The Long Way Home. Summary

Since meeting in Louisville, KY, we put just shy of 3,000 miles on the bikes. In that time I learned a few things.

Don't plan so much.
Don't expect as many miles per day
Take more pictures
Repeat as often as possible!

The Long Way Home. Tuesday

Miles: 503
States: MS, LA, TX

Getting up and partaking of the “superstart” breakfast (Krispie Kreams and cereal, what else do you need?) we topped of the tanks and headed West towards home.

Stopping only for food, fuel, and butt-breaks, we made it home around 5PM.
After being gone for 6weeks, I was more then ready to be home!

The Long Way Home. Monday

Miles: 393
States: GA, AL, MS

Leaving this morning around 945 AM EST, we made our way to Birmingham, AL for a visit to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. For anyone interested in motorcycles and cars, this is a must see.
Just a few of the vehicles they have can be seen in the pics I took located here.

Continuing on down the road, we stopped in Jackson for the night. We’ll get up and finish the trip home tomorrow.

The Long Way Home. The Weekend

Miles: 4-5
States: GA

After arriving Friday evening we spent the weekend just hanging out, enjoying friends, playing Wii, watching Rush Hour 3, playing Wii, defending ourselves from the vicious cats, playing Wii, and just having a good time.

The Long Way Home. Friday

Mileage: 391
States: NC, SC, GA

Knowing that the earliest the cycle shops opened was 9AM, we slept in a bit (7:30) showered, loaded the bikes and got ready to go by 9 when I called and found a Michilen Pilot Road in the proper size at Boone Honda. The didn’t have the Dunlop D220 and the earliest they could have it was Tuesday. So the ST got a PR on the rear.
They wer very helpful and got right on it as soon as we pulled in. An hour later, the ST had a new shoe on the rear, air pressure checked on the front, and the rear member oil topped off.
One of the gentleman there had to wander around my VFR and decided it was “good looking” the kid behind the counter was amazed that I was from Texas. Surprised the service guy when I gave him my address too.

With the wallet $220 lighter, we set off in search of food around 11AM.
After pestering the waitress at Huddle House, we headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway.
BRP is a beautiful road. Sadly the 45mph speed limit hampers the amount of fun that can be had there. I constantly had to watch myself for accelerating out of corners well over the limit.

Jumping off the BRP in Ashville, got directions from some locals and made a bee-line for Atlanta. The chosen route took us down to Spartanburg, SC and then over to Atlanta. Unfortunately it was all interstate, but time was of the essence.
Traffic didn’t seem to have a problem rolling 80-90mph so we made excellent time. And somewhat surprisingly, the bikes loved it too. 46mpg on the VFR, 50mpg on the ST1300 :eek:
Just 9 miles from our exit, the rain started. Couldn’t have been earlier when both bikes temp gauges were reading over 100*F, nope, had to be just before we arrived so we are trapseing all kinds of nasty wet gear into the house. :giveup:
We managed to avoid the maniacs that wanted to run us over, and there are lots of them on I85 and in Atlanta! and made it to our destination about 8PM.

The long way home. Pictures

Pictures can be found here: Link

The long way home. Thursday

Miles: 320
States: VA, NC

Getting up about 7AM we started loading the bikes. And watching the clouds roll in.
Broke out the VX-7R and listened to the NWS forcast to see what was happening. They said it would be afternoon before anything fell out of the sky. Well, they were wrong. Just after getting the tent broke down, it started raining. Not hard, just enough to get everything wet.
Waiting a bit for it to wash off the roads, it stopped raining. So we loaded up and headed down the last half of Skyline Drive.

Arriving at the bottom, we looked at how far we had to go and how much time we had and decided we needed to make up some time. So we jumped on the interstate and headed south at a brisk pace. But only after getting some food at Shoney’s.
I was pleased to see that they had sweet tea on the menu. Nice to be heading back towards the south again!

After about 3hrs on the Intersate, we were sick of it. And our iPods had died. So we jumped off onto US221. Once into NC, the road got wonderfully twisty. The 2nd county in NC, Ashe, was horrible! The road was still twisty, but the pavement was like a roller coaster! Up and down, left and right, all for no apparent reason, just terrible paving work.

Once through that we found a CiCi’s pizza and had some food.

Deciding we’d had enough for the day, we looked up the local KOA and rented a couple movies.
Unknown to us, there was a BMW motorcycle gathering at the same KOA, so the place is full of Bavarian hardware.

I’d been watching the rear tire on the ST1300 and was hoping it would survive till Atlanta where I had a tire waiting at Cyclegear. Sadly its not going to make it, so we are going to hit the local tire shops in the morning and get a replacement. Hopefully

The long way home. Wednesday

Mileage: 405
States: MD, WV, VA, PA

Today we were wanting to go to the Gettysburg Battlefield and the HD assembly plant in York, PA.
Leaving MD, we finished out US50 and made it to Parkersburg, VA for breakfast (~10:30AM)
Continuing down the wrong road, we finally made it to Gettysburg around 12:30PM. Seeing as it was on the warm side and we were already hot from the ride up, we opted to wonder around the museum.

