One of our local stealerships had a Fall Foliage ride this past Sunday.
Advertised and 100 miles and a free lunch.
About 40-50 bikes showed up. They split us up into two groups. Cruisers and sport bikes. The cruisers left the parking lot first. Then the sport bikes lined up and headed out. The leader of the sport bikes hit the throttle hard as he came out of the parking lot, started a tank slapper and almost lost control of the bike.
We had a short jaunt on the interstate to get to some nice back roads. After about 10 miles a bunch of us got stuck at a traffic light as the rest of the pack rode off. No worries a fearless leader from the stealership pulled up and lead us on the way. Only he couldn't remember the route, we went about 10 miles past the turn we should have taken. Made several more wrong turns and U-Turns before I noticed that we were stopped at a light for our turn. I pointed out the directions I had printed out and had in the map pocket of my tank bag. We were back on track. We were supposed to stop at a 7-11 in Front Royal, but as we rode into town there was a group of about 6 riders from the ride at a BP station that waved us over, so we pulled in.
While we were waiting at the BP station several of the first group had been calling their friends in the cruiser group. Somehow we had beat them to Front Royal. They were coming into town and were going to meet us at the BP station. As we waited one of the staff members from the stealership pulled up and told us to go to the 7-11. So we donned our gear and fought the fall foliage traffic trying to get onto the Skyline drive and went over to the 7-11. Where we waited and waited. Then we see the cruiser group go riding by. Seems they decided to stop at the BP station. So we don our gear and take off after them.
About a mile down the road they are coming back towards us. They had done a U-turn to come back and get us. Well our leader says he now has the address in his GPS to just follow him. So off we go. Right past the next turn off to the lunch stop. And we keep going. All the way to the end point. Yeah he had the address of the end point, but not the waypoints along the route. We ended up in Lurray, VA, and I happened to know from a previous ride out there of a nice little Pub. So five of us said we had enough and headed to the pub. At this point we had traveled a little over 100 miles and spent more time waiting for our leaders to figure out what we were doing than riding.
Had a good lunch of Fish and Chips, my four fellow riders turned out to be a pretty cool bunch. All of us current or former military. After lunch we decided to head home, one rider and his wife needed to get back home, but the other three of us were not in a hurry we took the scenic route of about 140 miles on the way back. No getting lost, no turning around (well except for one photo), just a really great ride on a beautiful day.
Even though the first half of the organized ride was totally screwed up, the great weather and new friends as well as the ride home made up for it.
So after riding almost 250 miles with some new friends on a gorgeous day what did I turn around to take a photo of?
