BRP Harley Trip - Day 3

Welcome to Ride and Rally with Fix My Hog. Rain today. What a surprise after yesterday, but drizzling just a little bit. Eileen and Danny, where we're staying, assure us that we're gonna drive out of this in like-- Hour and a half. An hour and a half, that's their promise to us.

So, logistics here, Charlie's clothes bag is right in his passenger seat. He's got a garbage sack pulled over that. My bag, my tail bag is completely waterproof so I'll be okay there, but it's kind of like, it's not like being in a car, obviously, where you can just make changes. I mean, you're inside a car. So getting on the bike, there's a lot of anticipation here of do we put the rain suits on?

Do we leave the rain suits on? You know, cause we don't wanna stop every three minutes with a mind change over, oh, we should have done this. So, we're both starting with our rain suits on and then if we're sweating like dogs in an hour we'll stop and take them off. That ain't gonna work. Down goes the bag.

Better fix that before we go. So yeah, we'll just keep packing up here. And then, I don't know, 10 minutes we'll be, hopefully, ready to roll. Welcome to Indiana. The rainy state of Indiana.

This place is rainy today. The good news out of this is, it's cloudy, overcast, we're driving east so you don't have to contend with the sun rising in our faces today. About 20 miles north of Kentucky, stopping at a rest stop, here, for lunch. We are over halfway on our 420 mile ride. It feels good to get off the bike, have a sammich and a cup of coffee.

There you go. Hit it. Good afternoon. Our daily lunch report is part of our video story sequence, here. And part of what, this is a long day.

This is a 420 mile day. And Charlie and I were just talking about this, that, how do you feel, Charlie? I'm good. And so do I. And it's like, I was telling a friend of mine earlier, I'm honestly kind of surprised.

I'm 60 years old. I'm a little surprised I'm not more like, do I gotta get on that bike again? Yeah, but we didn't do 420 miles yet. Well, that's true. So, I think where we're going with this is, trips like this are doable and part of what we're doing now is, I think part of that, which is stop, get off the bike, and, I don't know, give yourself a break, have a Starbucks instant coffee or something and then just take it easy and go from there.

Right? I don't know. Right, yep. Push on. It's going to be a long day today.

It's six or seven hours a ride but easy ride, like you said. It's interesting too that day one was only 285 miles but that was a really long, our average speed on that day, cause it's tracked on the garment, was 34 miles an hour and we're gonna go 420 today, like in the same amount of time because it's all freeway miles. And when we planned the trip it was with that in mind, we knew this was a long day. Cause then we have a short hop to Waynesboro the next day and then we're on the Blue Ridge after that. So, I don't know.

Plan, eat lunch. Hydrate. Hydrate, yes, that's a big deal. So yeah. Look at this bridge.

We are crossing the Lewis and Clark bridge of the Ohio river. This is amazing. Wow. This is so pretty. And, welcome to Kentucky.

Boy, look at this underpass, I guess is the name for it. This is an interesting start to Kentucky. Wow. Rain yesterday, traffic jam today. We don't know what's going on here.

Road construction, I guess but we have been stop and going this for probably 15 or 20 minutes already. We are only about a half mile from the exit where we get off here and we cut east on highway 64. So, anxious to get out of this mess. This is not a fun way to drive a motorcycle. It's very pretty, the lay of the land along with the signs that say, "Watch for fallen rocks." Whole different topography here.

Just passed a sign that says, "Entering Daniel Boone National Forest." Man, this is pretty. It's foggy, misty, and I don't know if we're high enough for that to just be the weather or are we high enough up at this point to kind of be in the clouds a little bit? I don't know. I'll check the elevation when we get to, when we get up here to Ashland, where we're staying. How you feel?

I feel really, pretty good for that long of a ride. I feel good. Yeah, same. Like, I think I said this a couple times already, but I'm kind of surprised at how great I feel. We left at 9:00 AM this morning and it's six o'clock now.

So, obviously not every second of that was butts in seats, but that's a long day. Yeah. On the bikes, many hundreds of miles. And this is our worst day. We might have a couple long days in the back of the trip.

Right. But I think it's a real testament to the quality of the bikes too, right? I've said to a couple people, I can't get over, I rode a lot of other bikes before I got onto this Harley, and I just can't get over how comfortable the bike is. And how great they perform. I mean, it's just get on it, get back, sit back, and cruise.

And no worries, no nothing. It's just, it's just riding them. It's a blast. And I think it's, I've got a backrest on mine, and Charlie's he rearranged his tail back so that is his back rest now. And I think that's important, having that back support and then the highway packs too.

Because, I think what makes this work for us, cause I see you doing it all the time and I know I'm doing it all the time, is getting in a different position on the bike-- Yeah. So that you're not, somebody asked me how sore is my butt today. We broke a thousand miles total on our trip today and it's not sore at all. No. And I'm not waking up in the morning feeling like, damn it, I gotta get back on that bike again.

It was funny riding down here, just this last, like I said, the last hour, I know we were getting close our destination, we were getting into the good stuff, we're getting into Kentucky, great Kentucky. Now we're here in the mountains. And it was like, I'm not ready to stop just yet after whatever, nine hours or seven hours, whatever it was of riding. I'm like, I can't believe I'm saying that, but I also felt like I was riding a magic carpet. I'm laid back, my feet are up in the highway pegs, and I'm just sailing through the air on a magic carpet.

And it was a blast. Well, and I agree. So, it was so fun that Charlie and I have been around the block a lot in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, those states. So it's the terrain change. Yeah.

And then, just the whole different look to the road here, suddenly it's like, I just got a shot of caffeine, man. This is good. But it's a great indicator, this is the tipping point for the next part of the trip. Tomorrow, we go to Waynesboro and Waynesboro is the kind of headwaters of the Blue Ridge Parkway. And so this, it was neat, we're starting to see, today, what we're gonna see a lot of over the next four or five days.

And they be speeding down here. We're cruising along at 80, 85 and they're going by us. Yeah, we got passed. We were the slow pokes at 80 on a 70 mph speed limit. We were getting passed a lot by cars.

And hard. I just loved it. All right. Well overall a good day, just a tiny bit of rain this morning but rain gear came off at lunch and that was a good decision cause we didn't get any more water. Other than riding the cloud.

Well yeah, I shot a pipe cam video when we were doing that and I think, I gotta check the elevation for Kentucky, but I think we were, yeah, I think we were not getting misted on. I think we were in the clouds. There's gonna be some more of that too over the next few days. But, great day overall. Absolutely, it was fantastic.

It was wonderful.