Leaving Gettysburg about 1PM we headed towards York, 30mi away, with the plan of arriving about 1:30PM to get a spot for the 2PM tour at HD. Well traffic conspired against us and we didn’t make it to York till 2:10PM. On top of that, I wasn’t sure where HD was.

Giving up on HD, we decided to grab a bite to eat and fill the tanks. This was a challenged because we were in York. York is annoying. There’s tons of streets and lots of buildings, but there’s nothing there! We drove around for ~20min before finally finding a Taco Bell. To that point we still hadn’t seen a fuel station! On top of the town being weird, the drivers are idiots, and I swear we caught every red light in town!

After pulling the map out in Taco Bell and plotting an escape route, we topped off the Camelbaks and proceeded down the road in search of a filling station.
Once out on the road we were making pretty good time. Traffic was moving, sun was shining, nobody’d tried to kill us in the last 15min, it was good.
Then it happened. Traffic came to a screeching halt and the sirens came wailing up behind us. Cresting the hill we discovered that three vehicles decided to get into a physical discussion and had shut down the highway.
While sitting there trying not to melt, a gentleman on a Triumph Thruxton rolled up and chatted with us. It was a beautiful yellow ’06 with a little black fairing around the headlight. Beautiful machine!

About the time all the traffic in front of us had been re-directed onto an alternate route, the cleared the road and we were able to continue down our originally planned route.

We made it to Front Royal, VA about 6:15PM, topped off the tanks and set off for Skyline Drive.
After a wrong turn down a wonderfully twisty road, we made it to the entrance about 7PM. Only to discover that its $10 per motorcycle, $15 for “normal” vehicles, to ride the road. We paid and began slowly working our way down the Drive. (Its 35mph the whole way) Fortunately the road is fairly twisty, but 35 is a bit too slow. Taking advantage of the error in the speedo, we increased speed a bit (45 ) and began enjoying the road more. The scenery is beautiful on the Skyline Drive!

About 2hrs later and 50mi in, we stopped for the night at a campground. Its $20/night to camp, there’s no power at the camp sites and they charge you $1/5min to take a shower. So much for camping being cheaper then a hotel!

Its really pretty here and the skunks are friendly so I think its worth it.

The long way home. Tuesday

Mileage: 473mi
States: KY, OH, WV, MD

After messing around with the bike-to-bike for a little while and getting the bikes loaded, we finally pulled out at 9:15AM. The goal was to stay away from the Interstate and enjoy ourselves.
Taking US60 we headed East.
If you ever get a chance to ride US50 through WV, you’ll love it. From Parkersburg to Clarksburg is big fast sweepers (speed limit of 65) and then from Clarksburg on its fairly tight and twisty. Lots of S curves and nice little downs thrown in. Speed limit is 55, but I’m only getting there when it’s straight. 40 is about what I’m doing around the corners, but then I’m slow and the bikes loaded to the hilt!

We stopped in MD on US50 at a little mom and pop motel. Rooms were old, and lacked A/C but were very nicely kept and provided a welcome flat spot to lay out on.

The long way home. The prelude

I [Nathan] was up in Michigan for a months worth of training to go our as a student missionary. To get up there, I made a 1,200mi, 23hr run to Berrien Springs for an attempt at a SS1k IBA certification.
Finishing training on the 12th of Aug, I headed for Louisville, KY to visit my aunt and meet my brother [Larry]. It took me about 300mi and 5hrs to get to Louisville.
Larry had a 900mi to cover. He left Saturday afternoon, stopped on the W side of Little Rock for the night, then continued on his way in the morning.
Larry arrived about 6PM.
I arrived about 9:15PM.

Larry came up grudgingly on my ST1300 due to his Virago breaking a timing chain just hours before he was to leave.
I was on the VFR in Michigan, so naturally, I rode that...

Monday we made a trip to Cyclegear to exchange Larry’s new Scorpion EXO-700 for something that didn’t hurt his head. After fitting about all the helmets on the shelf, the Shoei RF1000 was the final decision.
Spent the rest of the day enjoying family and scheming for the rest of the trip.

This concludes training

As of about 30min ago, training concluded.
We've been taught how to draw closer to God
We've been taught how to serve the career missionaries on the project.
We've been taught how to step outside of our box, and learn the culture of the people we are going to serve.
We've been taught how to learn new languages.
We've been taught how to work as a team.
We've been taught to deal with conflict.
We've been taught basic medical.
We've made a bunch of new friends.
We've watched as God has worked wonders in our fund raising.
And we wait patiently while He continues to work on the remaining funds.

I thank you all for your prayers and support, its greatly appreciated.

I ask your prayers for a couple of my fellow SMs.
Marjorie Kendall of Collegedale, TN is needing over $1,400 before she can launch. The rest of her team will be flying out on the 1st of September. We believe that God will work and the money will come in so that Marjorie is able to leave with her team. Marjorie is to be homeschooling the kiddo's of a family in SE Asia.

Ebony Daniels, from TN as well, is also in need of more funds, though I don't know how much she needs. Ebony is going to serve Marc and Cathy Coleman in Guinea, Africa.

I believe that the funds will come in according to His timing. I thank you for your prayers and support.

Nathan Seery
seeryn@gmail.com