Robin: If I remember correctly, Mr. Burleson, you were escorted to the door many episodes ago. I don't know how you found your way back in, but let's keep this brief and try to be professional. Okay.

Travis: The metaphorical zoom door, an emoji. Do I need to install an update? Is there a bouncer plugin?

Robin: This is the official, everybody that could be here. Sevens episode of radio TRO. We've got everybody that rode the 2024 trip sevens group motorcycle tour together. Minus the one and only beautiful Jasmine Islam, who was already on an episode by herself, which I hope more than makes up for the fact that she can't be here today. We're going to miss her, but we will talk about her while we're doing this. I already did this. I already described everything front to back sevens days to Dave and it was, you know, a long winded episode of me talking at Brian and Brian being very tolerable.

Travis: Day negative one to Brown County rally a week later.

Dale: Yeah. I should go listen to that because that whole week is a blur.

Robin: I'm going to take my only moment in the opening here to welcome everybody. Seven people in the room. We've got Paul Rosner here. Mr. Brian Ringer, who was only here for two days. Travis somebody. I don't know. Dale Dunn, the one and only Bionic Man, Norm Felger, and Grieg Witte.

Robin: Greg, how you been, man?

Greg: I'm doing good, although I haven't been riding many motorcycles lately.

Travis: I haven't either, you know, but that's just work and kids and life and stuff.

Greg: Yeah, exactly.

Travis: It is, uh, neighborhood festival season here in, uh, beautiful tropical Madison, Wisconsin. I have been running the moped quite a bit to, uh, some festivities, because that's what mopeds are for. Robin covered the mishaps of day negative one and trying to put a new shaft from Brian's damp porch into his, uh, Beamer's back end.

Robin: Really?

Travis: Yeah, that's how I remember it. That's how we do. Um.

Greg: I thought what happens in Brian's garage stays in Brian's garage. Fuckin

Robin: Vegas.

Travis: There's a lot of molly involved. Molybdenum grease for those of, uh, those of you who are not familiar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so Day Zero was, was actually, there was some good writing we got in the Maysville. Everyone got in the Maysville by different means. Robert and I rode in from Ringers after, uh, following him around Indiana for a bit. And running out of biscuits somewhere in Nowhere's Indiana. And I know you were gonna, you weren't gonna do Day Zero, but everyone tell me about your Day Zero in 50 words or less. Uh, but how you got in and what that involves, Paul, what was your, I forget, did you trailer in or did you ride in just from Indiana? Uh,

Paul: well, kind of both. We trailered in, in the Madison, Indiana, and then we're about an hour away from the, uh, Bristol hotel. So I rode in, uh, my motorcycle with everything I had on my back and, Nice. Did you do any twisties or did you just kind of take it there? Direct. Took it there. Direct kind of rode along the river is between the, uh, the border of Indiana and Kentucky.

Brian: Okay.

Paul: Nice.

Brian: Had to get your rest in before it started. You didn't have any bags on your bike. If I remember right, you backpacked at the whole hardcore.

Paul: Yeah. At least at the beginning until a good old Robin took my underwear. And my shorts and my t shirts and my dirty socks. And he was a good friend there. I

Robin: just wanted to borrow him for a little bit.

Travis: You're wetter than dry bag? Yes.

Brian: That's how it's going to be, huh? Okay.

Travis: Luckily that got strapped to the outside of people's motorcycles along the way. What about you, Norm? I know Norm rode down. I

Norm: had a nice ride. A nice day ride. I left in the morning. Beelined it to 70 that cuts through Ohio and then after that I got, uh, onto two lane roads. I appreciated that and I made it to Maysville with, I think I was like the second one there. I was there early. Yeah, it was a nice trip.

Travis: What about you, Greg? How was your ride in on day, day zero?

Greg: I had a real nice ride in. There's some lovely roads and scenery between the middle of Tennessee and Maysville. I've made that ride a few times. Now, so I've got a nice route mapped out. Just enjoyed the ride up there. It was a non event, just all very. Very pleasant motorcycling all the way up. I think for the first time ever, I arrived, which kind of threw me off. I got there. There was no other motorcycles there.

Robin: Checking your watch. Like, is that, is that this week? Shit. Am I

Greg: in the right place?

Paul: I guess this is just a fun, a fun day ride for me. That was the third one to arrive. I think Greg and Norman were already there and I didn't know anybody except for Robin. So I didn't know what bikes or who I was looking for and just kind of traveling around.

Greg: Well, when all pulled up, I was like, there's no way. There's no way there's somebody here to go on a seven day tour on a CBR 1000 RR.

Paul: And a backpack, right?

Greg: Who's, who's this guy? Why is he stopping to talk to me?

Travis: Did he just get out

Paul: of the

Travis: mental

Paul: hospital?

Travis: He must be on his way home from his work commute. Yeah. Dale, how was your ride in? If you remember?

Dale: I am trying to remember. I don't remember it in detail. On previous years, I. Took 75 south into Kentucky and, you know, had a little bit of fun on the playground there in northern Kentucky, 22 and 10 and so forth. Uh, this year I, I started out in my, my local backyard playground, which takes me 20 minutes to get to, but took that down south towards directions I haven't been in 10 years. Exploring some of the roads down there again, passed through Felicity, Ohio, which is a nice quaint little town. And tried to find a road that got me over towards Mayville so I wouldn't have to follow the river too long. Again. 52 or whatever that horrible, boring road is. I got across the bridge and pulled into the parking lot and parked next to a bunch of bikes that I did not recognize, except for Robins, matching CBR like who are these people?

Robin: I did not see that comment. I did not know there were going to be two. Two of the most unexpected.

Travis: Oh yeah. Same, same year, same color. The 2017 25th anniversary CBR 1000 RRs. That's right. Matte black. Went ahead and a little bit extra plumbing. That was

Dale: the only difference.

Paul: Literally. Yeah, literally. Gave me some ideas. Jasmine set up. I was, I was jealous of her high handlebars and all of the baggage and space that she had. And luggage and her New York commuter set up. Yeah, I was as impressed too, when she rode by, I wasn't quite sure if she was part of the group and then she rode back in and into the parking lot and parked with everybody and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me, like a CBR 1000, same year, same color, what, what are the chances?

Dale: Oh, you thought you were going to be the only cool one, huh? That's right.

Robin: You know, from day one on, tell the story you want to tell. If it's 30 seconds, if it's 10 minutes, draw straws and speak to your

Norm: mind. I was impressed about the accommodations, the hotels that we stayed at. Oh yeah. The Blenner Hassett was ridiculous. That place is off the charts. And that is very beautiful. Or the hotels and, you know, spot.

