Blue Ridge Parkway Good/Bad... - Motorcycle-Journal Forums

Spectre45 · 07-23-2007, 06:55 PM

Well, I got back home today from my parkway trip, had a BLAST! Ended up putting on about 1400 miles in the trip, and had some of the most fun times and best views of the Appalachians all together in one! Had three days of riding and only one "whoops" moment...

Yeah...lucky me managed to roll the new toy the first night on the parkway. After driving through the POORING rain for nearly 3 hours to get to the hotel me and my other biker bud had already gotten a room arranged for, the roads are covered in water like rivers almost. I was taking it nice and slow, as miserable and wet as I was getting from it. The time comes to turn off the parkway and I slow it down to cross the road to the exit. I have heard from alot of people to avoid the yellow lines in the heavy rain, so I see the gap in the yellow lines that you normally see at turn off's, and try to cross there as i am slowing. So the turn starts off nice, and then the rear of the bike starts sliding around like crazy (got over to about 45 degrees tilted). It fishtails a couple times before I can get it straight again...right as i run out of pavement and it goes off into the grass and immediately slams over in the mud. After i went back and looked at it, turns out the big normal looking gap in the yellow lines for turn off's was only black paint covering the yellow lines, lucky me!

Since I was SOMEHOW able to get extremely lucky and keep the thing from falling until the pavement was done, the only damage was a bend to the shifter pedal, not a scratch anywhere else! I guess that is the good thing of the rain, there had been so much rain that me and the bike just slammed into the mud real nice and didnt get any real damages. I was planning on changing out the shift pedal for one of the two pedal models (i cant think of the classy name for them, but you know what i am talking about..one pedal for up, one for down), so all in all I am EXTREMELY lucky.

Managed to get a ton of amazing pictures, a bunch of good rides, a sweet looking bruise or two, and ALOT of learning. All in all, a great trip!