Tuesday 7 May 2013

All the way to the end...

An almost perfect day of riding today.

A lateish start after another french toast breakfast, as I assumed I wouldn't be eating again for a while.  It turns out I was right, by 12pm I still had a 150 miles to go on The Blue Ridge Parkway. 

The weather was a bit of every thing: mostly sunny, but cool all day, but with a brief two minutes of visibility due to fog down to 20ft!!  Also ran across a couple of minutes of hail the size of green peas!!  BTW hail hurts!!  I don't know how guys rider cruisers long distances with an open face helmet, certainly in this weather at this time of year, and I passed a few.... I was huddled in my full face helmet with most of the vents closed trying to keep warm the last few days...

I had hoped to run the whole second half of the BRP on one tank of gas, with what I thought was 10 miles left to go I dropped down to zero bars out of 10 on my gas gauge.  So sadly departing the BRP I headed into a small town to fill up, still not down to reserve.

I have now run a few tanks of gas at highway miles, and have averaged 425 kms before needing to fill up!!  I have been putting on average 6.25 gallons or just under 24 litres into my 30 litre tank.  So theoretically I should have quite a bit to spare.  It works out to about 5.65 l/100km or about 42mpg!!!

It turns out the BRP is not 450 miles but nearly 470, so good thing I jumped off when I did.  It was a very anticlimactic end to the ride as it just ended at a junction.  No sign no nothing... Very disappointing after spending two days riding through it.  I was pretty happy with the accomplishment considering how close I was to throwing in the towel yesterday.

The view from 6000ft near the end:




I also didn't realize how close to Tail of the Dragon it ends.  I am in a hotel about 10 minutes from motorcycle mecca.  Tomorrow I will check it off my bucket list.

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