May 09_Friday Let's Go For a Swim

It all started on Thursday morning. I have been talking about this trip to anyone who will listen. So when I went to a scheduled doctor's appointment on Thursday morning, everyone there had to suffer through my excitement about our upcoming adventure. I covered the waiting room, the front desk, and any of the staff who would either stand still long enough or for whom there was no convenient escape route. I promised the tech who took my vitals ( a very nice young lady named Norma ) that I would mention her in this blog. So Norma, for better of worse, here is your 15 minutes (seconds?) of fame laid bare for the motorcycling community and whoever else has so little to do that reading this is how they spend their free time.

The weather was threatening toward the afternoon, so I left work early (what a sacrifice....I wasn't functional anyway) and rode over to Mark's house. I had packed the motorcycle the night before and was ready to spend the night. We ran some errands and Mark dropped me of at Jill & Kay's for a previously arranged dinner. After a wonderful dinner and visit, Jill ran me back over to Mark's where a whole bunch of folks were having tacos and a good time.

We awoke Friday morning to rain. Up at 0400 and ready to hit the road by 0500, Matt and Steve joined us for the ride from Sterling to Manassas. We rode to the MacDonalds on Route 28 near Manassas airport where we met up with Jeff and Deb. It was very dark and very rainy, so we grabbed breakfast (or what passes for breakfast at a MacDonalds) and waited for some sunlight to make the rainy travel a little safer.

The news report on the TV indicated that a tornado had stomped on Stafford, Virginia Thursday night and there was still a good deal of strong storms and rains in the area. Oh boy....my favorite. Fortunately, there were few injuries and no deaths in the overnight storm. We were a bit concerned that there might be debris and other after effects of that storm that would make a detour down Route 17 unsafe. This was to be our fallback to sharing Rt 95 with heavy downpours and big trucks. Not knowing what to expect, we just got on with the program and headed south on Rt 28 and Rt 17 towards Fredericksburg.

So now our group consists of me (George), Mark, Matt, Steve, Jeff, and Deb. This is the motorcycling equivalent of a six-pack that would complet the initial trip to Myrtle Beach. The weather had cleared just enough to lure us onto Rt 95 south. We hit rain, rain, and more rain. It went from steady, to heavy, to torrential downpour, to "Hey....I need a snorkel over here!". We assumed that the rain was going to Myrtle Beach too. It seemed to be running down Rt 95 right along with us.

At one point we just had to get off the road because we couldn't see. We outran it a little to the west and took a break at a gas station.

Crossing over the North Carolina state line was like Alice going through the looking glass. The rain stopped, the skies cleared, and like a dog who has already forgotten that he is not supposed to pee on the rug.....we were happy campers with the bad weather forgotten behind us. We stopped in Dunn, NC ( Roger...Over...Over....Roger...Done ) for lunch at a Hardee's. If you didn't understand the whole "Roger, Over" references, go and rent the movie "Airplane!".

The rest of the trip all of the way to Myrtle Beach was absolutely beautiful.

We arrived, checked in, unpacked the bikes, and immediately went in search of food and beverages to stock our rooms. That accomplished, we gorged ourselves on snack food and drink in preparation for a visit to the resort restaurant. We had the place all to ourselves and had a great dinner and a fun time. After dinner we made drinks and headed for one of the several hot tubs on the property. It was necessary to make some re-supply runs to the room for more drinks, but we prevailed and even took a stumble down to the beach before heading back up the the room somewhere after 2300hrs. All in all, a great ride and a great relaxing start to the week.

Everyone seems to be having a good time so far!