Travis: Day one, I'll, I'll kick it off here. You know, we had a good, we had a good day zero, good dinner, despite the festival going on. It was really busy and there was nowhere. We really, we didn't get a table at, what was it like? It was like insanity or something. What was the name of the place? Pandemonium. Pandemonium. Yeah.

Robin: And I couldn't hear anything. We had a place called

Travis: Pandemonium and there's a street fair outside with like three bands.

Robin: Travis, first thing is sweet. Can you do me a favor? Sure. Can you make sure we find a nice quiet place? It's kind of a lounge, comfortable seating, good food. What can you find for me? Pandemonium next to the festival. Hey, it was,

Travis: it was, you wanted walking distance and we were a block from the festival where there was nothing we were going to do in Maysville, Kentucky. There's like four options. And they're all right on the main street where the festival was. You did awesome. But yeah, day one. So we got up, got that breakfast from the continent, uh, hung out with the like Southern Ohio Harley Davidson something consortium. I'm assuming that was, uh, something like that, that were also at the breakfast with us. Uh, and then, yeah, I just love that, you know, it's been a couple of years since I've been on sevens and you, you pull out and, uh, no one missed the turn. That was good. That's a first. You go over that bridge and you go over the Ohio river. You know, it's like the sun is rising and there's a mist on the river and you go over that trellis bridge and then you get on the Ohio side and you're just kind of like cruising through the trees and it's, it's like beautiful. And it's like, you can hear the Lord of the Rings tune just playing in the distance as you set out on an adventure. It's, it's so good. And then we, you know, get going for a little bit and then we hit the first, that first twisty section. And, uh, Dead Man's Curve there for the, for the first gas stop. Oh, man, Dale? No comment. I've seen one person drop a bike there. It's like a weird off camber, downhill intersection where you stop and crossing traffic doesn't, but you can't see the crossing traffic.

Robin: That officially has a red mark on it. Everybody stop, do your own thing, wait until I'm gone, then proceed.

Travis: Yeah. Do not move as a group, but yeah. And then it was, you know, kind of easing up. It's the, the warm up to Zanesville, uh, which was good. We had good weather and then we hit the nickel and to the nickel is always that same thing to where we get on it and you're like, Oh, this is it. This is the triple, but like that for the first like 10 miles or just like, whatever, I was like, Oh, is this, this is when I remember it being, I don't know, and then, and then you get it. And you're like, Oh yeah. Okay. This is the fun.

Paul: Yeah. For me, the triple nickel was, I don't think I've ever been at any, anything like it. With the blind Hills and the 90 degree turns was pretty crazy. And then I was second, I believe Robin was ahead of me trying to follow him at his pace. I was like, this is going to be day one. We have six more days of this, like, but, uh, I ended up having a blast and I felt comfortable and I knew Robin knew what he was doing and he's been on this before. So you're the one. Got you fooled. Just having a guide, you know, in front of me and starting day one like that. That was a pretty epic. Everything leading up to that point, the talk, the reservations, paying the money. This is my first trip. So I didn't know what to expect. And 2000 miles on a sport bike and on the East side of the country, going through the mountains, I just had no idea. That was one heck of a first day and in my head, triple nickel, many, many turns, many blind Hills, and, uh, everybody, it was, Safe and made it through and I knew we're going to have a ton of fun in the next six days.

Norm: I like the hotel in Parkersburg. That would, that's the

Robin: Bletterhasset.

Travis: Yeah. It was a nice arrival in the Parkersburg. And too, we don't do the toll bridge. I've definitely done that toll bridge in the rain before, and it is sketch. Yeah. No reason to do the toll bridge and, and come over that way. So yeah, the, the Bletterhasset would, uh, would, uh, way too classy for us.

Dale: Absolutely. If I had known we were going to stay at a place like that, I would have packed in different clothes.

Travis: Norm was styling the whole time. Norm had like, he'd come out, he had like nice Chino shorts and a clean polo. And of course he had, he had the room for all the luggage. It's probably like a steamer in there. The K1600 steams your pants, does your creases.

Brian: That's just how Norm rolls. I've seen Norm roll in, in a, in a rainstorm and five minutes later, the bike is gleaming. I don't know how he does it.

Norm: Gotta keep it looking good.

Paul: It's an old machinist trick. Yeah, just keep the whole thing wetted down with mineral oil. Did anybody else get a postcard from that hotel saying thanks for the stay? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. Was there like a guest

Travis: book or

Paul: something? No, like sign in a form to guest check in. You'd sign address, travel, like, no, screw that. Just give me the room key. Listen, they must scarf it off the

Travis: copy of our licenses that they take. They probably sent it to Robin. I had to share a room. They sent it to Peoria. I would say Greg and Dale have done, done the nickel before. So. And I'm like, yeah, it was good. It was still there.

Robin: Felt like a confident year for it though. Anybody got anything else for day one?

Dale: My most firm memory about that day is thinking, okay, those two just beat that Mustang in a drag race. I don't have half the power. Those two guys have,

Robin: I'll remember that incident. That's right. Those are welcome in this discussion. This isn't a rated R podcast. All I know is that I had a feeling that if I tried to pass this guy, He had his partner in the passenger seat. Clearly I could feel that they were going to be like, not me. You're not, not going to happen, man.

Dale: Well, he had put some money in that old Fox body. So yeah, he was going to use it.

Robin: Freaking Fox body Mustang is a bad thing to try to pass because you're going to pass it, but you might not. You don't know what's going to happen after that. After you make the pass, there's no telling.

Dale: Yeah. What's he going to do? Makes you through the corners?

Robin: I took the opportunity and everything I expected happened did. He wasn't slowing down so he could pass. He's slowing down so he could cause trouble. I'm not going to say whether it was Dale Rosner or Paul Dunn, but one of those two wheelied past that car because it was the only option they had.

Dale: Well, it certainly wasn't me that wheelied past him. The GS doesn't wheelie without help from some kind of significant defect in the pavement or some nitrous.

Travis: Whichever bike can do a power wheelie starting at 60.

Paul: Robin, I'd like to say there, there is a difference between a wheelie and a power wheelie. Good point. But it had to be done.

Travis: Which one is the shuttle launch escape? Yeah. Then the Bletterhassett went to the riverfront. I like rambled at you guys for some reason for like 20 minutes, about canoes or something. That was, that was a great hike. Beautiful sunset over the Ohio river. Yeah.

Paul: I was trying to enjoy the sunset and I heard Travis talking behind me. I don't know what he was saying.

