#southboundswiftly

[halfswagnyc]

One of the Killboy photographers snapped this picture of me scraping tailpipe. On TN 129

[halfswagnyc]

A banger of an end to an already awesome trip. All told we rode 1860 miles from Philly, to Nashville and back in 10 days (9 for Tav). The long pushes really gave me some great time to just explore my own thoughts, and the super fun windy stuff was easy access adrenaline. The Shadow did amazing. She probably needs some new tires at this point, but what a champ that bike is. And what a champ Tavi is! Props to him for putting up with my shenanigans. I am far from an easy person to travel with. I am pretty head strong and deviation from the plan or schedule (on a jam packed trip like this) is an anxiety button for me. The man took it in stride. I think that the next time I do something like this win Tavi or anyone, that It would be prudent to make sure everyone involved was on the exact same page, before leaving. I think initially, we were off a few, but once we got into a nice rhythm, the road seemed much smoother. I would love to do this trip again, perhaps in a more relaxed fashion, but I think what I really want to do the national parks cross country circuit....or Southeast Asia I am going to go back to just posting cool pictures now. Thanks for reading. The first image was taken by 129photos they hang out on one of the turns on the tail of the dragon and snap pictures of narcissistic bikers who want a cool glamour shot of themselves. Amazing shot! @129photos

[halfswagnyc]

The wildwood Ultimate frisbee tournament is an event of debauchery and shame. As wildwood itself is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The only food available all weekend comes out of a frier and and the only liquid comes out of a bottle of liquor. The sun is relentless, and all the while you have to play ultimate…in the sand. It is pretty amazing. This was my 9th wildwood.  I am not sure how many more I have in me, but this one was great. I went to the Bolero once early Friday evening to check our team in, then didn’t step foot in it again all weekend. For years, the Bolero was always both the best and worst part of the weekend. Everyone always went there, but Rumors of a splinter party at another club provided a great alternative to help alleviate some of the overflow and honestly was probably a better bar.

 Hit wawa and bombed back to Philly.

[halfswagnyc]

10 hours riding today. Not including breaks. Today was by far, the longest I have ever ridden in a single day. We rode from Ryans place, 20 minutes south of Asheville, to Richmond without riding a single mile on an interstate road.

The plan had been to just ride the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way up, but we ended up just hitting back roads the entire way. To be completely honest, I have been loving certain aspects of the rides we have been doing each day, but today was the first day where I really enjoyed every single second of time on the bike.

We made it to George and Sandy’s place just in time for the sunset. (They are the couple that took us shooting on Sunday)

Tomorrow we push to Wildwood. Come at me bro.

[halfswagnyc]

That plan to hit Ashevill by dinnertime? Yeah that didn’t happen. Tav needed a new inspection sticker since the one he had said 2011 on it. It is a good thing too since the front break pads were just about non existent. Luckily Carrey from Velocity Cycles in Richmond had break pads and kindness to throw them on his bike real quick. I ended up getting some for mine. True to form, we said our goodbyes at 2:50 and were on the road by 3:00pm. This was the push day, so we rode. Southern VA is beautiful. It reminds me of the farmland and vineyards of Upstate NY. Well until you pull off for gas and talk to anyone. I reckon I am getting better at understanding these thick accents. We made it to Greensboro for dinner, and the decided to try and push a just a little farther. I40 is the fastest and most direct road to Asheville, which is the next planned destination, but it is an interstate and kind of sucks from greensboro to at least where we ended up in Hickville NC (yeah I know). It also poured! The heavens opened up on us for about an hour of the 1.5 hours we made it. Yeah riding at night on interstate roads in the rain is the worst. So we pulled off at an exit with a holiday in express so I could ball out with all the phat stacks of points I got from the spring season and the SD deployment. Yeah thats right Platinum Elite for this guy. So we turned on the tv and what do you know? Wild Hogs is on AMC. It is a pretty terrible(y awesome) Tim Allen movie from the mid oughts about a half cocked motorcycle road trip. Sound familiar? Tail of the Dragon tomorrow!

[halfswagnyc]

Spent Sunday in Richmond, and it was quite the day. We didn’t have to ride anywhere, but we did ride mountain bikes over to Tav’s friend Isaac’s place. I didn’t bring my wallet, but did bring my phone. So when we drove by this garage sale I offered to paypal the girl the two dollars she wanted for a water bottle and together we took a step closer to that cashless society I so so so look forward to. We met up with Tav’s childhood friend Isaac and his lovely wife Brittany (check out her food blog here www.eatingbirdfood.com). They took us to sugar shack where, according to Isaac, you can get the best donuts ever. I honestly couldn’t tell you if they were the best donuts ever because I was holding out for pie (which never came…..burn)

Now the story behind these sweet shooting pictures.

We drove up to Caroline county, to Tav’s friend’s farm and shot guns for the rest of the day. It was real fun.

Tomorrow is a real hard push to Asheville. Fingers crossed for good weather.