The past few years, one of our crazy cults of long distance riders, Team Strange Airheads, has put together a ride in Georgia called the Grand Tour of Georgia. Its basically just an excuse to get out and ride around the state and actually tell the wife its got a purpose... To raise money for Eddies Road in support of at risk youth. They give you a 'passport' and you have to ride to the locations and get a photo of that location with your passport. Unlike most of my rides, you actually get 6 months to get to all the locations, vs the normal 12 hrs. And if you get the required 17 or more, then you get a certificate. Not my normal kind of ride, but a good one. So how can I turn it into one of MY rides. I have the Cape Fear 1000 coming up in mid April, and Ed's Last Resort in May, and very few miles on the bike since I dropped it in Nov. The GTG seems like it could make for a good warmup ride. I talked to dad about it and he agreed. Lest see if we can do this GTG in a day!!! We got signed up and awaited the 'bonus' locations. About a week later we got the email with the locations. I imported them all into Streets and Trips, selected them all and hit Get Directions... 1650 miles. Ok. Time to break it up. I do need the warmup ride, but I don't need to over do the warmup. So I broke it up a bit and started playing with multiple options. What I came up with was 2 rides. One with 750 miles, the other is 1200. That way we could work our way up to the longer ride. Weather was bad the first 2 free weekends, so finally we got a break of a free weekend and no thunder storms March 30th. Time to ride. The route was pretty simple. Leave the house, meet dad at a gas station on our route, and start picking off the locations. We would have 8 planned stops, one 'if we are ahead of schedule stop', most likely a lunch break and 1 or 2 gas stops. But we were not going to do this in full blown rally mode. Just a leisurely ride, off the bike stops for photos, and take our time. And that's what we did.
The first stop wasn't until almost to Jax. We planned that leg first since we left in the dark, and I-10 is boring at night when you are tired. So we got the crappy part done first. It was about 45 degrees when we left, but tolerable. I-10 lived up to its normal standards... long and boring. We shot north just before the city limits and went to find the Cherokee Tribal Grounds in St George, GA. I knew from google maps, it was behind a ball field, over the RR Tracks. GPS took us right to it. I followed the same process for just about every stop today... Got off the bike, took off my gloves, got my passport/camera/cell phone out of the tank bag, took a photo w my camera, then with the cell phone, and uploaded the photo to Facebook. Put it all up, got my gloves back on, and off we went. 5 to 10 mins per stop. NOT like my normal 2 min rally stops. So we got the photos and headed back over the tracks back to the road. I followed dad out since he got turned around first. Over the tracks and back to the main road. About 30 seconds later the train blew his horn and about scared dad off his seat. It was then I realized I rode over the tracks without even
looking for a train. 30 seconds later and that could have hurt a little bit! Lesson learned. Look both ways crossing railroad tracks.
The second stop took us north up to Darien, Ga to Americas smallest church. It was just off 95 so an easy in and out. Got the photos and got back on the interstate. Traffic was thick with Spring Breakers headed to/from the southern beaches. But only once did a cager try and run into me from the side. We made it up to Pooler, GA where there is an aviation museum. We got off the hwy and my GPS said turn left now... dads
said go to the next road and turn. We followed his route to a dead end where the road we needed to get on was under construction. So we back tracked and followed mine right to the plane. He needed a photo of the A-4 Phantom jet parked in the lot. I'm sure there was some neat stuff in the building, but we took a quick look at the 2 other planes in the parking lot and headed out. Those Migs were tiny compared to the Phantom! We headed up 95 a bit more then took a left and headed NW a up the state line. We found the park and huge sign for the Battle of Briar Creek. Hopefully the battle took place during the time
of year that the gnats weren't there. I forget how bad they are in GA. GA has the gnats. FL has the noseeums. Not sure which is worse. But at least they weren't biting. Now we started our westerly ride. We were already 383 miles into the ride and past lunch time. We had probably seen 5 or so BBQ places so far on the ride so we decided to stop at the next one to eat. We made it to Statesborough and finally punched in a Sonny's in the GPS since we had not seen anything else. When we got there it had been converted to a taco joint. So I pulled up the next closest place which ended up being a Shane's
Rib Shack. Kinda like a Joe's Crab Shack... but with counter service. But the hard wooden chairs left something to be desired after 7 hours in the saddle. We finished up and made our way to our next bonus. My GPS told me it was on the right. Dad had his eyes open and saw it was on the left, and only clued me in after I passed it. Thanks pops! Luckily there was somewhere to turn around. I got my photos of the horse drawn funeral coach and continued on. We made the short jaunt over to Abbeville, GA and found the Wild Hog Express caboose. We took a few extra photos of us and the the bikes in the pictures.
Something we hadn't done all day. Stop number 7 on the list was an old steam locomotive in Sylvester, GA. We had had our Sena headsets in intercom mode all day, but mine finally gave out before we got to the train. I took it off and plugged in in to charge all the way to the next stop in my tank bag. We took the pics and got back on the road. Our last stop ended up being in Boston, GA. We parked in front of the Carnegie Library and took our photos. It was getting close to dark so we decided not to go for one more since technically we were behind schedule. I hooked the headset back up, since it
had about an hour to charge, and it ended up making it all the way home. I led dad back to his house, and he peeled off behind me while I continued on. I made it in, right at 14.5 hrs, and a total of 725 miles. It was a long day, and there was a tinge of discomfort a few times, but much less than anticipated. And the next morning... nothing. I felt like I hadn't been on the bike at all. Nice. I guess I am ready for the Cape Fear 1000. Now to fix the front fork leak I discovered.
The first stop wasn't until almost to Jax. We planned that leg first since we left in the dark, and I-10 is boring at night when you are tired. So we got the crappy part done first. It was about 45 degrees when we left, but tolerable. I-10 lived up to its normal standards... long and boring. We shot north just before the city limits and went to find the Cherokee Tribal Grounds in St George, GA. I knew from google maps, it was behind a ball field, over the RR Tracks. GPS took us right to it. I followed the same process for just about every stop today... Got off the bike, took off my gloves, got my passport/camera/cell phone out of the tank bag, took a photo w my camera, then with the cell phone, and uploaded the photo to Facebook. Put it all up, got my gloves back on, and off we went. 5 to 10 mins per stop. NOT like my normal 2 min rally stops. So we got the photos and headed back over the tracks back to the road. I followed dad out since he got turned around first. Over the tracks and back to the main road. About 30 seconds later the train blew his horn and about scared dad off his seat. It was then I realized I rode over the tracks without even
