptions of making a motorcycle your regular commuter.  Ride to Work Day is traditionally the 3rd Monday in June, but this year I wasn’t able to ride in to work at all. I believe it had something to do with running-out-of-time-having-to-get-little-dudes-after-work-business-meeting-blah.

Which is to say, those strung together excuses are some common reasons why people don’t ride to work.

Wear gear. Pick something, and wear it. Wear it every day. Have some flexibility in your outfits. be safe. When my coworkers ask me about those dudes who are going 120 mpg on the Garden State Parkway in shorts and t-shirts I tell them it’s because they’re so physically uncomfortable that they go faster to get home sooner. Don’t be that guy!

Honestly, I lean towards what is commonly called the POWER RANGER edge of the gear spectrum. I wear an armored textile jacket and pants, reinforced boots, a full face helmet and gloves every time I get on the bike. I have a longish commute, too – it’s about an hour by bike. My home locale is generally 10 degrees cooler than my place of work. I leave at or before 7AM, so it can be quite cold in the spring or fall, and it’s really warm on the way home in the summer. I know that there are lots of people with really short commutes – I don’t know what to tell you, it’s too crazy for me. I might be tempted to just ride in jeans if I had a short commute too! But that is so far from my experience. I need to dress for a range of weather, a range of temperatures, and crazy NJ drivers when I hit Rt. 17 on my way to work. And I find that in heat, wind, and sun, wearing full textile gear leaves me more comfortable and protected from dehydration and sunburn than anything else.

(also I like to go up next to people texting and wag my finger at them. It’s surprisingly hilarious to see the reactions you get when someone realizes they’ve just been totally busted by a power ranger.)

As it is, I pack my work clothes every day and when I get to work, I hop off the bike, grab my bag out of the hat box (see next pro-tip!), shove my helmet into the box, and strut into the office like an astronaut. I go straight to my desk and turn on my computer, and then I go to the bathroom and change. It takes me 2 extra minutes every day to swap clothes. During that time my computer gets warmed up and booted and I have a minute to rewrite my daily to-do list. Reverse and repeat at the end of the day.

Get a hat box. Seriously. OK, so many people think it’s totally lame and way too euro-metro to ride around with a top case, but I have been hopelessly spoiled by my waterproof stash box on the back of the bike. It’s more expensive to get a rack and hard case for a sports bike or cruiser than a scrappy DRZ, though, so find one of the  many strap-on soft cases that are available that you can put onto your pillion seat. Seriously: in the summer, backpacks suck. In the rain, backpacks suck.

This is my modestly sized hat box:

These are the things you may want to carry with you to work:

• Your office shoes.
• A change of clothes.
• Your rain gear.
• Maybe your work laptop.
• Your lunch.
• That awesome book you like to read at lunch.
• Sunglasses/Clear Glasses.
• Different gloves for those days you ride to work in the 50s and head home in the 80s.
• Your sealable travel mug full of your favorite hot beverage.
• Sunblock just in case.

Having all of these in a hard top case that is waterproof is a huge luxury that has spoiled me for ever. Other people have saddlebags, hard side cases, or even canvas tail bags, and these all work for their purposes. As for me, I am filled with love for my hat box.

Pick your best route. I have two fairly direct routes to work – both are about 45 miles, but one is all highway and highway speeds, and the other is two-lane highways and a nice trip over a mountain with some sweet twisties and sweepers. The nicer route takes me a full hour to ride, while the highway is only 45-50 min. Clearly, I choose the hour long ride. It’s way more fun. I can afford that 15 extra minutes.

Can you off-set your work day so you miss the worst of the traffic? Is riding to work important enough to you that you are OK with taking a slightly longer route to get in so you can avoid crowded highways filled with impatient rush hour zombies?

