...and This Is Today

Yesterday was warm and sunny, with gentle breezes.

That was yesterday. This is today:

I'm at the little dot under all those colors, just above right of the top red dot.

We've had tornado warnings all morning. Warning means that one has been spotted, keep an eye out for more. After noon tornadoes hit north of here, overturning cars on the freeway. The freeway has been shut down and there has been at least one fatality so far. We're getting hit, and this one isn't a joke...unlike snow warnings in Atlanta.

**UPDATE:

THANK YOU, EVERYONE, FOR THE CONCERN!!

Luckily the storm seemed to peter out a little around the office. The weather sirens were going off in a nearby city. I could hear them through the walls at work. (One rich city has warning sirens here.) There was a time when the wind and rain stopped dramatically (read suddenly) and the sky went a strange color of orange, green, and black. Then it suddenly moved on and softer rains came in.

I stayed at work until 4. The worst of it had passed over, but the yellow and red bands were between work and home. I was going home anyway. Wait too late and I would probably be caught in horrible traffic. I meandered my way home with only rain to keep me company. Sometimes it was heavy, other times light. Made it home in 1 hour 30 minutes. Only slightly longer than average. :) All was well at home. The detention pond in the front yard was full. Rare occurence lately. It has probably been full twice in the last five years. (Quite a difference from when it was full four times a year the first couple years we lived here.)

Oilburner stayed late at work and made it home safely as well.

I'll count my blessings and keep the less fortunate close to my heart tonight. Thank you, friends, for thinking of us.

Twisties in the Rain

The morning wake up ritual continues: groggy, coffee, "When we going riding??"

Mr. Oilburner and I managed a slightly earlier kickstands up time today.  But Brother was doing exceptionally well given his time zone change.  I think Brother would have been happier to get moving earlier, but Mr. Oilburner and I still have the classic problem of slow feet sometimes.

This day was threatening rain.  We took it with a grain of salt and headed towards the mountains.  Brother wanted twisties!!  He insisted that he could handle it.  Mr. Oilburner and I would look at each other with that knowing look.  He might think he knows twisties...but he hasn't seen anything with our roads out here.  Fine.  Brother wants twisties, we were gonna give him twisties.

We headed towards Suches and planned to take Hwy 180 over to Helen.  One of the twistier roads in the area.  We were hoping to have lunch at Two Wheels Only (TWO).  That would give Brother a break between Hwy 60 from Dahlonega, before hitting 180.

Hwy 60 north of Dahlonega is a fun little road that has to be shared by motorcycles, bicycles and sports cars during the summer.  We had it to ourselves on a rainy Monday!  Allowing us to go whatever speed we were interested in.  Brother was confident enough to go the speed he was most comfortable with.  So saying, he was obeying the speed limit instead of attempting to keep up with Mr. Oilburner.  Like yesterday, he looked extremely comfortable.

We stopped at the top of the pass to show Brother the Appalachian Trail.  Tis the season and many hikers were milling about.  It was so eventful that we didn't even dismount the bikes.  Just a quick discussion and we headed on our way.  TWO was only a couple miles down the road.  As my luck would have it, TWO was closed.  We stopped to take a few pictures and gawk at some of the demolition scenarios they had on display.

We weren't terribly hungry and didn't have any issues with continuing on our route.  Our luck held and the rain started just as we turned onto Hwy 180.  Hey, I never said it was good luck.  Figuring that it wasn't going to let up we let Brother suit up in the Frog Togs.  Mr. Oilburner and I were wearing our waterproof gear already.  I enjoyed watching Brother taste real twisties with winter gravel still sitting in some curves and the rain coming down pretty hard.  And since Mr. Oilburner and I are connected I was able to give updates on Brothers learning progression.  I couldn't fault his caution on those hairpin turns.  180 is a stupendously fun and curvy road if you know it.  Encountering it for the first time in the rain is daunting and he did well.

 Hwy 76 was a different story.  The rain was still obscuring visibility and coming down hard enough to sheet across the road.  Brother's speed slowed down to 20 mph.  Which isn't completely unreasonable considering that is the posted/recommended speed limit around some of those turns.  I chuckled down through the wireless.  It took Mr. Oilburner asking me if he was leaning into the corners for me to notice that Brother was starting to manhandle the bike a little more and that bike was barely leaning around any of those curves.  :-)

I was anticipating the hairpin turn marking the last of the tight curves to see how Brother would handle it.  I wasn't anticipating how I would handle the sheer embankment encroaching the edge of the pavement.  It was a little disconcerting executing my perfect lean, trying not to wobble as I realize I am looking directly down the washout.  Hiccup...  Wish I could have gotten a picture of that, but I wasn't about to take my hands off the wheel.

Yeah!  Our luck held out a little longer and the rain stopped just as we came out of the mountains.  Of course...  We stopped at the first place we spotted for lunch and shrugged out of the gear.  My jacket weighed about 10 pounds more then it did when I first put it on.  And my shorts were wet and sticky all the way up to my derriere.  Damn waterproof gear ain't so waterproof.

Helen, GA is also known as Alpine Helen and revels in all things Germanic.  It is a little on the tasteless/tacky side and a huge tourist trap, to me.  But visiting in the off-season provides plenty of parking spaces, easy access to eateries and actually walking space on the sidewalks.  So we laughed about our luck and antics over delicious bratwurst and sauerkraut.  We tripped through a few stores looking for souvenirs for Brothers family.  I lucked across a place selling Haribo Raspberries.  Brother bought homemade fudge and divinity and I buy packaged candies.  :-)  We let Brother sightsee, being his first time.  He takes all the pictures, I merely tag along.  Nothing exciting.

