If this sort of pic bores you silly ...,
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]... better stop here.
If, however, still interested, better still hang on; I'm a retired word merchant, so this may be painful for the "just give me the executive summary" sort.
Kathi told me some weeks ago — in that charming way the best of wives have in their bag of tricks for herding men
— that we would be going down to Wendell (vic. Raleigh), North Carolina. One of our granddaughters had gotten a role in a high-school play, Shakespeare’s "Much Ado About Nothing,” albeit set in the 1940’s during WWII.
I won’t say that I didn’t really want to go, but I was pretty close to that. Still, as Kathi is also a retired middle-school teacher, she is practiced in getting 7th grade boys to do what they don’t want to do, which is pretty much the same techniques needed for 70-something men.
One of the arrows in her motivational quiver is to say, as she did here, “Bill, the weather’s looking pretty good for early November here and there. I’ll drive and you can ride down. Take a couple of days both ways and have some fun.”
Naturally, I was suspicious.
But, of course, I swallowed the bait, thus this little photo trip report. First, some words.
I decided on the GRiSO over the …
1) EV. Has slow leak in front tire. Bead sealer goop inbound. Also has some “spark” problem that baffles me. No, that doesn’t take much.
2) Stornello. On the lift with all fluids drained and rear wheel off awaiting NoMar time.
3) V7 III. I had ridden it to N.C. last time, and to Tennessee two months ago, so that left the GRiSO.
No, wait, there was a …
4) Steve P’s 750 Breva has been sitting in the Moto Grappa as a surprise present to his wife. It’s been taking up space and electricity keeping its battery charged, so maybe I should do Steve a favor and give it some road time? No, better not.
I had recently changed out the GRiSO’s rear tire, but thought the front looked fine. Well, until the day before I left when I decided I better order a new tire to put on after I got back from this 700-or-so-mile r/t. I had not realized that I had a Michelin Power on the front as that was what had been on the rear. I had wondered how it felt like a track combo until the rear got squirrely and changed out with a Road 4 GT on the way to Kentucky this past spring. So, the night before the trip I ordered a new front tire from Revzilla. Astonishingly, it came the next morning before I launched to N.C.!
I decided, however, after getting to Lynchburg that first night to have a local dealer R&R that tire if they had one. That led to having the Revzilla tire (a MR4-GT) as a spare, and the GRiSO wearing a new MR5-GT on the front for the rest of the trip.
I rode the whole trip on back roads, i.e., zero eye-roads, and with the only 4-lanes in built-up areas.
The weather on Days 1, 2, & 4 was stupendous; Day 3 sucked. Not the forecast even two days before I left. Meteorology makes alchemy and astrology seem like hard sciences!
I don’t trust meteorologists to tell me what the weather was, much less what it will be. Then again, God doesn’t watch Weather Channel.
Anyway, even the low speed limits on Skyline Drive (35 mph) and Blue Ridge Parkway (45 mph) were not maddening as some (and even I occasionally) find them. Virtually traffic-free, both were joys, even on the GRiSO, a machine that prefers taking big sweepers at orange-suit anywhere speeds. I pulled off at lots of overlooks. It’s odd how photos of overlooks all seem to be the same, yet, in reality, they are all varied well beyond nuances. Still, I probably post too many, but you can skip over those at will.
Oh, I have a photo or two of my supper (and beer) stop in Lynchburg on the way back; Shakers. Nice place, fine bar food, perky waitstaff of the distaff sort. But, as the pix and captions show, getting there from the hotel and back on foot was about as dangerous a thing I’ve done, involving sprinting — never a strength, and, at 75, not happening, period — across a busy 4-lane and vaulting — same level of feat for me as sprinting — over a jersey barrier between the lanes. Heck, even the Russian judge would have given me a 9 for effort.
Terror is a wonderful motivator. I didn’t ride over because I try hard never to ride after a beer. It would have been way safer.
Wait a minute. The play? The enthusiasm and earnestness of high-school students is fun to watch, and some — especially, of course, our granddaughter, Joanna — are special joys for obvious reasons of familial pride. And, for an Old Flatulent like me, often pessimistic about the future, such events are a very good thing.
After all of that TLDR intro, the photo show may seem like the play, Much Ado About Nothing.
If, however, you are still reading and game for the pix, have at them.
The album opens in “landscape collage,” which means you don’t have to plow through all the pix one at a time in slideshow mode.
If you care about captions, hover your cursor over the small pix. If you want to see all in larger format, choose the “play” symbol at the top.
Here’s the link: Taking the Winding Roads to Wendell
Bill
Subject: Taking the Winding Roads to Wendell 
Thu Nov 10, 2022 8:21 pm