Which leads me to my next point:

Be a little flexible. Whenever I have to not ride to work on a gorgeous day, it’s because I’m strapped for time. For example, on the days I pick up the little dudes after school, I need to be there before 6PM. so if I back-calculate it will take me an hour to get home on the bike, and then 30 min. to swap clothes, hop in the car, and go pick up the boys. Leaving a little buffer for various potential set-backs, this means I really need to leave work at 4PM. Which is really hard for me to do!

Of course, I could go to work an hour earlier and then I’d be able to leave at 4PM to ride around. It’s hard, though, to leave work earlier than everyone else – I totally get that – even with the flexibility my office provides it’s still hard for me. And leaving an hour earlier in the morning cuts into the exercise block I have scheduled for myself.

So if you can be flexible, you will be able to ride to work more. I have just shown you how inflexible I am. However – I’m thinking about it, and I bet one day I’ll just suck it up and do it, and then I’ll be shocked at how easy it was to make it work, and I will probably write a post here or here about how foolish I’ve been this whole time, and how easy it was after all.

So why go to all this trouble?

I love to ride to work because it provides a bracket to my day. Motorcycling is a form of active meditation, after all – you have to concentrate so much on not getting offed that you don’t have time to worry about what you did (or didn’t do) at work or at home that day. I am entirely present on my motorcycle in a way that I didn’t expect when I first learned. It’s amazing.

And I confess! I love that everyone at work thinks I’m a tough guy because I ride to work. I love that I am challenging their expectations of a young woman engineer. I love that I present a challenge to the typical “biker” prototype in my (hopefully) thoughtful and careful commute.

There are three great profiles in the July 2011 AMA (available partially for free on their website – go to page 34 for the feature start!) of full- or near-full time motorcycle commuters. it’s aways fun to see how others manage the continual negotiation between motorcycling, weather, time commitments, and convenience. (via IronDad. thanks!)

And at the root of it, riding my motorcycle to work gets me excited about going to work. It gives me a stellar reason to leave my desk at the end of the work day and head home at a reasonable time, instead of just doing “one more thing” on my list. It allows me to stretch out my cars lifespan by minimizing the mileage I’m putting on it.

Best of all, though, I love riding my motorcycle to work because it means I’ve evaluated the status quo of driving a car and determined a new way to get around it. Anything that challenges the normalized lifestyle we so often unconsciously lead is good for me. I think it is so importantly to critically evaluate the choices you make in your daily life and to actively participate in the type of life you are leading. Choosing to motorcycle is a way for me to show that I have fully evaluated the type of lifestyle that I am leading, and I’ve done my part to take control of my life in some small way.

Do you ride to work, and if so, why do you do it?

Mike and I took Seven out for a ride on Saturday! We had a few firsts –

• First time I had a passenger on my bike;
• First time Seven got to ride on the DRZ;
• First time Seven tried out his awesome new motorcycle jacket (which is still way too big for him);
• First time Mike tried out his new helmet;
• First time Seven got on the bike, rode for a little, signaled for me to stop, and peed by the side of the road; and
• First time of the year we rode to ice cream!

note: I hate this photo, because the cheek pads are still too tight and I have dramatic chubby face syndrome. thinner pads are on the way.

It was really so fun. I was worried about passengering someone – especially sweet little Seven! but he is so light and sits so still that it wasn’t a problem. He liked that he can touch the pegs AND lean against my top case – on Mike’s kawi he can’t reach the passenger back rest and hang on to Mike at the same time.

also of note: we strapped him into boots that may be 2 sizes too large, but we tied them up REALLY TIGHT so they wouldn't come off. he walked like a diver.

We still need to get real pants for the boys, and we especially need to get them some more seat time so they can build butt endurance and we can start to go on longer trips together. Twelve (he’s twelve now! not Eleven!) hasn’t been out since last year either, and now that he’s so aged he is victim to that horrible tweenish falling-asleep-all-the-time thing now – so we have to make sure he doesn’t conk out on us while on the bike.

