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there were sooo many pics that i think i needed to put up another post so that the original post does not get over clogged with them....

well i still don't have ambrose's or matt's pics, i will need to get those but for now here are the pics from brian and myself...and snag the ones i see on facebook from mattski to complete the trip...hopefully he'll give me them at some point .... so i'll apologize if not all the pics are the same width because they are all taken from dif. camera's...

anyway onto the report...

day 1, we got thru the border, and stopped in springville, site of the last timmies we'd see for the next 10 days...just happen to be as we were stopped to get some food'age that brian rolled in on his bike, i think he left work earlier...




Riding thru the backroads in NY, PA to the hotel:



we caught a huge storm cell on the way down in PA, it cleared out mostly by the time we got the toll road near maryland, stopped in at this steak house at the beginning of our stretch of the tollway



brian seemed so happy to get food of any type...



and of all things, they actually had chowdah, not it might be because i was wet, and hungry but it wasn't bad...



ended the day pulling into the hotel...




day 2: i see this pic matt took and think "we'll be rolling around the mountain here we come...." LOL



i dunno why ambrose has a thing with rubbing off all his stickers but he had most of them rubbed off by the trips end...



down the hill form the hotel we the truck stop and so we all stopped in for some air...



i found another use for the air hose, combined pressurized air with a evaporative cooling vest and you have voila, air conditioning ! man it felt good in that heat...




slabbed the first coule of hours, some of the guys had fun taking pics on the interstate...weather was glorious, tho hot...



we caught lunch at a place I had been to before in staunton, a few years ago, an old train station converted into a neat bar and restaurant, they enclosed the platform area and a/c'd it




little did i know that that train line it was next to was active, as we were finishing up, a coal train came barrelling thru...






after lunch we made our way over to the blue ridge parkway...




scenery was as always in that region, spectacular, weather was awesome...



did i mention it was hot? ambrose looks wiped out from the heat



blue ridge pics
















matt decided he wanted to climb a mountain, he easily climbed freely a rock ledge up about 4-5 stories overlooking the roadway, i still don't know how he didn't get hurt coming back down...





unfortunately for him just around the corner was the mr. ranger...



matt wasn't feeling like riding much more so he bitched with me to dinner and took some photo's while riding pillion...





i think ambrose bought him dinner for not naming names ! LOL



again he looks completely wiped out...



after dinner we headed to walmart to pick up some needed items...while pulling in i have no idea why, but brian decided his bike belonged with shopping carts instead...i guess the vstrom is utilitarian... LOL



i found a full suspension bike inside, imititation dirtbike, had to take it for a ride...i was bottoming out the suspension just sitting there...



ride back to the hotel...





i think matt was attempting to be artistic, i'm not sure...




day 3:

back to the blue ridge to continue on our way to the gap...



they actually built that viaduct to go OVER the mountainside to not disrupt the actual mountain itself...really cool...



more blue ridge





typical cornering on the ridge for those of you who have never been...



ambrose looks like....well he might need TP...LMAO...



day 4: we didn't get to do that much riding...i tried to take the guys down into georgia to ride but we got majorily dumped on, mileage was fairly pathetic as i recall...

we started by going up thru the gap and then down to georgia, at the resort parking lot...



after leaving there and heading to georgia at a gas stop, i made an offhand comment to ambrose, that he had a nail in his tire...



the look on his face was priceless...this pic does it no justice...



on the way down was fine...



but we got split up when the heavy heavy rain and hail moved in, it was nastyness...



we all made it back to the hotel if not all together...



and i was not a happy camper, everyone else had food but me, everyone gets there burrito's, etc. what did i get? a plate of lettuce and some tomatoes i gave to brian...




day 5: we started off the day with matt having wet socks...so he came up with an idea to zip tie his socks to his frame sliders to let them heat dry from heat off the bike with windblast at full speed...LOL





made our way over to the great smoky mountain national park...



i'll willing take captions for this...



scenery was spectacular...





i thinki must have deleted one of the pics, but if you view these next 4 pics i did a 150 panaram for viewing purposes from left to right, but its missing the middle shot...









