BRP Harley Trip – Day 5: First Day on the BRP!

Welcome to "Ride & Rally" with Fix My Hog. Good news with the rain. Left our bikes soaking wet, and I did bring a chamois. So, this is a good morning for hot coffee. Kind of washing the bikes. At least wiping them down and getting some of the grime off. Big difference. Helps that the rising run is hitting it just right. And I won't get a wet butt when I sit in it when we get rolling this morning. Big day, Charlie. Big day. And I'll tell you what, I'll give you credit. You did a great job ordering weather for today. Well, I do what little I can. We paid our dues riding in the rain for, I don't know, two or three days. It's all swimming together literally. But holy buckets, it's like 65 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, and it's BRP day, baby. Well, yeah, and it's not a cloud in the sky here. We're going over the couple hills. Yeah. You don't know what's on the other side. Well, this is true, anything could change. So, it's interesting with the Blue Ridge Parkway 'cause it's got a strictly enforced speed limit, which it's either 35 or 45. So we have a real short day. It's like 106 miles or something. We're going to Roanoke, and we intentionally made it short so we could take our time, poke around and then we can always "excurge," whatever. Yes. We will be "excurging." Well, we can "excurge" off, if we find, we have plenty of time to get to Roanoke. Part of the reason I got that Garmin Zumo XT is you can look for spots and tell it you want cool motorcycle roads, and that'll help us get off the parkway and see, I don't know, what else there is to see. I want to go boondocking. Want to go boondocking. We're not gonna get the motorcycles stuck. These are heavy bikes, but we're gonna go see cool stuff. Ready for fun times? Yes. I didn't know this was coming. Okay. I don't know, am I ready? No butts. And you run the bikes. What a great point. We wiped them down this morning and we took advantage of the fact they were wet, and that's true. Like normally at home, riding anywhere, it's constantly chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk. Something's hitting my visor or the bikes. But yeah, that's true. It's been since-- Indiana. Yeah, I was gonna say, since Indiana or so. Yeah. Wonder why that is. It's too high here. Ah. Maybe. All right, we're gonna roll. Let's do it. We've been told there's no gas on the parkway. You gotta get off the parkway to get it. So we did a quick stop this morning after we left the hotel to top off the gas tanks. I do have a list. I was able to find a list online of off-the-parkway gas sites, what mileposts they're at. So, we've got that. I've got that in my saddlebag, but this preemptive strike to make sure we're starting with full tanks. Blue Ridge Parkway, 500 feet ahead. So, at this point, the Blue Ridge Parkway goes south. The Skyline Parkway goes north. And we just jumped on the Blue Ridge Parkway. So as it turns out, this is the Howard Turnpike, we just turned around. So it's faux pas number one for today. The Blue Ridge Parkway is down now, just down to my right there somewhere. Saw this cool-looking road, and I thought, hey, it's fun to do. There's the big sign that says "Blue Ridge Parkway" right there. All right, we gotta stop and take a picture. Blue Ridge Parkway! I wonder if it's backwards, 'cause the phone is like this. This is finally it. We're at the head of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and look over there, there. This is the start of something good. We did have to stop. We both dressed fairly warm down in Waynesboro. We've already stopped to put more clothes on, 'cause it's chillified. Look at you zipping up. All right. Here we go. That way. Here we go. This is why this trip was a long time coming. And honestly, honestly, credit goes to Charlie. My first version of this trip was to go from Canada to Mexico, and Charlie turned my head toward this part of the country. And if he hadn't pushed me on this, I don't think I'd be here. He was very big on let's just, let's make it happen. Let's pick the date and make it happen. It's very cool. It's already amazing. Wow. Wow. Stopping at our first overlook. Let's see the reveal here. Holy buckets! Don't go over that edge. Something that's really impressed me on the parkway are the number of bicyclists that we've seen. I ride a road bike and a mountain bike a lot, but I'll tell you what, I'd be pretty intimidated by the inclines on the parkway that these bicyclists are up against. Something you should be aware of is that sometimes the bicyclist have a car behind them, car with the hazards on, traveling at the same rate as they are. And that car, I guess, is just letting people know that the bicyclists are there, but you gotta be aware as you come around corners that there could be a really slow-moving vehicle that's tracking along with those bikes. Oh, I love Charlie's hat. Why are you wearing a hat today, Charlie? It's a little cooler up here than it was down in the valley. Yeah, we're at 3,000 feet right now, not the highest point on the parkway. That's just over 6,000, but yeah, it's cool riding today. I'm gonna add a hoodie to what I'm wearing, and Charlie's got the luxury of an