We also had an interesting conversation with the boys yesterday when Seven asked why he had to wear boots on the motorcycle and of course being safety kid I said “so if you fall off your ankle bones don’t shatter into a million pieces.” I told them about people I know who’ve shattered ankles and have metal plates in their legs now to hold everything together. And then we played “spot the squid” on the way home from visiting my parents. (If this conversation was on twitter I would hashtag it with #protectingchildrenwithuglyscarytruths.)

I will admit to feel a little bit of schadenfreude when I fill up the scrappy DRZ when gas is so expensive.

(please note the not-yet-replaced plastics from the front of the bike. I lost 2 screws, and can’t put them back on. this is why I don’t have a bike with lots of chrome.)

At 59 mpg I’m so happy I can commute by motorcycle… but I can’t help but wonder: how high WILL it get this summer?

The (incredibly awesome and highly recommended) motorcycle forum I spend most time at has started an annual mileage competition – it’s all in good fun, so you post your mileage at the beginning of each year, and you get to see how far you’ve gone.

The first photo is from 4/4/10, and the second is from 4/10/11. Amazingly I’ve put almost exactly 5,500 miles on the DRZ! and I say amazingly only because it’s such a nice round number. In all actuality, I would have put way more on but my poor bike didn’t turn on one sad morning in late July. I mean, it turned on fine… but it didn’t turn OVER. and I took it apart and did everything you’re supposed to do to the spark plugs and air filter and all kinds of things but couldn’t get the carb apart to clean it out, and it turns out that there was a PIN HOLE in the tube that goes between the petcock and the carb. so I don’t know if I’d have figured that out anyway. And THEN we were so busy through August and September and October and November (which was still pretty nice) that I missed out on probably about 25 at least ride-to-work days which would have given me an easy extra 2,500 miles.

Oh well! this year will be massively better. for sure.

I am, however, smart enough to follow simple direction. Followed by some effort. Like this quote from Mother Teresa.

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

Thanks, Musings of an Intrepid Commuter, for a great quote.

The last day!

May 16.

We started groggily with hotel continental breakfast, and to the sad realization that it was really cold outside – it was in the low 50s, and when you have to factor in the wind chill of riding at 65ish MPH, you need to dress for bout 40 degrees. Our solution: put on all of our clothes and hit the road. Our plan was to get home as quickly as possible, so it was mostly highway all the way. We were home before dark.

Final states:

Did I mention we took this trip to ELEVEN?

Most of the directions we used:

and final mileage:

We had so much fun on this trip. Can’t wait until next year!

[[check out the summary post with lessons learned, and a full index to this ride report post.]]

May 15.

The next morning was dry, thank goodness, and the Timberline Lodge looked just as respectable in daylight as it had the night before.

After our breakfast, we headed out. We were all getting really tired, and we still had two long days ahead of us  – we were till over 600 miles from home! Today, though, we were going to make a silly and arbitrary trip into West Virginia for the sole purpose of picking up ELEVEN STATES in ELEVEN DAYS. we couldn’t resist!

[[As per all long trips and second children, there aren’t as many photographs on these last days as there were at the beginning. It’s tragic, but it’s human nature (and did I mention that we were so tired?)]]

This ride was really pretty, I wish we had more (any) photos of it.

Highlights of the day: Checking on the funny oil leak Janice’s bike had developed (we didn’t have any Harleys with us any more, so hers was compensating?)