Travis: Uh, was day two. We got Bletterhassett. We got those hash browns. You gotta talk about the hash browns in the morning at the Bletterhassett. Oh, that was good. I love that. Greg knows what I'm talking about.

Greg: I know that was the good

Travis: cheesy stuffed hash browns and it was cheap. We got like five bucks off or something. Right. And it was, it ended up only being a couple of bucks for breakfast. That was a good deal.

Robin: Yeah. That place worked out.

Travis: Yeah, it was

Paul: a pleasant surprise. Uh, again, my first trip, first day riding. And at the end of the day, I was expecting just to stay at a normal motel. And we ended up staying there. I'm like, this is impressive. I had a great time with a group of friends riding all day and then ending the day like that. Really got me excited for the next six days.

Greg: Well, Robin has really upped his game because that's a big step up from the previous lodgings in that town.

Robin: I'll edit that out. Actually, Brian knows that story. There was one year, and I think Greg was there for that year where we arrived. They had no record of my bookings and they ate all of my profits right there. Nice. What's going in for this whole tour. They were like, we don't have any record of this. I was like, well, I've got the bank statements right here. And they're like, well, that doesn't mean anything to us. And I had to pay them for all the rooms again. And then we had it out after the tour is over. And that's why I don't have any hair.

Paul: That's why you ride a BMW with a hundred thousand miles on it.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: It's almost paid off. Another a hundred thousand. It'll be paid off. Peak of day two Hashbro. Ash Browns, and it's all downhill.

Robin: There's nothing to change about day two, in terms of the route.

Travis: Down to Warm Springs, all those roads are so good, through West Virginia.

Brian: Hey Norm, how was the hotel in Warm Springs? You're the, you're the hotel reviewer.

Norm: Oh, I loved it. It was, oh, very beautiful. Rooms are really nice and comfortable. Yeah, and I had a good time, good meal there. Kind of stuck out with, in my head. Well, we all went into Robin's room, and we're all sitting around there. Uh oh. I'm looking around and I'm wondering, uh, when was the last time Jasmine was in a hotel room with six other guys? Ha ha ha ha.

Robin: See,

Norm: these are the things.

Robin: Now I have to edit it.

Norm: But we were all gentlemen though, so everything worked out cool. Oh yeah, she had us all on our best behavior. She did. Well, I mean, I'm a gentleman anyway.

Robin: I think we all are. We fake it as best as we can, but I think in the end there was a group of gentlemen, and she had us in check the entire time.

Travis: I think Paul still had his 8 Gentleman Jack shooters from, uh, from Maysville. There's a picture. From the Maysville front desk. I did. That thing lasted forever. But yeah, the roads they too are just, I don't know, what do you say? They're, it's amazing. It's good the whole, it's good the whole time. I don't know if there's one stretch that's better than any other stretch.

Greg: No, but I mean, quite briefly, you said you could figure out a reason to live in Warm Springs and just ride up to Parkersville and turn around and come back, you know, and just make that what you did a lot. That would be an epic life. That, that is, there's a lot of fantastic riding. And, uh, those are great roads.

Robin: Greg, I think it was like the easiest day to plan. If I type into Google maps, Parkersburg to Warm Springs, there's the route. I guess I'm done with that day. You know, like move on to the next. It was impossibly easy to just create that. Not a damn change needs to happen.

Travis: That was the day. Well, I'll say this, I'll go back for a second and create one of this. And then Jasmine's not here to defend herself, but so day one was the day that Jasmine ran low on gas and I had to pick her up a sweep. But it was fine. That's why we're here. And it's fine. It was fine. No problems. But then she was all like every stop, whether she needed gas or not, she was topping up her tank. But that last stop before we got in the warm Springs, that was one where the, she got sprayed with gas.

Greg: I mean, that's right.

Travis: Oh, the sprayer was broke and it was like shooting out of the side. It was like shooting out of the joint and she got like sprayed with gas. And it was like a whole thing. Wasn't that before we got into a warm Springs?

Robin: We are here right now so that you guys can express those day to day memories.

Greg: Yeah.

Robin: I have no retention.

Greg: You're right. That was before we got into Warm Springs because she left her gear all out on the porch in front of the room, hoping it would air out.

Brian: Oh yeah. That's the worst one. Yeah. When you're, you get gas all over you and you got, you know, uh, It's there for weeks.

Dale: Wasn't that the gas station at the foot of snowshoe mountain? West Virginia is one of my all time favorite States. It's just, you stay off of the highways like 19 and 33. It is just uniformly awesome. And by the end of the day or well, middle afternoon from coming down all those twisty roads on deeper backside of all the mountains, you know, I was in danger of having my hands cramping up. Just from squeezing the brakes and

Travis: hanging on. Day two's got the, uh, the one lane, half a lane goat road where the work trucks waved us past. Right. But it's the pristine brand new asphalt. And it's just like this little snake on the side of a mountain, this little goat path. But

Robin: it is the example. Brian knows now that it's like, it's, it's not about whether or not it's tight and twisty. Goat roads are welcome, but the pavement has to be pristine. And that pavement, oh, okay, that we ride that day is really good.

Travis: Yeah. It has to be paved. And then, well, yeah, so Warm Springs Inn, breakfast there, good. And then we go up the hill there to the gas station. Such a good exit out of that. To you just like right that road right next to it and it zigzags up the hill up to that big Vista at the top, which I think if we would have thought about a little more, we maybe would have could have should have stopped at that Vista, but we just kind of kept chugging along back down the other side of that mountain had not a warm Springs is just that's such a good little kickoff start. It's like, yeah, there's no like, okay, let's go through town. Let's go down this highway. And then we'll turn off. It is just switchbacks up this mountain, switchbacks down this mountain. All right. Cut down the state park road through the woods where there's a bridge to jump.

Robin: Oh, that was Norm. He jumped the railroad tracks.

Travis: Yeah. The, the duet state park road. Is that really tight? You know, it's all wooded and you go past the state park eventually, but it's just really tight and windy. And somewhere along there, there's like a little stone, like one lane bridge. That's like a little hump. And it's like, if you're going faster than 20.

Robin: Now I've got the map zoomed in right now. I'm zooming in on this one spot for Brian Ringer alone because it's called Big Lick Hollow.

Brian: I seem to have developed a reputation for wrongness. Oh well.

Paul: Was it day two or where Travis came down that the right hand turn, everybody's at the gas station and he came around hot and heavy? Yes. Tire out. Was that a scheduled gas stop on day two? Yes.

Robin: Totally on the map. And I just stopped to make sure everybody knew that we were making the stop. And then all of a sudden, I remember that we looked up and we saw Travis come over a crest as Greg would say, just hauling the mail. And I look and I see that his whole frame is sort of tweaked over the front wheel because he's bringing the back end through the curve. And I don't know if you knew it, Travis, but the look on your face was like, this was the plan the whole time.

