At long last it’s time. Time to start moving the motorcycles north towards home. My home in RI, to stage for the great Unsponsored Nova Scotia Expedition.

With the first two pages torn out of the calendar, and the worst of the winter behind, it’s finally time for a proper ride. The offer came from my friend Denis to work on a NASCAR Nationwide race at Nashville Superspeedway in March, and without hesitation, a riding plan was set in motion.

Along with Ron Scalise, Denis is one of the people that gave me a chance back when I was an audio tadpole. Not to get overly sentimental or anything, but it was Denis that called me to give me the bad news about Ron. Since I left the world of NASCAR on ESPN for the (at-the-time) seemingly greener pastures of the WWE, Denis and I have kept in sporadic touch, and when he calls me to ask if I can come work on a race with him, my answer is always yes.

And this year, I found out that Denis had extra space in his garage, so there’d be storage room to leave our bikes for a few weeks, during Wrestlemania and the upcoming WWE England/Scotland trips. We’ll return to Denis’ house sometime in May to get the bikes back home.

Leaving Florida

With all that in order, Abi and I left Orlando on a windy Saturday, heading for Savannah. The roads leaving Abi’s adopted home state were typical. Straight, flat and boring. Though the winds were gusting to forty miles per hour, the weather was good otherwise, in fact it was the best weather we’d have on the whole trip.

Tornadoes and lightning were hammering Atlanta, but the angry red flashing blotches of storms on the Weather Channel seemed to be north of Savannah, so we stopped there for the night.

Lightning – Fun to Watch, Hard to Photograph

Just after dinner, the lights flickered a bit, then went out. And stayed out. We paid in the dark, left the dark restaurant to walk back to the dark hotel. An amazing lightning storm was forming behind the hotel, and some guests had already dragged chairs out to the parking lot to watch the show.

It’s sad to me that the only time people talk to strangers is when there is no electricity to run the boob tube. We met a couple of kids driving down to Spring Break, a poor mother with three young kids that were scared to death, and a toothless old trucker that decided to ‘sav’n his’n hide‘ and stop at our hotel. The power stayed out until sometime in the middle of the night, about the same time that the heaviest rain that I can recall fell since… well.. since Daytona Bike Week the week before.

That night, I finally decided on a name for the FJR. SB Squared. This bike attracts more bad weather than the original Stormbringer ever did.

The next morning was clear, but cold. We pointed our bikes toward the horizon and held the throttle open on the highway. It was not really riding, it was more like aiming. Highways are good for getting from place to place, but not that great for actual riding. On the way we saw a car that had recently rolled over several times, yard sale-ing tons of contents all over the highway.

We stopped for breakfast at a truck stop somewhere in the middle of Georgia. This is never a good idea. I asked the cashier if they had any muffins, and she looked at me as if I’d asked her to wash my ass. “Muffins? MUFFINS? Aah don’ think we ain’t got no muffins.”

“So, what you are telling me is that your job is to take breakfast orders every fucking day, and from the time you started this career until this day, nobody has ever asked y’all for a fucking MUFFIN?” is what I wanted to say, but instead I just said, “OK, I’ll have a biscuit then.” You have to pick your battles, and there is no point in pissing off the person who is about to handle your food now is there?

On the way to the bathroom I saw a basket full of Free Sermons. I considered taking them all and putting them in Abi’s tank bag, but decided the bad karma wouldn’t be worth it.

After a few hundred miles of straight line slogging, the highway started getting to me, and I realized with a short, seventy mile detour, we could hit the Congaree National Park, and I could score another stamp for the old National Parks Passport. We debated it while riding using our specially devised motorcycling sign language, and agreed to take the detour.

Abi Says ‘Yes’ in Motorcycle Sign Language

The road in to Congaree National Park was more exciting than the park was, but this NP makes stamp number eighty-one in my collection.

Abi Just LOOOOVES My Little Detours

We slogged the four-hundred-something miles to Denis’ house in about ten hours, arriving just in time for dinner, naturally.

Denis, ever the gracious host, had arranged a cabin for me and Abi. Or, come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t graciousness, maybe he wanted us to go away… well in any case, the cabin was so comfortable, it was a place that I could easily move into and live.

Even if it WAS the honeymoon suite…

The next morning, Denis on his 1994 Kawasaki Concours, Abi on Fireball and me on the newly named SB Squared geared up for a two day, pre-work riding tour of the Smoky Mountains.

Before long, I saw ‘The Sign.’ The Sign that leads to The Road.

Consider Alternate Route? Maybe some others would, but for our little motorcycle gang, this Sign lead to riding Nirvana, also known as Deals Gap – the most famous motorcycling road in the country.

Deals Gap is an eleven mile squiggle that cuts through Tennessee and North Carolina. The advertising hype for Deals Gap is that it contains 318 turns in 11 miles, the exact opposite of Florida which contains 11 turns in 318 miles.

Ready to Ride The Tail of the Dragon

We rode the best road in the country at a moderate speed, posing for the many professional photographers staged on the road that are glad to sell you your picture on their website.

At the end, we stopped into Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort, then turned around to ride the road in the opposite direction.

When we finished this most excellent road a second time, I noticed these two guys getting ready to head back in.

Ducati 848’s in Red and White – Motorcycle Porn

I waited for them to launch down the road, but instead they headed away from Deals Gap, possibly going home, done for the day. I launched SB Squared at the throat of the Tail of the Dragon, picking up my pace to what most certainly was Moto GP race pace.

I left Denis and Abi in my dust as I corkscrewed through Deals Gap.

Or so I though. The guys riding Motorcycle Porn probably went for a sandwich, a cigarette and maybe a haircut. Halfway through my own personal assault on the road, Fast Frick and Faster Frack reappeared, passed me then screamed away in a blur. These Italian masterpieces sound incredible at full throttle, and will scare the crap out of you if you don’t see them coming in your mirror.

Then I got passed by a girl. Seriously. That sucked. I don’t have a picture of Little Miss Molly Motorcycle Racerette and her fancy leather suit, mostly because when I saw her at the other end, I realized not only was she much faster than me, she could probably kick my ass too.

So I asked her to take our picture instead. Once she figured out the complicated mechanisms of the camera, this was the best she could do. Good job. At least her photography sucks.

We finished our time at Deals Gap looking at the Tree of Shame, where the parts from bikes that stack it up on the Dragon end up.

The rest of the ride was educational. For example, we found out why they call these mountains The Great Smoky Mountains. A forest fire was blazing in the distance, covering the road with thick, smoke. Visibility was limited, and we smelled like campfire for the rest of the day.

We followed the road all the way to Cherokee, North Carolina. It was St. Patricks Day, so we looked for a good place to end the day and celebrate with our Irish brethren.

Completely randomly and totally unexpected, we stopped for the night at an Econo Lodge directly across from the Cherokee Casino.

Equally unexpected, the casino was in a dry county, so we celebrated St. Paddy’s day with sweet tea and hush puppies.

Ah well.

Tomorrow, Mother Nature christens SB Squared with a vengeance.

Author: frenchy