I had to backtrack on I-85 North since I was so screwed up. It wasn't all that bad; I cut across some local road from Oxford back to US-1 south. This was going the wrong way, but I didn't want to get snared in Durham and I figured that all I had was time. Sure enough, I hit US-1 south and had quite a pretty ride. The sun wasn't quite hot since I got out of the hotel pretty early, and there was lots of trees lining the road. There wasn't much wind damage, so I could keep busting around corners without trouble from trees and other debris in the road.
South of Raleigh, I grabbed US-64 and headded west. There was a really wierd bridge over the lake just west of Raleigh; I forgot about my camera, of course, and didn't take a picture of it.
Tooling along US-64 was great. It was a divided highway which was newly paved and it was going pretty well. There weren't any big towns here for a long time, so I had a pretty easy time. I got into Asheboro, North Carolina and decided to get some lunch. I went into a Popeye's chicken and read the paper while I ate. The girls behind the counter complimented me on the bike. I was dripping with sweat.
I'm not sure if I really understand all of the people I encounter. There are lots of strange people down in the south, and I'm not really that far south yet. A guy came into the parking lot out of a truck with a couple of his friends— he slammed into the slot next to my bike so fast and wide I thought he was going to take it out with his big fender.
I'm not sure if I would just call the cops or proceed to try to split his head. I'm kind of excitable. I fantasized about smashing him in the mouth. He looked like a jerk; the kind of guy who pushes you in a crowded bar or on the way out of an ice hockey game.
I'm sure I heard the guy say something like "Harley (mumble) buy American (mumble) assholes" just before he opened the door so I put down the section of the paper and stared at him as he entered the air conditioning through the double-doors. He looked at me for a couple of heartbeats too long and then said "How are ya?"
Was it just because it was a Japanese bike? A Japanese bike from Washington state? I don't know.
I tossed the tray and put the paper back in the rack and split. The parking lot had a really wierd slope and I guess I didn't pay attention to the way I parked; I had to really struggle to get it backed up enough to turn out.
I got onto NC-49 and it darted down towards Charlotte. I was making great time; before lunch, I had ridden more than 200 miles in 3.5 hours. The ird was smooth until I was actually in Charlotte. The new football stadium really screwed things up; there were crazy detours and bad pavement. I almost got lost. There were huge walls covered with ivy close to the road; they made blind spots so I slowed down.
The directions I printed out from AutoMap got really screwed up just outside of Charlotte. It had me go up to Newton instead of down towards the rest of the trip. This would have taken me about 120 miles out of my way on two legs of a triangle. By riding the short side, it was only 20 miles. I have to enter a bug against the AutoMap guys.
I remembered this road form my trip to Memphis a few years ago, somehow. It's amazing how your mind can pick out crap with the tiniest hint at what you might have thought. Sometimes your mind invents stuff, too.
This Nine Inch Nails song is in my head all of the time: "I used to be so big and strong, I used to know my right from wrong, I used to be somebody." I have to go home and see if I have the CD.
I rode along US-29 the rest of the way down towards Clemson. Somewhere near Spartansburg, South Carolina, I hooked up to US-123. Somehow, this junction stands out in my mind; I got the impression of a soft, quiet homestead town where people make lemonade and have garage sales.
I hooked up with a couple of squids. One had a GSXR with a really screwed-up back end, and the other had a new-looking FZR-1000. They had no helmets. At a stoplight, they asked me where I was going and they whistled when I told them "Seattle". They're the guys that make insurance expensive. I lost them near some mall, before Spartansburg's population thinned out.
I rode past Clemson; there was a big highway there with paw prints on the road and the names of fraterneties (and sororities, I guess) inside the pad of the paw. I thought of stopping here: it would be fine to get loaded up at some college-town bar and hit on freshman chicks. "Wow!", they would bat their eyes, "You're from Seattle?"
I kept going, though. That was stupid.
The skies opened up. It was just incredible. I saw the shower line after I came down the last bunch of US-123 to US-23, a few miles into Georgia. I saw the ramp, and I saw the rain at the same time. I thought that, because of the way the ramp went, I would snake down under the bridge to hide (with the trolls) in the nick of time. But the ramp to go south didn't go under the bridge; it went south.