Stopping in WV to tighten Mike’s chain

and the friends we made there:

Things we should have taken pictures of:

• When we stopped for a map check in WV and ran into a passel of motorcyclists who had trailered their sportsbikes in from Ontario. We had a nice talk with a few of them, and this this, well, old guy in a well worn ‘stitch comes barreling over and starts saying stuff like: “Eh, you couldn’t get away from your wives for a ride?” What’s a girl supposed to do? I looked him in the eye and said: “Wanna Race?” It was amazing how quickly his buddies were apologizing – in the funniest ways! “he’s old!” “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”  (Did they think he would get housed by the young lady on the DRZ SM? not at 40-odd horsepower he wouldn’t have. Though I am scrappy.)
• The Awfully Nice Guy we met at a gas-and-lunch stop in West Virginia – he was on a moto guzzi and we bonded over our small light flickable bikes, and I emailed him the link to our travel tumbler right away.  He’s involved with the WV Moto Guzzi Owners Club and I hope we can meet up with him on our next trip down to WV!

We did manage to find (nestled in some mountains) a DMV motorcycle testing course, and rode around in circles for fun and u-turn practice.

We ended the day in typical Flying Circus fashion by overshooting our hotel and accidentally getting onto a highway before finding our way back to the room, and making several U-Turns on our way to a Hardee’s for dinner. Not the smoothest way to end the day, and it’s much funnier when Mike S. is the one leading us on U-Turn adventures.

[[check out the summary post with lessons learned, and a full index to this ride report post.]]

May 14.

This was the day we started our trip north. No! we don’t want to go home! Happily we had some more highlights ahead of us.

We started out with a change of plans – Kerry’s dad lives in Limestone TN, so we were able to stop in and see them for lunch. We headed north and mostly motored, so I didn’t get a chance to take many photos.

You can see on the map where we had to cross over the Smokeys National Park  – that road, whatever it was, was a HUGE highlight. It was split between following the coves through the mountains and some strong up and overs. We had to stop and double check where we were at trout stream – you can see the water behind the sign.

It was full spring here in the mountains, and the flowers were thick and the bugs were enjoying it. Something big and hard bounced off of my chest and got me all gutty – I hope it was a big beetle and not a hummingbird – and I think it hit Rick on the way down after it struck me. Yuck!

Once we made it over the mountains we stopped in to see Kerry’s Pa. Limestone is so pretty, it backs up against the hills.

We had a nice stop with lunch and some dogs for belly scritches.

After that, we split off from Mike S and Mike F – they were headed back to Delaware to the dealership where Mike S got his motorcycle.

We took off headed north. Note to everyone in the world: Avoid Rt 11 unless you’ve done the google maps view to make sure it’s not all stopped traffic and big box stores. We had some problems through Kingston and Johnson City. We were really cruising, and then around 7PM the skies got dark and ominous and we ducked into a gas station to put on our rain gear. And not a moment too soon.

We let the bulk of the thunder pass by as we damply huddled in the over-air-conditioned mini-mart, but after about half an hour we decided it was time to move on. We got our rain gear tucked in as best as we could, and hopped back on the bikes. It may or may not have been hailing at any given time, the rain was freezing cold, and it got dark dark dark as the day ended. I think we lasted for 45 min. on the road before we started looking for a place to stay. After an extremely creepy hotel lobby evaluation (“oh, you only have smoking rooms? [thankgoodness!] We’ll move on down the road”) we picked the much nicer Timberline Lodge in Ceder Bluff.

The sign said 100% Quality, and they were right. I wish I’d snapped a photo of the furniture or the lobby but it was very cute. And across the street was a “Waffle and Egg,” where we enjoyed both dinner and breakfast.

[[check out the summary post with lessons learned, and a full index to this ride report post.]]

May 13.

This was a really full day. Mike and I were in charge of the trip routing from Myrtle Beach home, so we had spent a lot of time looking around for the best roads – like, a LOT of time. And if you know Mike and I, we can make a 15 minute trip to the grocery store into a three hour tour (a LOVELY one, but a long one).

We knew we wanted to start in Helen and end up in Whittier, because we’d found a cheap motor lodge that seemed charming and oh did I mention cheap? that is, AFFORDABLE. The group wanted to spend some time riding the dragon, and as we did more research it turned out that there were about a ZILLION other roads that were just as lovely in the area. It made for some exciting mapping sessions.