Travis: This seems to happen sometimes where it's like, Oh, there's everyone.

Paul: I was talking about it to you, Robin. I was looking the other way and you were looking toward the way where Travis came in and then the look on your face was priceless. I didn't know what to think. Bigfoot's coming over. Like what the heck's happening?

Robin: The best part was the smile. You just see the, all you see is like a visor and this giant smile and the whole back end is at 90 degrees from the front wheel. And hi, welcome to GASP.

Travis: Okay. Yeah. I remember that. So that's before we kind of get down in the Roanoke. Yeah. Yeah. Which is just, yeah, without the cues, it's such a tangled mess down in Roanoke. Something I didn't

Robin: mention on the last episode was when I hurled my clean canteen at the ground. Blaze of glory. We had to stop and I was just like, so done dealing with the vertical. Brian did hear about how the roads are on top of each other. Cause there it's a vertical shift. So you got roads that are crisscrossing from different angles. They're not connected, but the coordinates appear to be the same because they're all around each other. I was so bent. So I took a break and I just took my canteen, just hurled it at the ground. And then I think Jasmine was like, did you just throw that at Travis?

Travis: Well, then it's like Roanokes, it's like the city built in a valley. And then there's all these like, yeah, elevation changes and five way and six way intersections and all the roads intersect like 20 yards away from each other, like, which, which one of these do I take?

Robin: The listeners have already heard all of this. And the question becomes, what do you guys remember about that day? Cause the way I described it was everybody was like, we, this is great. I'm going up and just like smoke coming out of my ears.

Dale: Robin, I've spent enough time following you that it was also entertaining. Follow you through that, watching that little circus develop. Thanks, Dale. Trying to keep what I'm doing under control, trying to keep myself and the people behind me safe. Well, you figure it out. I knew you'd get there. Well, confidence there, way those roads come together. It's, it's not amazing that it happened at all.

Travis: Yeah. There's definitely a couple of moments too, where I just stopped. It was like, Hey, he'll, he'll turn around in a couple of minutes.

Robin: That's the day we remember to start daisy chaining the role.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: Next person to screw up, sweep takes over. That simple. Both capable leads. No problem.

Brian: Did you get through Roanoke reasonably clean or do you, or are you thinking about revising that to go around the city even further?

Robin: I, I said, will you please disappear this problem after the tour? And Travis went in, made edits, made suggestions and disappeared the problem.

Travis: Excellent. I turned seven turns kind of through the town into four, uh, which is like get on the main highway. Yeah. Turned on this road, turned on this road, turned on this road. Just get it over with. Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. Quick and dirty. Get me out of here. It's like

Travis: it adds whatever, three quarters of a mile, but it's like, now go on the main drag to the river, cross the river, follow the river back, then keep going.

Robin: I feel like Greg could say something and he's just reserving and being a kind adult.

Greg: The beautiful thing about being on this tour is that. Most of the time, I had no idea where I am or where I'm going. Just trying to follow the leader. And then, you know, it's easy to judge after a whole series of events to say, wow, we just went through a lot of extra rigmarole to get here. It seemed like there might've been an easier way, but I wasn't in charge. So it was, uh, it was all good. What the

Robin: hell was that? Hold on. So what he just said was, so it seemed to me that you really loused that up, but I didn't have any control over the situation. So that's how it went. All good. Back to you, Travis.

Norm: I think there was some construction in there too, so that's kind of screwed it up a little bit.

Dale: Isn't that the city where half of the group went one way and the other half went the other way?

Greg: I don't think it was Roanoke. I think it was a different day. But Jasmine and I And maybe Paul left a gas station following everybody. And then we were separated. We got lost because Travis never showed up. That's what it was.

Robin: Way to go, Trav.

Greg: We were following everybody. Travis never showed up because he took. The way you probably should go.

Travis: Oh yeah.

Greg: I don't think that was this day though.

Travis: That was day two.

Greg: Right. We went the long circuitous way to get back on the route, but if you just turn left out of the gas station and went straight, you would reconnect to the route without going through a bunch of neighborhoods. So we went through all the bunch of neighborhoods, but Travis never showed up. So Jasmine and I being the good little ducklings, we were, we just stopped and waited for Travis to show up. We waited forever and then Jasmine actually rode back to the gas station and came back and she's like, well, he's not the gas station and he's not between here and the gas station. And I was like, well, we're responsible for Travis because he's behind us. So what the hell is going to happen? And then I think Travis comes rolling up.

Travis: Cause I saw it, cause there was like, you pull out the gas station, you go over the bridge and then the route's right there, but like the route goes through this like industrial area. That's like up three blocks the other way. And Robin went back up that way to connect.

Greg: Right.

Travis: So I just went over there, like everyone took off and I was like, well, let's go over the bridge and catch them on the other side. It'll be funny. And so I was waiting there. Was it funny, Travis? Was it funny? Yeah,

Greg: it was

Travis: hilarious. Four people go by and like, well, where's the rest of them? I should go back and make sure they didn't get lost. They were looking for me and my defense. I told Robin, just take a left out of here and go over that bridge. And then he's like, I know where I'm going. Yeah. All you gotta do is follow the red line. That's

Robin: not

Travis: what I was like. All you gotta do,

Robin: Travis. Right, is follow the red

Travis: line. We were, well, the problem was we were off the red line. Do we even know what day this was? Are we even at this point yet? I think it was day, I think it was somewhere in Ohio. Oh, that, okay. That tracks. I'm trying to think about the rest of day three. So we get out of Roanoke. I went to Mount Airy thoughts on the Mayberry and everyone loved it to keep her nice pool

Greg: point little place to stay short walk for dinner

Travis: little Frogger

Dale: and Robyn, can you arrange shuttle service for us next time

Travis: they need to get that Andy Griffith police car going and then we can all sit on the bench seat in the back four wide and you can just shuttle us over there yeah I think it would seat six at least plus four in the trunk I

Greg: think this is the first year we've stayed there that anybody availed themselves to Of the swimming pool. So I never even thought about bringing a swimsuit. It's like, Oh, although you have a pool, some of these places have pool.

Robin: That was an interesting time

Travis: because we met interesting people there. The gentleman in the pool, his dog that like talk and tell stories, say things.

Greg: Oh, yeah. You're in the South. The hillbillies will talk to you.

Robin: Drunkenly at one point he wanted to discuss politics, so I just busted out the old Zappa and just explained that politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex and I kept walking. He didn't say a damn thing after that. He was just like, all right, can I have a beer, I'm Bill, see ya.

