Blue Ridge Parkway Harley Trip: Meet George and Charlie

Welcome to "Ride & Rally" with "Fix My Hog". Hi, I'm George Vondriska with "Fix My Hog" with- Charlie van Dusartz, "Fix My Hog". And we are really excited. We're very, very close, within days, of launching on a 3000-plus mile excursion. So we'll talk about the trip a little bit. The bullseye of the trip for us being- The Blue Ridge Parkway. It's gonna be crazy cool. We're gonna get on it at the northern end near Waynesboro, and we're gonna take it all the way to the southern end at Cherokee, and in between, we've got stops in Galena, Illinois, Champaign, Illinois. And this is cool. We started talking about this, I don't know, I kind of can't even remember, it's that long ago. Probably six months. Yeah, it's been about six months into planning. It started with a big wall map in Charlie's office. And my first idea was I was gonna ride Canada to Mexico. Look, you can see his face. Stop it. And so it was your idea, why did you want to go East like we are instead of- Well, just to see the area, see the mountains down there. I haven't spent much time there and I think we just wanted to get on a good ride. If we're gonna do a ride, it's gotta be legendary. Yes, legendary. Little joke there with the legendary. So yeah, so we switched from Canada to Mexico to this ride over the Blue Ridge Parkway. And we're not trailering there, we are riding the bikes the whole way. So the loop is down through Tennessee, we're gonna come back up through Ohio, Michigan, ferry across Lake Michigan to get back into Wisconsin which is where we are now, with a side trip or two along the way. Absolutely. So this is gonna be cool. And we're very excited to take you along with us. You can watch for posts on social media and a whole series of videos that we're gonna do day by day by day as we go. Any words of wisdom? Well no, let's do a little background here. You've been riding a bike for since how long? Probably 15, 20 years at least. And started off on a 95 Ultra and I rode that thing to death and still have it, love the bike. You've broken a hundred thousand miles. Yeah, it's 110 on it now and I haven't turned a wrench on that. So it's been a great bike for me and now it's the backup bike or the somebody lost a ride bike and needs a bike to ride, jump on that one. And I call it the old girl, right, the old girl. And I think the bike you're gonna ride on this trip is a cool story because you did a little work on this one. Yeah, this one was totaled and this is a 2019 Road Glide and it was totaled, so I brought it home last, oh gosh, last summer I guess it was and rode it in various colors. I put parts of this, that, and everything on it and it was kind of the bike of ugliness, rode it all last summer, that winter, the second half of the year. And then last winter, took it all down and repainted it, put all new parts on it. And so, yeah I bought it with 200 miles totaled and now it's got 2000 and after this trip we're gonna be in the six range. Yeah. And we're gonna do more on the bikes we're taking on the trip in the future. But I think that's just such a cool story that he brought that back from the grave and a statement on this trip. For me, I had a motorcycle I bought in a bunch of boxes in college. It was a little Kawasaki 250, put it back together, popped around town in college with it, and then didn't have a bike again until- When did we find that Honda Rebel for me, like- Four years ago? Yeah, yeah. Or five? So I started with a tiny little Honda Rebel and then went through- That was funny. That was funny watching you ride that. It was a little small frame for me, but an easy bike, a great bike to come back to ride on, very user friendly. Couple bikes since then, and currently on a Harley Ultra Classic, an '09 Ultra Classic I just bought used earlier this summer. And I think we are at this point ready to ride. Let's do it. All right. We'll see you on the road. Have a good time.