It was tough. Just 200 yards down the ramp, I couldn't see the road surface and I couldn't see the merge into the highway. The bike didn't float at all, much to my relief and surprise. I let it down to around 30 miles an hour; I kept first gear, I think. Even though it was well over my rev limit, I needed th power and certainty of the compression under my butt.
I got into the highway; there wasn't much traffic. There were many cars stopped on the side of the road. I couldn't decide what to do. I thought that if I stood on the brakes, the bike would slide or the brakes wouldn't work and I'd hit the car. And I thought of backing up in front of a car, but then I would just be getting wet right in front of someone. Getting wet didn't bother me, but my bags aren't very waterproof and it was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock.
I thought, too, of stopping alone but then figured I would just get nailed by someone who thought they should follow my taillights. There was a bridge or two. Even though I laid on my brakes to make sure they weren't flooded out, the underpasses had wierd guardrails and steep slopes that made stopping tough.
Christ! So, I plugged on. Eventually, the rain stopped and the sun came out. And, even further, the rain stopped and the road was actually dry. I tried to rev it up to dry out, but it was steamy humid hot and I could feel that there wasn't anything to eat the humididty out of my underwear. Then it started raining again.
I slugged it out, almost deciding to stop one more time. Finally, the sky was clearing and then I rode fast for a while to try and dry out. I opened up my jacket. I decided to stop in Gainesville, Georgia.
This really snotty woman checked me into the Ramada. She was scared of me, but she was also somehow mad at me. My hands were black from the new ink in my gloves, but I paid with my gold card.
After I cleaned up, I went out to hunt for a restraunt. I ended up at a joint called "Peeches on the Tracks", where I tossed down a few beers with the timers from the Olympics. One had an OS/2 shirt on; I thought of talking to him, but he was in a heated discussion with these guys who had French accents. The convention center, across from Peeches, had a marquis outside that said the rowing teams were all meeting there.
The bartender was really cute, so I ordered food and stayed. I liked watching her; she didn't talk to me, but we had these glances and I read all sorts of stuff into them. I'm really kind of excitable. She was the only bartender there and the place was getting crowded. She said that the last Sunday she worked, they almost closed at 3pm because nobody was in the restraunt. She had to call a manager three times for ice; there was no barback.
The food was good. I had about nine Heinekens. Heineken is good; it isn't pretentious but has a very identifiable taste. It's one of the few beer tastes I think I can actually recognize or even think of without tasting it.
I had parked my bike in a covered lot across the street under a bank. The snitty reception desk owman wouldn't let me park in the canopy at the hotel's entrance. I checked on my bike before going to bed.
I realize that somehow, I'm a slave to my possessions. I sweat out the theft ot the bike and all of my stuff at home all of the time. I don't know if that is good or not. You should be comfortable, you should be surrounded by things that you like, but you shouldn't be worried all of the time.
I am very, very afraid of the bike being stolen. After Peaches, I went to the garage and saw it in the light. I touched it, too, for the first time without bags all over it. It sounds really dopey, but it's like a girl. There are curves all over it and it is tightly put togheter. The bike is engineered. I wondered, for a minute, if it was just because I was riding a eight year old piece of crap and now riding a new bike. But I knew for sure that this was an amazing machine. It was, after all, carrying my big fat ass across the country. But it was also really, really good looking.
Red, like apples and blood and old Ferraris. And engineered, like a MagLite flashlight or Advil.
The bike kicks ass. I knew I liked my jacket, but my fat belly doesn't fit into it anymore. But even zipped to the pants, it fits great. The boots are more comfortable than I thought possible. Even though my shins are too big to tuck the pants into the boots, I can somehow get air into there and cool off. Of course, sopping wet, it doesn't matter.
The bike kicks ass. But I think that luggage is a serious problem. The tank bag blew all over the place, even though I kept tightening the strap around the triple tree. The bags in the back slipped noticably left or right because the bridge bag, behind my butt, was too narrow for the VFR's big wide tail section.
Finished on 17 August, 1996.