We got up pretty early, and headed out to find our way around the smokies. Bright and shiny and eager to go:

Before we started we had a motorcycle kick-off talk – I don’t normally do this with our group, because we all ride well together – but we were going to be on some very technical roads, and we didn’t have a map to distribute to the whole group, and I didn’t want anyone to get in over their heads. We let everyone know that the twisties would be fast and frequent, and that some people would like to go faster than others through the route – if you want to go faster, signal to pass up to the front and wait for the group at major intersections. If you want to go slower, hang back, take your time, enjoy yourself and of most importance RIDE YOUR OWN RIDE, and trust that we will wait for you at major intersections.

I don’t know about everyone else, but laying it out like that made ME feel more confident that people would take care and ride at their own pace, and I was able to enjoy my ride much more for it.

Our first route was going to take us up Rt 348, but we found out that it was closed!

oh, that’s ok – quick iPhone re-routing to take GA129 up into NC/TN…. and OH MY GRACIOUS it was so lovely.

[[Disclaimer: some motorcyclists are great at taking photos while they ride. Some motorcyclists are great at stopping frequently and taking photos of where they ride. I am good at NEITHER of these. I am good at riding and riding and riding and having a darn good time and going back later and making google maps of where I’ve been.]]

This is my favorite road of the day – GA 129, up and over Blood Mountain.

Here’s a video I found on youtube that will give you the flavor of the road – basically, you’re going up a steep hill and there are turns! back and forth! not so deep that you had to slow down, but still challenging! you could see ahead of you on the road and all you saw were gorgeous corners ahead!

watch?v=VPJhvVPm02k&feature=related

It was really FUN!

And this day, Day 8, is when it all clicked for me and I started to really understand why light bikes are so fun and how to use the brake to flick back and forth on twisties. SO GREAT. I also started to really appreciate how much work my friends on larger bikes had to put in to get their bikes to lean back and forth. Mike and I were on sportier bikes (He was on the SV650, I was on my DRZ supermoto) so we took the lead. It was phenomenal. Plus, I grew up in Eastern TN running around the smokies, and call me sentimental, but the smells and plants and flowers and terrain felt so familiar and welcoming to me. What a lovely place to ride motorcycles.

We took a break at Tellaco Plains in TN for some ice cream (I had a Mayfair Brown Cow ice cream bar – these were such a treat when I was a kid, I couldn’t resist!) and sodas, and cool water in great quantities. The temperature was fluctuating wildly between the cool of the shadowy mountains and the hot flats and coves in between the peaks – I was really happy to have the gear on that I did, it was very comfortable at a range of temperatures.

After Tellaco we headed out onto the Cherahala Skyway into NC – which would take us up over this ridge:

It was just gorgeous. We stopped at an overlook to get a good view of the smokies:

I think this is the road we came up on!

After that, it was on to Deal’s Gap! We stopped at the Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort for “lunch” – it had been a long day already, and we were stopping at 4 or so in the afternoon. I had a smoked trout sandwich, which was supposedly caught and smoked by a local guy. it was delicious.

To prepare ourselves, we walked out back and checked out the tree of shame:

here are a couple of my favorites:

and

“VFR vs Deer. Deer Loses, Rider Walks. ATGATT.”

The Dragon was closed for much of Spring 2010 because of a rock slide which not only covered a portion of the road at the bottom, but also created a dangerous overhang over the road, but it was opened for drivers and riders to go down and come back up again. Despite it’s cult status, Rt 139 is still used as a major cross-over between NC and TN. Check out these amazing old photos of the heyday when the speed limit was 55 MPH.

After that, we suited up and headed down the road. The Dragon’s Tail is really physically challenging. you really can’t go much faster than 30 mph (well, *I* can’t, anyway) and it’s a series of serious switchbacks – not even twisties. there is oncoming traffic and you have to stay in your lane. that said, it was so fun, and so challenging. I’m glad we had a chance to run it.

