The ride was organized by Randy Miller, and we all met at the Rabbittown Cafe in Gainesville. The Rabbittown cafe offers good old Georgia country cooking with cafeteria style service. Great way to fuel up for the ride. The riders who started at the cafe included myself, Bill, Frank, David, Randy (ride leader) and first timers Alejandro and Monique. Naturally, everyone was riding a Beemer. The riders and rides were:
Me- R1150RT (Sienna Red)
David- R1150RT (Silver)
Alejandro & Monique -R1150RT (Black)
Randy-R1200RT (Silver)
Frank- K75
Bill-R65
We then rode to Toccoa where we met Paul on his R1150R in the same Sienna Red as my R1150RT.
En route, the weather was crappy. Grey skies, drizzling rain and fog suggested that we'd end up putting up our tents in a downpour. We stopped at the Sapphire Mountain Brewing Company for lunch. Nice restaurant overlooking the golf course. Several of us tried the fish and chips, but Alejandro was feeling ambitious and ordered the pizza. He felt that the 7" personal pizza was too small so he opted for the 24" truck tire sized pizza with 8 lbs of cheese and 4 lbs of tomatoes. He'll be featured on a future episode of Man vs Food. For a slim guy he's got quite the appetite!
We left the restaurant and headed for the BRP. As usual, the BRP was socked in with fog and for most of the route you could barely see past your visor. Along the way we stopped to try to get in one last phone call or text message before entering the area of poor cell phone reception.
Here's a picture of Bill taking a picture of me and my bike (foreground) while Alejandro and Monique try to get a few text messages off from a spot near the summit. Unfortunately, nobody had much luck getting a signal. Below is a picture of Randy also trying to send a text.
We rode on through the drizzly, overcast fog and as we entered the campground the sun started to poke through and we were lucky to be able to setup our camp sites without a torrential downpour.
After setting up camp, we met the others who had travelled separately to the site and proceeded to get the grill heated up and cook a few burgers and dogs. We had an excellent dinner and then downed a few beers. While getting set up a woman came around and asked our names for a door prize drawing. It turned out that the Moto Guzzi guys were holding their own event and they decided to open the drawing to anyone that showed up at the camp site. That was a nice gesture, but it turned out that the BMW riders kept getting their names pulled. In fact, one of the guys from BMW MOGA was the first name drawn and therefore had the pick of the best prices on the table -including a new modular helmet. Wisely, he chose a crappy lawn chair since he needed a lawn chair, and also because it is well know that Guzzi riders travel with guns and hunting dogs. Had he picked the grand prize, I'm pretty sure there would have been a R1200 GS laying on its side in the morning!
Anyway, it seemed like at least half of the BMW MOGA contingent won a prize ( I took home a Givi baseball cap) and the Guzzisti had the pleasure of our company until the prizes were all handed out.
The Guzzisti had hired a live band to play at the campground. The band did a great job of playing a number of completely unrecognizable tunes. As one person noted, the band actually sounded better as you walked further away from them . I was about 3 miles down the road when I thought they actually might win a grammy.
Fortunately, they stopped playing at 10:30 PM. Since most Beemer owners are grouchy old men, it was not so bad to have to stay up past the normal 9:15 bedtime.
The next morning we packed up camp and grabbed a quick breakfast before hitting the road. The campground was fairly packed -mostly with Guzzis but there were some of the other usual suspects as well. Everyone drooled over a perfectly restored BMW Toaster /5. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me when we saw it.
At breakfast, Alejandro ordered another gut-buster. The pancakes at the campground are huge. Roughly the size of a hub cab from a 65 Chrysler, and about as thick. The poor boy barely made a dent in the 6 lbs of pancake batter used to make the whopping cakes. After the prior days lunch and this breakfast, Alejandro had to reset his suspension and pump up his rear tire to 44 PSI.
At various points along the way riders peeled off to set their own course home. I rode with Bill through some really insane roads, including the "Goat Path", a road that was barely 6 feet wide and cut right past a goat farm. After about a mile or two on this road, which would barely have allowed a motorcycle and car to go in opposite directions, we see a sign that says "Narrow Road Ahead". You're kidding me, I think- The road actually gets MORE narrow? During this section of the ride I'm thinking -man, this looks like it's going to turn into a motorcycle version of Deliverance. At the first sound of banjo music I was gonna just ride across any open field I could find.
Eventually, we caught up with highway 400 and made our way back to Atlanta. Great riding and a fun trip.
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