Sunday morning ride.

      Sunday the 16th of October, my wedding anniversary, dawned bright and sunny with the promise of 70 degree temps up here in the mountains. Luckily for me I have a very understanding wife who said I should go for a ride on my scooter while she and her friend Teresa went to the Woolly Worm Festival. How cool is she for a wife?
     Anyway, after lounging around a bit and then washing "Sophia" I headed off toward Tennessee in order to check out a Geocache that I have attempted to find twice before without success. The previous day I had met a fellow named Papa Smurf who gave me a really broad hint as to how to locate this cache. As I said the weather was beautiful, and the road I had to take was once part of the local railway, so it was quite narrow and it cut through a few mountainsides. The hills swept up above me on one side and down steeply to the Doe River on the other side, I was surrounded by tall trees that were all shedding their leaves. Brilliant!
    This particular road is over 5 miles long and for the whole, slow, lazy, enjoyable time I was on it, only 2 other vehicles came by.

       
I had to stop a couple of times to take pics of the fun ride.  You could actually see some big Trout in that river back there.

   
   As you can see, not a very wide road at all. The line that ran through there was called "Tweetsie" by the locals  and Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina by the people who bought shares in it. It was a narrow guage railroad used for carrying, wood, iron ore, and people, in and out of the Mtns. to places like Boone N.C and Johnson City Tenn.

                                                   Another view of the "Long and Winding Road"

 Another look at Sophia. Did you notice the buddy seat has been removed?  Sitting where the seat used to be and crouching a bit whilst going up a loooooong hill gives me an extra 2-5 mph.....Honest. The poor old girl needs all the help she can get going up these steep  hills around here. I swear I spend 65% of my time in 3rd gear. It's no wonder I only get 82 -90 mpg!!!

   What is the view like from your office? This is mine, for now. In the distance you can see Grandfather Mountain with it's famous "Mile High Swinging Bridge"  I have actually driven up there 3 times now on Sophia, AND I talked one of my co-workers into riding up there the last time on his little chinese 50cc Sinski.  It was surprisingly fast, course he only weighs 160 lbs to my 220 and I think he has "rodded" his bike a bit.
     We had a great time riding up there and an even better time coming down. It sure feels good leaning into a corner at 55mph.(Downhill is where my greater mass has a bigger advantage). Youth has it's advantages too , and Joel goes into a corner as if he is indestructable, in spite of my warnings.

   One of the bonuses of making it to the top of the mountain is to see the looks on all the Harley and BMW rider's faces as you crest the hill into the parking lot.  One of those guys actually asked me if I had pushed my Scooter to the top!! Cheeky bugger!  He wasn't so glib when it was time to leave and he could see me in his rear view mirror the whole way down.....TeeHee.

   All the best ,
  Sir  Paul.