Travis: His dog was cute though. He had like a Labradoodle. Apparently he is. Band was overheating and you need to get a new radiator or something.

Robin: Mayberry Inn. They are the only place on the tour. I'm not going to email, I have to call them. I'll ask them, you know, can I make a reservation? Absolutely sir, you absolutely can. Let's get that done for you right now, shall we? And I'll be like, all right, cool. Can I get a reservation number? Yes. Here they are. They are these numbers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is there any chance, do you guys have an email or can I get some kind of confirmation or some billing receipt? Absolutely not, sir. We're not going to do that for you, but I'll tell you what, we look forward to your stay and we'll see you when you get here. All right. All right. Bye now. Click trust. Just

Travis: let it happen. It's all analog over at the, they, they do it like they did in Mayberry. Yeah. That

Dale: place. It's just absolutely solid. It's like, you know, it's going to be there. You know, everything is going to be right. It's a brick,

Robin: except for coffee,

Dale: coffee.

Robin: You don't, you don't drink coffee, Dale.

Travis: There was a coffee issue. Yeah.

Dale: Mount Airy is where I decided finally, yeah, this tire is not making it. And we hadn't really been talking about that. I mean, in warm Springs, I got on the internet and ordered up a fresh tire to have shipped to the house. Hoping that the tire I was using would, would make it back home. Time for the Brown County rally, but that didn't work. So I missed most of, well, I missed pretty much all of North Carolina following day. I had to backtrack up into Virginia, find, uh, a dealer with, had a tire and said, you know, we have a shinkoen on the, yeah, great, great, that'll do, found this amazing little road on the way back up there, coming back down at the other way was terrifying because there's no guardrail in one lane and you're on the right side of that now. And. It was literally a little mom and pop dealership and did that guy like to talk, but he was the right guy. He'd been working on bikes for 40 odd years, knew exactly what to do with my bike. It took three of them, but they got the wheel out of it without having to take any luggage off. It was a bit of a feat, but I thought unnecessary, but whatever, you know, stand back, let them do their thing. Yeah. You forget to mention that they did that by tipping it

Travis: to the side.

Dale: And he told me all about how CFMoto swooped in with inventory when the Japanese bikes during COVID couldn't cough up anything and now all his customers love it and probably three quarters of the showroom is CFMoto. He was talking and talking and talking. And his wife said, he needs to get to Maggie Valley. You need to let him go. That's

Robin: how I got out of there. That's Southern Social Q. I don't want to take up any more of your time.

Dale: That was great, but a little 20 something who balanced the tire had an issue. That tire was not balanced correctly. When I got home and took that wheel off, I, you know, set it up on the axle to see what it does, and there were close to a dozen weights, about 90 degrees from where they should have been.

Brian: Now, eventually it'll like triangulate itself. They got desperate and they just kept putting them on and gave up.

Dale: Yeah. I remember thinking he looked a little fused and uncertain about what he was doing. You know, maybe I don't know if I should have asked for a sanity check, just put the axle through it and see what happens. But no, I was just so happy that they had a tire. I was trying not to make them angry.

Greg: Well, and we haven't really talked about. What all motorcycles, everybody's riding, Dale's motorcycle in particular has pretty unique tire and wheel styling that are not common

Travis: anymore.

Greg: So the fact that you found one. Found somebody that could, could actually do it on your bike. Pretty amazing. I was skeptical.

Dale: When I saw that tire for the first time, I was like, wow, that's a lot of dust on that. Let's have a look at the date codes. Cause it was like a adventure bike tire, right? Uh, no, not quite. It was a street tread pattern, but it was pretty blocky. And, uh, I'm more than halfway through the tread on that thing after 1, 200 miles.

Brian: I use those shinkos on my vintage, uh, Suzuki as well. And I get maybe 3, 000 miles out of them.

Dale: That sounds about right from what I'm seeing.

Brian: They'll get me through an average year. Cause I ride my other bikes more. They stick just fine. They just evaporate pretty, pretty quickly, but that's all right. They're cheap. Sure. That one was not cheap. What was a 740? Was that what it was? I

Dale: don't remember. If

Brian: you

Dale: really want to know, I mean, it's in the garage. I could go look.

Brian: There's 712 and a shinko 230 are the ones that are available for the vintage Suzuki's It

Dale: was definitely

Brian: seven something. So I think you got it. Is it 16, 19? No, it's a 17 inch rear.

Robin: Seven. Wow. Okay. 17 inch rear, 19 inch front.

Brian: Not in stock anywhere. That's for sure.

Robin: That is day three, day four. Somebody remind me about what happened after Mount Air.

Brian: Part of what we did was try to, we, we tried to avoid the BRP somewhat. That was. Uh, less successful than it might've been if I remember the feedback correctly.

Robin: And we went out and took a ride on whatever this Pine Ridge noise is that, uh, goes past the Copper Pot. Basically it crosses over 74 and 77.

Travis: I

Robin: think the intentions

Travis: were good. Yeah, day four is hazy for me too. I'm looking, I'm trying to look at like the, uh, the street view and there's definitely some good looking roads on it.

Robin: Yeah. And there's 18, but it also, I can't remember. Oh, that's the

Travis: day you forgot your phone somewhere.

Robin: Yes. There it is. This was a good day. This was a fine day. It wasn't bad except for I had to miss the grand finale and you got all the credit for my hard work with Brian's, Brian's humble assistance. You know, he brought me coffee.

Travis: We rolled down and then there's that, like that gas station. And then we went there, like the food trucks that were, they were closed. So we went to the, uh, the barbecue joint next door. And that's where the lady called, was that where the lady called you and said she had your phone? I called her and she answered. You called

Robin: it. But I do remember that thanks to Brian's hard work, basically you can see if, can everybody see the screen I'm sharing? Minus Norm, I doubt he can see this, I don't know.

Norm: I can see

Robin: it. Oh nice, well you got the Blue Ridge Parkway there, right? Now count any number of curves on the Blue Ridge Parkway versus the number of curves on the route we take. And that's why we did that.

Travis: Also, it's not patrolled by the Federales and the 45 mile an hour speed limit.

Robin: Exactly. Now, don't remember, this wasn't exactly like a neighborhood thing. 221 we've done before. I know 221 is a pretty fine time. Parallel to the BRP, it hides from it as best as it can, and I kept on wanting to hold it over Greg White's head, that the reason we don't do the Boreridge Parkway is because you didn't want to, and it was never, I don't think Greg ever actually said that. He just

Greg: No, that's a good day's route, and I think it's a lot better than spending that whole day on the BRP. Trying to avoid the BRP out of Maggie Valley is a bull's errand.