By the time we gathered our gear and ourselves the clouds were clearing away, letting the sun shine through. 

See?

My luck...  :-)


Stats:
180 miles
Brother's first treat of GA twisties...and he even had to do it in the rain
Rain in all the twisties, clear skies coming home on the highway...
Maybe even our first time actually eating German food in Helen, not just funnel cake.  ;-)

Sunrise on Cherohala?

We had the bright idea of taking a ride to Cherohala and catching a sunrise, hoping it would make some great shots to have the sun in the background of the bikes. We were also happy to finally be riding the skyway together since we had both ridden it solo previously. However, we failed to comprehend the date of June 21 as the solstice. We went so far as to research civil twilight and sunrise times. But failed to remember that this was the absolute longest day of the year and the earliest the sun could possibly come up. Ouch.

Our research revealed that civil twilight would be around 5:53 AM, with actual sunrise at 6:23. So we made our provisions to rise early and get out the door before 3 AM. We calculated that it would take us about 3 1/2 hours to reach a suitable location and prepare to worship the rising sun. I won't mention that we took an extra half our to get suited up and out the door. Nor will I say much about riding freeways and twisty country roads in the dark. Our speed suffered a little with the darker roads since I was worried about poor woodland creatures jumping out and derailing the entire trip. And I won't mention how the temperatures continued to drop unexpectedly on some of the warmest days in the year. Of course, we weren't adequately prepared for those. And we were going to higher elevations?

We took our first rest stop about 90 minutes into the ride near Helen, GA. We needed to eat a little something for breakfast and warm up. Our break was a little longer then desired, but we had fueled and warmed ourselves well and had a little chance for a photo-op. Once we mounted the bikes again it would be to go through Helen and up the curvy pass of Hwy 76. I was in the lead to set the pace I desired. Still didn't want to hit any creatures, and my first time on this road, but we fared well and proved our theory correct of it being warmer on the other side of the mountain. It was a hop, skip and jump to get to Hiawassee where we gased the bikes up and picked up some drinks and snacks for later in the day. Rode through town and took a right, rode a couple miles and then turned left. Wow. We were in North Carolina already.

Made a few lefts and rights and we were soon able to see the road a little better beyond the scope of the headlights.  We were cheered to see the road was rain wet and that we weren't in any of the rain.  Yea!  But a few more miles took us to Hwy 19 and larger puddles on the road.  It had rained recently, and rained pretty hard.  Hmmm....  We continued on and we rode into the rain, then out of the rain, then back into the rain.  When the drops started making heavier sounds on the helmets we turned around and headed for breakfast at a Huddle House.  Not our ideal, but the only thing around.

We were a little curious about the rain as the forecasts we had seen showed clear skies and smooth sailing.  And our waitress, who lives in the area, couldn't help us at all.  We again heard the standard adage "Wait 15 minutes".  We waited 60 to be on the safe side.  We knew we weren't going to make any Cherohala sunrise this time and we were cool with that.  The continuing rain was a little daunting, but not a deal breaker. 

The clouds shrouding the mountain gave us pause.  But we continued on hoping the skyway would be above them.  The deal breaker was the lightning bolt that struck the valley floor about 10 miles in front of me when we were about 5 miles from Robbinsville, NC, near the beginning of the skyway.  I hit the very next turnout and did a 180.

Hmmm...where to go now?  We back tracked down 19 and hit the gas station in Murphy.  And unbelieveably the weather was fabulous.  The skies were nice in this direction. We just decided to hit the backroads and see where they took us.  C remembered some interesting side roads that he had taken, so we set out in search of them.




These side roads brought us to the great Hiawassee Dam in TN. One of the multitude of the TVA projects.

Continuing down the roads and C remembered someone in the office talking about "Fields of the Wood."  And it just happened to be on our so-called route.  Fields of the Wood is an interesting biblical attraction in a beautiful setting in the mountains.  Fields of the Wood has the Ten Commandments Mountain:

The Psalms of Praise:

Jesus' Garden Tomb:

Golgotha:

We didn't spend much time walking around.  We were in our full riding gear and riding boots...and they don't lead well to hiking up mountains.  We'll have to go back someday.  There were some interesting and attractions and I'll bet some great views from the tops of the ridges.

We then turned our attentions towards home.  Following the spirit of adventure that had brought us this far, I bit the bullet and agreed to take Hwy 60 through the mountains.  In case you didn't know, some people have the belief that some of the best twisty riding in North Georgia can be had on Hwy 19 and Hwy 60.  These roads weave up, down and around the mountains, offering many hairpin turns, sharp inclination changes through curves and steep road banking...all facilitating the serious twisty adventurur.  I won't dwell on the fact that these roads are also frequented by sports cars, crotch rockets and bicyclists for all of the same reasons.  So these roads can get very crowded and dangerous during the summertime.  Some people don't care, but I prefer to ride in calmer conditions and away from the crowds.  In this case we wanted to get home and C didn't want to take the ugly, boring freeway. 

In all, the remainder of the day was completely uneventful.  I had great fun on Hwy 60, practicing my approach on left hand curves (I invariably approached them too close to the center line, making myself uncomfortable if a car approached in the other direction, possibly on my side of the line.)  Lots of practice and I picked up my tricks.  Stopped for drinks and chocolate, chatted with a few other riders and just enjoyed the absolutely beautiful and warm sunny day that it turned into.  The biggest compliment came when C started scraping his pipes on the curves.  He informed that he was confident enough in my abilities and that I was taking the turns at speeds near his desired speed that he wasn't worrying about me as much anymore.  Yea!  Just having fun and enjoying the roads.

Statistics: 327 miles, almost 11 hours, 3 states, many new sights.