electric vest he's gonna put on. So we're doing lunch a little bit different today. Charlie's got an MRE that he's-- Meal Ready To Eat. Yeah. With a little bit of labor. Yeah, figuring out the instructions on, and you got a pretty complete menu there of pizza. I had jalapeno cheese and toast on a baguette type apparatus. I've got chocolate protein powder drink. I have pizza and cherry cobbler for dessert. And then I'm doing a Mountain House meal. So the backpack stove is heating water there, and there's gonna be coffee too. So, but what a great morning. I mean, the parkway is amazing. We are saying with the weather, cool is fine. It's cloudy, it's clouding over a little. If rain comes, that's not gonna be good, but holy buckets, the parkway, turn after turn after turn of beautiful views. Lots of turns, a really nice motorcycle ride. And just right, there is nobody on the road. No. Very, very few cars. Today is-- Thursday. Thursday. That right? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So, yeah, very little traffic. So we're gonna have lunch and keep it going. Lunch was good. We both have a couple more layers on. Got a couple more stops. Further along, want to stop at James River. That's the lowest point on the Blue Ridge, and then Peaks of Otter is a cool spot. We'll see in between now and then what we see. Clouding over, hoping we're not gonna get rained on. Oh, it's beautiful in that direction. So maybe we're okay. First tunnel. How's every little thing? Because we'll never get a ride like this again? Nobody on the parkway but us. Just cruising it. Like shooting a 12-point deer on your first bow hunt at 12 years old. Are you having fun? Yeah. Good. Lunch was a little bit ago, and Charlie and I are now at the James River. This is the lowest point on the parkway. Hope you can hear us. The wind is blowing kind of a gale. Lowest point on the parkway, 649 feet elevation. We spent the morning, coming down, and you did a little scouting up ahead. And we go back up, you were saying. Yeah, it's awesome. There's been a lot of rain in the area, so the river is very, very brown, very muddy. Flowing like crazy. So we're ready to climb out of the lowest point, and the highest elevation is somewhere in that direction. Let's go find it. Charlie's got a good idea, which is to be up here when the sun sets. So we are currently about 10 miles, no, about 23 miles from our hotel for tonight. And so we're just gonna keep track of these overlooks and look for one that's pointing west. And go down to the hotel, get our stuff and get checked in, and then scoot back up here for sunset. So I think today was maybe Charlie's favorite day. So far, yeah, yeah. Our first day on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and it was absolutely incredible. A case of turn a corner, "Oh my gosh." Turn a corner, "Oh my gosh." Go over a hill, "Oh my gosh." It's just, it was incredible. You saw a deer. Yep. I had a buck standing in front of me in the road. Got outta the way just in time, that was nice. And what a neat, these Lenovo K3 cameras that we have on the bikes are, man, they're worth their weight in gold. There would just be no good way for us to capture everything that we're seeing if we didn't have those on the bikes. The hard part is winnowing it down from all the amazing stuff. Yeah. To, you know, the small amount of footage that's actually gonna be in a video. Yeah. So I think today was only like 120-mile day, but the Blue Ridge is a 45-mile-an-hour speed limit. Charlie said, we're broken for life now on cool motorcycle rides because-- We're spoiled, the weather was great. There was nobody on the road. We had the whole mountains to ourselves, almost literally. It was, I had to pass very few people today. So that was the bonus. So we learned, today's September 23rd, and I'd highly recommend this timeframe for this trip. The temperature's just right. Got a little cool at elevation, but not horrible. But somebody else told us this is the slow season for the Blue Ridge Parkway, which makes it a great time to be on it on a motorcycle. I would not want to be bumper to bumper with hundreds of cars when the colors change in a little bit. It's all deciduous trees. So when the colors change, it's gonna be amazing. Yeah. But it's gonna be crazy crowded. And then we were saying, too, mid-summer when it's steaming hot out in this part of the country. No, thanks. No, thanks. And, like I was telling you a little bit ago, I feel like I'm breaking the law, breaking the rules. It's so much fun. I shouldn't be able to have this much fun without getting in trouble. And then I go, wait a minute. I'm not doing anything wrong. I can do this every day. It's an amazing ride. And we'll, you know, at the end of this whole thing we'll kind of do a debrief with our recommendations if you're gonna make this trip, how we, if we did it again, how we would do it, I will be doing it again. Yeah. Yeah. Charlie's got a plan. We'll talk about that later, but overall, a wonderful first day on the "Burp,' on the BRP, and looking crazy forward tomorrow. A friend of mine said, "Views at 3,000 are cool. Views at 5,000 are even better," which is hard to imagine, but we're gonna find out. Yeah. See you tomorrow.