Robin: That's again, thoroughly hammered into a previous episode, loud and proud.

Travis: Oh yeah. No, but that next section there that you're over is,

Brian: and I think in, uh, going into going into Maggie Valley, you guys got to go on 209, which is one of my favorite roads ever chucking straight South out of hot Springs. And it's quite, uh, quite nice.

Robin: I imagine it is Brian.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: I imagine it is. Trust me. Yes. Lovely.

Brian: What were you doing, Robin? I was hanging

Robin: out, looking at my

Brian: phone. It's a beautiful

Travis: phone, isn't it? A really great phone. Yeah.

Travis: 209. Yeah. Out of hot springs. That was a good stretch. Yeah. I remember. Yeah. That's the Rattler. I remember seeing the Rattler. We come down into the Valley and there's like a tavern or some old house that's converted that looks like it's run by a biker gang. And it's like, you just rode the Rattler, brother,

Brian: brother, that way.

Dale: You know, I, I did have one highlight out of riding that day. It was coming down from Virginia to get down to Maggie Valley, ended up getting on interstate 81. Google wanted to take me all the way to I 40 in Tennessee. Which I said no to, and then Google says, Hey, there's another route available. Do you want to take this? And it automatically switched me because I didn't see it. Ask me, can Google. So anyhow, I fixed that, came South and I got to take I 40 eastbound back into North Carolina, across the gap there. I'm used to doing that. And my wife's Prius and. Just flogging that poor little thing, the Gen 2 Prius corners flat. So it's actually fun in there. I had always wanted to do that on the bike and it was calming and exhilarating at the same time because the interstate is just so big and wide and sweepy and limited access. You know, there was no worries about the prizes. The only problem I had was people who couldn't get it through their head to, no, you can, you can go faster than the truck in the slow lane. You can do that. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Okay.

Travis: Yeah, so this is like I 40 like across the Cherokee National Forest there.

Greg: Yeah, it's the only decent part of I 40 in its entirety. But it's fun to zoom through there and zig and zag past the traffic.

Dale: Yeah. It's another one of those things where there, there's almost no entry or exit on that. There's almost no place for enforcement to be there.

Travis: Yeah. It's like through the national forest. So yeah, there's,

Dale: yeah. And you can see on the barricades and the grooves in the pavement, you know, there's black marks all over everything where people just lose it in there.

Greg: Dale chose to address his tire problem. In plenty of time, but that wasn't the only conversations we were having about tires.

Robin: I don't have any recollection of what you're talking about. So why don't y'all discuss?

Travis: I seem to remember starting out, there was some conversations about, so is that a new tire?

Paul: Yeah, it's kind of hard to, uh, you know, the longevity of tires with a 200 horsepower motorcycle.

Greg: Oh yeah, that's right.

Travis: When you power a wheelie, which is different from a wheelie, has safety past the kind of Fox body.

Paul: That is true. But when Fox body Mustangs think they can outdo. Drag race you, you know, it's hard to not twist the throttle. Some things

Robin: we

Paul: do for Jesus. I do recall day three when Dale was like, you know, I'm going to get a new tire. I'll, I'll stay behind and I'll miss a day, but I'll have a new tire. I'm like, I should do the same thing. Ended up not doing that.

Robin: While you're waving, I should totally be going. Yeah, I

Travis: should totally be doing that. Yeah. Well, the thing too, is you have a regular size tire, so you probably could have just gone to Asheville and gotten them.

Dale: That's probably true. Oh, you probably could have just waited for the dealerships there. In mount airy open up and they would have had something.

Robin: Well, then speaking of Maggie valley, there's only so much I can ask my mom to do. I'm not going to ask her to a hawk, a tire 80 plus years old. Hey, go down to the freaking garage and get a tire out of the bin. Would you?

Greg: Your mom is an angel or even John green to come meet with us. And then to bring us food on top of that. Yeah. She's a saint.

Robin: The new rule is next year. We just bring mom. Yeah. Cause there's food in town. We're okay now. We, we've now figured out that there is food in that town to be had. And we just want to see Ma.

Travis: Well, I think too, I think maybe when it was earlier too, like Maggie Valley is definitely a tourist town, so not as much as open before Memorial Day. But I mean, it's always nice there at the Jonathan Creek Inn, you know, on the deck. Fires, pizza, some beers, hanging out under the lights, took my sandals off and dipped my feet in the creek. So nice there. Yeah. And then yeah, yeah. Dale rolled up right, right. As we did, like we, we were just getting our rooms and stuff and here comes Dale, boom, right on time. Like, Oh, was I just behind you? Yeah. Nice.

Brian: Uh, Norm, what's your review of the lodgings?

Norm: Maggie Valley was really nice. I enjoyed that. Yeah, the pizza was great and everything. And, uh, meeting Robin's mom. That was very nice. She kind of reminded me of my mom. My mom would have done the same thing. She's like, does that type of stuff, you know?

Brian: Yeah, my, my mom would, would not definitely go on. I

Dale: gotta say that that stop is one of my favorites on the tour because it is just such a relaxing evening after riding all day. They'll have to, you don't have to figure out how to get to a restaurant. You don't have to figure out how to do anything. Just sit down and I wish there was a cushion on this bench. It was the only problem.

Norm: The breakfast the next day was very good too. It took a little bit of time and we kind of got out of there a little bit late, which I think next year definitely leave at least an hour earlier. Oh, you don't have to worry about that. That was

Robin: a long day. No, you're right.

Travis: There was a lot of other bikers and big parties at the Jack's Pancake House across the street. So.

Robin: Yeah. And I think we'll bump it back a week. So we're there one week before people actually realize that it's the riding season. That'll actually help a bit too. Enormous things are changing about that next day. We are not going through what we went through.

Travis: Well, we'll, we'll talk about everything. The Jack's Pancake House was across the street. Uh, it's fantastic. There's a lot of bikes in Maggie Valley and there was, you know, your usual kind of Harley crowd. Uh, and then we, there was like a group of like adventure bikes, including a Tenere 700 that was like showroom. It looks like they took it off the truck and put it in the parking lot. Do you guys remember that? Yeah, they had just

Dale: uncrated that thing.

Travis: Like there wasn't a lick of dust on the dirt on that thing. That's just wrong.

Robin: I'm an adventurer. I ordered it. Look at me. Well,

Travis: I remember seeing those guys. In the restaurant, and they all looked like accountants, and they all had super clean, like, brand new climb jackets, and like, Arai helmets.

Robin: Adventure.

Travis: I'm not judging, I'm just saying.