We stopped near the bottom – there was an outlook (we love scenery!) and there was a pace car ahead of us so we wanted to let it get out of our way before the final push down and back up.

I believe this is the Cheola Dam:

I LOVE this photo – doesn’t it look like we’re having an amazing time? (hint: the photos doesn’t lie!)

Hey, we made it to the bottom!

Killboy was there taking photos, and we ordered a whole bunch from them. They are super quality – I’m glad we got there in time to catch his regular shift, as it was pretty late in the day.

By the time we regrouped at the resort, it was getting late and we were definately tired. We still had one more stretch of road ahead of us before our hotel for the evening, which turned out to be my second favorite road of the day.

Rt 28 is charmingly called Moonshiner 28, and is definately a must-ride. After the athleticism of the Dragon’s Tail, Moonshiner was a nice mix of still pretty challenging but not so rough that you can’t enjoy the scenery. After the twisties rt 28 opens up into a 4 lane rural highway, and soon we were at our final destination –  the Gear Head Inn.

our hosts were so accommodating! They’ve just opened, and they’re redoing each of the rooms in the style of an old car or motorcycle mfgr, with posters and other paraphernalia.

We had the AMC room. the rooms are GIANT and the bathrooms are vintage and adorable.

The proprietors are really super and they were so accommodating. We ordered pizza delivery and ate by the pool, and they offered to run out and grab us beers if we wanted. so kind! They have lots of parking and plenty of spaces right in front of the rooms for cars and motorcycles, and a lot across the road for trailer parking. It was a great place to stay.

The pool is classic motor lodge – i.e., in the center of the parking lot, and we spent some time chatting with some of the other guests there. I had a funny conversation with one of them, he was a MSF instructor and I said something like: “you know how you start motorcycling and you’re just crazy about it for a couple of years?” he responded: “yeah, about *30* years?” So true.

After our pizza we all just about fell over from the sleepy. It was a long couple of days, and we had more long rides ahead of us to get home!

[[check out the summary post with lessons learned, and a full index to this ride report post.]]

May 12

This was a day of motoring. We had to make it all the way across the state in order to set ourselves up for our full day of smoky mountain riding tomorrow!

We had last minute plans to go to the BMW plant in Spartanburg SC – one of our group mentioned it at the beginning of the trip, and sounded really cool: they make cars, not motorcycles, but the building is also a super-efficient green building which I love. So we headed out across the state on small roads, with the plans to avoid highways as much as possible but make up time in some key areas. We got about 2/3 of the way to Spartanburg and were frantically trying to make up miles on the highway when the interested party said “oh hey, let’s screw it. I’ll do it another time. it’s too far away.” We all agreed that it was turning out to be too much work for vacation and happily, we hadn’t gotten too far out of the way, so we hung a left and went south towards our destination for the night.

It was hot going. We stopped to try some boiled peanuts – they are AMAZING with a can of coke.

The last leg of the trip was just twisty and pretty enough (after our long hot ride through some of SCs big highways) to perk everyone up. And I did have a surprise for everyone – we were overnighting in Helen GA , which is a bavarian-style town in the mountains of N Ga. I didn’t tell anyone about the architecture so when we pulled in and saw this:

It got even better walking to dinner:

Everyone was really surprised! it was super. I was a little worried Helen would be kitchy, or that we wouldn’t have enough time to enjoy it, but it was even cuter and more interesting than I had hoped, and everyone loved it and we all are secretly planning to go back another time for a longer stay.

We had an amazing meal at the (of course!) Hofbrauhaus.

And afterwards, we walked back to the hotel and turned in for another early start and a long day of twisties!

[[check out the summary post with lessons learned, and a full index to this ride report post.]]