the middle would have looked like this:



we came across one of the more odd corners on the trip, not many times do you get to do a full 360 degree corner, we went in to the corner and exited on an underpass in the same direction as where we were going in the first place...



last time i went, i never remembered the cades cove loop to be so busy but it was single lane (which i did remember) but it was bumper to bumper with people stopping to take pics of bambi and friends...not so happy




matt and brian took the dirt road going over the mountain while ambrose and I took the pavement way and went around it








we took the route around after lunch thru the foothills parkway, i was kind of surprised to see a mountain slide down onto the roadway...it looked like these huge boulders the size of VW bugs just decided "lets break away from the mountain today"





from there we made our way again thru deals gap and those are the pics i put up from before...









we all headed down to wheelers (local shop) to get nail removed and patched for ambrose and a new chain for matt



nail puncture:



ambrose with his georgia souvenir



they hit the dyno afterwards, you'll have to ask them for there numbers...i think i still outstripped them in power....wee go big engines !!



upon return to the hotel, matt was getting ready to take off to meet g/f for the rest of the nite, we should have given him a harder time now knowing the consequences of him leaving early

day 6: the day after matt left, we rode up to the cherohala skyway, and let me tell you, it is even more of a joy to run then I remembered last time...and again the scenery was beautiful, weather was fantastic and yes it was still hot...almost all were sweepers but smooth pavement and no traffic were a great boon







near the bottom of the valley, the 2 guys decided to climb down to the river



the river definitely had some interesting rock formations...



at lunch that day, holy cow, the first time I've seen ambrose take a look at a map to know where he's going ! LOL






notice we took fewer and fewer pics as the days went on, it was just more of the same, more twisties and more twisties, LOL...actually kind of got a bit too much

i don't think we even took any pics on day 8 at all, we were just riding and riding and riding, trying to avoid the rain clouds and finding the next twisty road...

day 9 on the 2nd last return day we ran up some mountains full of fog...holy cow, forgot how it was to ride a mountain switch back road in the fog...



we were playing tag on the twisties too...



ambrose broke off from us that day and headed on towards home because his dog was sick, we went thru some of the sites in PA

this is a panaram of the dam/reservoir we came up to take the next 5 shots looking left to right 180 degrees











standing on the dam looking on the down side...








and we came across this sign on the dam, didn't have a clue what it meant, sounded dangerous but actually it means just the first level of security after we looked it up later...LOL



we saw these big fish at the bottom of the damn on the up side of the dam and spent the next 5-10 mins hucking lugies (sp?) over the damn and the fish would eat 'em up...




day 10 - the only pic we have is of the huge bug that got lodged into the headlight of brian's bike...LOL

Nice pics

haha, loved that comment about Ambrose's first time pulling out a map! Priceless

wobblycat Wrote:haha, loved that comment about Ambrose's first time pulling out a map! Priceless

LOL, well he always just follows, and glances at our maps and says that he'll just follow, he doesn't need to know where we are, and then right after lunch he pulls out his map, and i'm like WTF are you doing? and his response is "i wanna know where we are", LOL

Nice pics Rory. It only took 55 seconds to download the theread.

Freaking awesome! I really need to get a Wing, throw the wife on the back and the dogs into the saddle bags. I'm so bleeding jealous.

Thanks for sharing Rory.

Awesome pics rory , man did that ever look like a great trip.. one day

I was going thru the pics from the Deals gap trip on my comp and I found some vids...here's 2 of them...a couple more to come...

(following brian)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDUc7BmM7jE

(i was too lazy to ride...so i rode as a passenger on rory's bike on the way to dinner)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYaP8ihg-ik

Nice vids..some serious wind noise though.

it's not bad considering i filmed it while riding one handed and holding the camera above the screen...

LOL dude i recognize that first one where you labelled it 'somewhere in south' that was the ride that day going up the mountain back roads and then we hit that sand road thru the mountains..LOL

Nice recap Rory ( with envy)

stay tuned...I'm uploading more than a GB of pics/vids right now

haven't had time to edit the set yet...but here's the link for those that are interested...some vids of the cherohala skyway taken with 1 hand on the bars...

please excuse the repeated pics...i haven't had a chance to go thru the set yet...