Robin: Meanwhile, Norm, on his red, white, and blue space shuttle, there were roads in West Virginia where his front tire was turning while his back tire was still recovering. Repeat killing it just killing it man.

Norm: I felt very comfortable because I on the smaller roads I would slow down define slow, but that wasn't a an issue, you know Wasn't like you guys are just blowing away, you know on the straightaways I would catch up a little bit but when them roads opened up a little bit like On the highway. Oh, man. This bike is made for the chair a whole highway my tires when I got home You They were pretty well wore out. Um, I had a little bit of mileage left at home, but not much. I just changed them last weekend or Monday, actually. But I had a couple of nail problems that sped up my decision to change in the tires.

Travis: Okay. Well, that is why we recommend that everyone start this tour with brand new tires.

Norm: Oh, was there an email about that? I'd started with 1400 miles while we're on my tires. Wait, what?

Robin: How many miles were on those tires when you started? About 1400. Are you running GTs? PR4 GTs. There's why. He's running the, okay. So he's running the GTs, which are like for.

Travis: Which he should on a K1600.

Norm: It's a heavy bike. I had a cooler full of ice and beverages.

Travis: The whole time.

Norm: All my luggage, you know, um, it was pretty heavy, your rig, but the bike didn't cut it.

Travis: Plus 1600 cc straight six motor and shaft drive and it handled fine, I thought. So day four, five, day five, day five was interesting. I hear it's five, Tennessee. We'll just set this up a little bit. So this day, Traditionally has been a bit of a pick your own adventure where you could do the chair, a whole, uh, or the dragon or the foothills, or if you were kind of crazy, you could do them all. And we were kind of having the discussion the night before with pizza and beers. I'm sure Katie loved the discussion, um, about what are we going to do? And everyone decided. Let's do it all. Why shouldn't we just go do the Cherahala Skyway, come back around, do the Dragon South, do the Dragon back North, do the Foothills Parkway, and that's what we did.

Robin: Okay. So let me revisit last episode to explain how we're going to do that in the future, because it is doable. The only way you do that, if you want to have a good day, you're going to ride the Blue Ridge Parkway, which that section is a very good time, all the way into 19, follow 19 over the Cherahala, ride the Cherahala to the Dragon, ride the Dragon to lunch. After lunch, take the dragon back, pick up the last of the foothills. After the foothills, don't try to do anything. Take the fastest, most direct route to Cumberland Gap. Kick back, drink beer, eat pizza, smile, profit.

Dale: Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

Robin: So here's what happened between Ringer and I in the planning and then I'll hand it off. Well, when Ringer and I planned it, let's look at the terrain. This was the mistake that led to a domino effect of total That is a neighborhood. We rode through 60 miles of neighborhood and it sucked.

Travis: Let's start at the beginning. So we get our pancakes. We look at the shiny bikes, a couple of cool trikes that we saw later on the foothills and the, the dragon, the trike, the victory trike. With the trailer. But yeah, so we get going out of, uh, out of Maggie Valley, and then we turn down this, you know, kind of goat road y thing, but it looks, looks promising, and I'm sure it looks promising, uh, for all of it that is on, uh, Google Street View.

Greg: I disagree. Robin, I don't know, can you pop the map up and zoom in on that section?

Travis: Let me show you what led us to it.

Greg: I think we should explore this section of the route.

Travis: State Road 1113. Brian Ringer, you better have my back.

Greg: I can open it and share it in, um, Basecamp. The nice thing about Basecamp is, is you can turn on the ability, or I guess turn off the ability to show unpaved road.

Robin: So did you just save this up for the tour and be like, I'm going to sit back and watch Robin sweat?

Greg: No, I think I've mentioned several times leading up to this. My map software doesn't show this as being a road.

Travis: But Greg, Greg was on a, uh, a GS. So he didn't care because an adventure bike, he had gotten a Starbucks that morning,

Robin: Maggie Valley, let's switch over to right. Would you be a cycle? So you can see the road names. 19 looks happy.

Greg: Right. And you should have turned right there all on the Blue Ridge park, but instead we kept following 19 down.

Robin: And it's a good time. Until you realize that these are all neighborhoods and it's slow. And then at some point, right there,

Travis: it's all the yuppies. There's the turnoff and it's fine for a while. This got cool. Like 1113 or something like that. Yeah.

Robin: 1413. You take a right off of 1413 out of Maggie Valley onto 493 or whatever this is. And you get about, uh, you get about, I'm going to say two miles. And it's like, wow, those two

Travis: miles sure were worth it. And then big sign pavement ends. And I was like, we'd seen that a couple of times on some of the back roads. It's like,

Dale: Oh, that road. I

Travis: remember now it's good. It's going to go for like a mile and then the payment's going to pick back up. Yeah. Dobson Ridge road. It got more and more fire roadie as we went,

Dale: that road had that bizarre pattern of a hundred yards of pavement, 400 yards of gravel, a hundred yards of pavement, 400 yards of gravel. That was bizarre, but that was very educational for me because that's where I finally figured out just go a little faster on the gravel and everything will be okay. Oh yeah.

Travis: And then there was, I forget what point we stopped, but there was definitely a point where the route said go up this road, yeah, we stopped and then it was like, Oh, this Sandy, this Sandy Hill, the Sandy two track. Yeah. That was about the point. I think Robin gave up. Uh, there's a colorful description in the previous episode. Uh, and so I kind of, I look at the map and I, I kind of rode everybody around then stayed on the fire road and got us back on the BRP eventually, um, and did not take the Sandy Hill climb over.

Robin: I want to know from the time that I sent you ahead and was talking to myself, how did you You guys left, and I screamed into the woods. Twice. You guys didn't hear that one. You heard the third one when my voice was blown out. I wanna know, after I took off to catch up to you guys, tell me everything. I wanna know your perspective on all of that. Everyone's take.

Travis: So this is the goat road, right? This is the Big witch forestry road, which is a fire road if I ever heard one. And there was this little driveway here, which goes like someone's house that was like, Oh, this is paved. And I was like, that's, that's someone's driveway. The route has us go up this thing, which is like a two trail Sandy jeep track. And so then I was like, Oh, wait, if we take this way along the ridge, it goes under the BRP and we can get back over here, which is what we did. Yeah. Yeah, but somewhere like right about, I think right about this curve here is where Robin stopped to three

Robin: yards from the BRP is a, is a T intersection and all y'all are stopped with your motors off.

Travis: Yeah. There's a, the Boomer County trail, uh, and then here, but then, yeah, then there's like two T intersections and this is where Robin was lost. This is where we were stopped.