After our excitement the night before we were slow starters and spent the day riding around checking out what little there was on display for the rally.

someone’s buddy on their motorcycle:

I’m pretty sure someone rode this into the HD dealership – I didn’t see any support vehicles, and it moved around during the time we were there!

there were some great paint jobs out there, and this one reminded us of the iconic three wolf moon shirt:

Although I don’t wear a leather vest, I love seeing the people set up to sew patches onto them. Mike and I are going to get one of these heavy duty sewing machines one day!

For those who have never gone to a rally, well, you might wonder what it’s for. really, I think it’s for walking around, looking at vendors, and checking out bikes. it’s nice to be in a place with a zillion other people on motorcycles, but that gets pretty weird when they don’t wear helmets (nutty south carolina!) or worry about safety gear in the same way you do! also the vendors at myrtle beach were pretty much all different versions of the same t-shirt guy, so it wasn’t that great. There were a lot of pretty bikes there, and of course there are the old hold-out vestiges of “biker culture,” like  suck bang blow, which is a bar where people do burnouts on old tires (no burnouts, poor turnout). There’s a bar called the rathole but we couldn’t find it at it’s new location – this is a more typical “biker” crowd with wet t-shirt contests etc. THAT part of the rally really ticks me off, to be honest, and I was glad to miss it. While there are a lot more women riding their own than there used to be (our group is really stellar in its equal representation) there are still a lot of dudes who need to prove to everyone else how tough they are by objectifying one group or another.

This was also the day that my very favorite photo of myself was snapped:

After noodling around, we all went back to the hotel to pack up. We had a long trip ahead of us! On the way back, I stopped at the store and bought some 2L bottles to try in my sweetcheeks –

And I even put them (empty) into the freezer before capping, so the ideal gas law would make them firmer to sit on. the next day I strapped it onto my seat and it turns out that… it wasn’t that comfortable. Maybe a 1L bottle would be better, this made the seat way too wide for me. So I went without on the whole trip.

[[check out the summary post with lessons learned, and a full index to this ride report post.]]

After our lackluster tour of the “rally” events we decided to head back up north to Wilmington NC to visit the USS North Carolina Battleship Museum. Our butts were feeling much better after our previous slow day! Wilmington is about 80 miles from Myrtle Beach, and on the way is Shallotte SC, where Beach House HD is trying to take up the lost crowds and revenue from the Myrtle Beach Rally.

We stopped at the HD dealership and crossed our fingers that no one would decide to buy a new motorcycle and checked out the vendors – there weren’t many set up, still too early in the week? but there was a delicious BBQ sandwich stand run by the local Volunteer FD and EMS, and also this very cool fire truck:

Then we continued on up to the battleship. This tour is SO COOL. it’s a self-guided walk through the entire ship, and it took us several hours to make it through the whole thing!

What is it about the fisheye camera?

Seriously, I was using some old film…

But every single photo is either totally unintelligible or it is SERIOUS.

Seriously Epic.

Exceptionally seriously epic.

The tour is so neat, you walk all through the ship and up and down and down and down and down –

as we walked out right at closing we saw this sign:

nothing reminds you that you’re in the southeast like alligator warnings!

after our visit to the battleship, we looked up the location of a Golden Corral and headed out for dinner. I wasn’t kidding, we ate there a LOT. Getting there required a Flying Circus Technically Complete U-Turn in Formation. Actually, I think we did a couple of laps around the neighborhood before we could find our dinner! We even stopped and asked for directions. Bellies full, we headed home to Myrtle Beach.

Unfortunately Mike F won our hero of the day award when he ran out of gas on the way home. It was pitch black and getting chilly and his fuel indicator light didn’t go on. Happily, we were really close to a gas station and it was just a slight derail of plans. Pro tip: if the gas station won’t let you borrow a gas can, buy some windshield wiper fluid, dump it out, and put a little gas in side. Easy to cap and bring back to your buddy, and just a little gasoline goes a long way when you’re motorcycling.

[[check out the summary post with lessons learned, and a full index to this ride report post.]]