Robin: I am at the corner of Dobson Ridge Road and Mountains to Sea Trail, both of which are dirt. The BRP is about 30 yards to my left with Greg just going, Watch this. And I'm just screaming out, just losing my mind, trying to figure out what the hell happened.

Travis: I can't zoom in anymore to show what this terrain is like.

Robin: Forgiveness has to be earned, Brian Ringer. Ha ha ha

Travis: ha. But then Robin just zipped past us once, once he figured out where he, where he zipped past us, but then knew there was, I don't know if he knew there was an overlook right there and he stopped at the overlook, which we probably all should have done, but I didn't want to like, you know. Get off the trail and lose Robin the whole way.

Greg: But, uh, I knew from the first moment that I saw this, as I was trying to load it into my Garmin, I said, Brian Ringer has had his dirty fingers in this route. I can feel his presence on this route.

Brian: It's a, it's a little, it's a little dirt. How bad could it be? Oh

Greg: yeah. And Brian's totally redone the, uh, the Kentucky and Indiana routes. I was like, Oh boy.

Travis: We should have just done that. Cut

Brian: all this out. Yeah. Just get through it on the BRP. Yeah. Sometimes in the mountains, you just got to stay. You just, you kind of get shoehorned into one route in the mountains and that's just how it's got to be.

Greg: Well, and that's some of the best parts of the BRP. Anyone nails you're down there in on twisty parts on it. But there's no reason to skip.

Travis: Yeah, to be fair,

Greg: I

Travis: would have ripped that gravel fire road at 50 miles an hour, you know, had I not been responsible for making sure everyone else got through it okay.

Robin: Okay, well, to be fair, I did rip those trails at 50 miles an hour. I don't know if you heard, but I was hopping everything, kill the bike, let the bike die, kill it, murder the machine.

Travis: Oh yeah, definitely. I turned off the trash control and we're just like, just kicking the back end out. Making sure Jasmine and Greg got through it all okay. No one tipped a bike over. People, the two people I could see.

Robin: And by the way, Ringer, all of this should make, I gotta be honest with you. This should all make day seven look like the expressway.

Travis: But then to get other people's opinions, one, we got to 19 and then the construction.

Robin: Uh,

Travis: What was everyone's opinion of city?

Robin: Is this the one thing you remember most about the tour? Waiting for construction. And you were like, this is the only thing I'm gonna remember about this tour. It wasn't as bad

Travis: as I look back. It wasn't as bad as I thought. Yeah, but I was just like, it was hot and sunny and we're on the pavement and it's one lane on the mountain road that they're widening to four lanes. And it's a pilot truck and you have to wait for the pilot truck to lead everybody the like four miles through the construction, engines off, just sitting in the sun dying.

Dale: Yeah, I remember that. That was where Paul got off the bike and started doing some stretches. I'm like, I should have done that too. You know, we, we were all just like, you know, hiking up and down the road, looking around, checking the place out. Trying to find a little shade.

Paul: Uh, that was fun when, uh, the group is ready to go, suddenly we're all off, gloves are off, helmets are off, bikes are off, we're, we're across the road in the shade and all of a sudden it's like, Oh, go, go, go. And everybody's like, you know, the, the old, the old school, uh, Le Mans racing, where you gotta run across the street and jump on your, on your motorcycle and start it. Uh, it was funny, uh, uh, doing that, but yeah, I remember the construction being kind of a hassle, but not that bad overall, we got through it pretty quick.

Dale: And then we got to the chair hole and then it was gold. And that was, that was fairly epic, except for the guys who were warning us of police for like 20 miles away.

Robin: Yeah, that was seemingly constant. I do remember that they, you know, we talked about the Mustang already in a previous episode, but. That was pretty crazy. Yeah. The

Travis: Mustang crashed near the end, but like people saw that and then kept going down the chair a hole up for like 20 minutes. And then when you intercepted them going towards the accident, they were like, Oh, police. And it was like, well, they're busy. Yeah. It's like, I like slowed down for like a couple of minutes. It was like, I don't see any police. It's fine.

Paul: Yeah. Have you talked about the tow truck driver and the Mustang? No. Yeah. You and I were behind him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Going through the Skyway, right? Yes. And he was like Michael Schumacher. He, he had the lights on. He had the Mustang on the back of his tow truck. And he was going probably 75 miles an hour in a 50. And the one time Robin wanted to pass him, he actually caught Robin off. Like literally went in the middle of the road, cut him off. And then I'm thinking to myself, well, he probably does this all the time. He probably did it for, you know, the best interest of, of us behind him. Try to pass him. Yeah. And long behold, maybe what, four turns later, there was actually a good, good place to pass, like a legitimate place to pass. And we pass him, and there was a police officer in the, in the overlook area. And I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? I was so careful the whole time, and the one time I needed to pass the stow truck, we were probably doing it.

Robin: We were going at least the speed limit.

Paul: At least. And there, there was a cop like you, gotta be kidding me, the one, fortunately the cop was busy, I think he was on his radio walking away from his police car.

Robin: That's what I saw, was a gesture. What I saw this cop do, was he was walking away from the car, he stopped, and he went, Ah, nevermind, and he just kept walking. Yeah, I'm just

Travis: not even, I'm not. Paul and, uh, Norm, I don't think you've ridden the Cheralo before, have you? I have about 10 years ago.

Norm: I have, but it was, uh, foggy and rainy. This last time was very nice. It was, I had a blast. That was my favorite road out of the whole trip, I think.

Robin: Nice.

Paul: I remember being in Morris Scenic about 10 years ago when I was on it, maybe because of the growth of trees, possibly.

Dale: Yeah, they had the overlooks and then they don't keep the trees in front of the overlook trimmed down. So you pull over to have a look and it's like, wow, yeah, that, that one's a poplar. And that one's a maple. And I know from prior experience, there's just a fabulous view across Valley to over where Tale of the Dragon is and, and see it anymore.

Brian: Yeah. I've, I've been down in that area, uh, dual sport riding in late October. It was really interesting, you know, like at different elevations, the trees were, some of them were bald and some of them still had the fall colors. And of course for the, the Charihola goes right through the middle of it, but there's just a million little unpaved dirt tracks and roads and gravel roads back in there. That's a lot of fun. Uh, you guys should have tried them, you know, since you got out of the gravel experience.

Dale: It's way too early to talk about the old mill bed and breakfast yet.

Travis: Yeah. We're not even to the dragon yet. Speaking of fresh pavement. Yeah. That is where I think, Greg, you, did you leave us at the foot of the Charihola?

Greg: Yeah, so right in Teleco Plains is where I departed. Maybe it's the, I'm just not used to the front end of