I wasn’t always a motorcycle enthusiast, but I’ve always been intrigued. Maybe I can blame Marlon Brando in “The Wild One” or Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape” for starting the itch that needed scratching.
My first foray was in Kauai, Hawaii, as a marine on a Kawasaki Ninja 1990 ZX-11. That bike was stupid fast, and I was just stupid. I had some gateway bikes afterward, like the glorified scooter, a 1997 Honda Rebel CMX 250, that I puttered around the back streets and beachfront drives of San Diego.
It wasn’t until I went on a blind date, and she showed up on a 1999 Triumph Thunderbird Sport, that I was like, “Woah, that’s a sexy bike.” I still remember the bumblebee yellow and black accents. She allowed me to take it for a quick spin, and I thought, “One day, when I get my shit together, I’m going to get something like that.”
Well, 25 years later, I still don’t have my shit all the way together, but I do have a couple of bikes that I’ve spent the last year really getting some miles on.
After I traded the never-ending gridlock, figuratively and literally, of Southern California for the wide-open Western North Carolina mountain ranges with their beautiful sweeping curves, stunning distant vistas, and the slow-down-and-get-your-chin-pointed-into-the-turn-type of twisties, I finally fell into what could only be described as the “spirit of motorcycling.”
It’s a type of meditation, an active resting for the mind. The only time you are hyper-focused with the multitask at hand, yet your heart rate isn’t a hair past resting.
I now own two smaller, fun bikes: a 2017 Triumph Street Cup Café Racer and a slick standard 2018 Moto Guzzi V7 III Dark Carbon. I got a mountain biking/beer-drinking buddy of mine out on the Guzzi, and he showed up at my house a week later with a Royal Enfield INT 650 in that sexy orange and chrome, and we decided to ride the entire Blue Ridge Parkway in three manageable legs.
Cherokee to Boone, North Carolina
(231 miles, 7 hours, 53 minutes)
Living in Waynesville, North Carolina, I’m acutely familiar with this part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and honestly, between Asheville and Cherokee, there simply is no better part of the scenic roadway. Richland Balsam is the highest point of the parkway at 6,053 feet. Stunning views, beautiful sweeping turns. It’s home.
The ride from Asheville to Boone was new for me, and it was a lot of fun. We rode a little while around Little Switzerland just to check it out. The most disappointing part of this ride was that we hit the dreaded fog right around milepost 304, Linn Cove Viaduct, so as we cruised this engineering treasure, we were riding on instinct, looking out into the distance of a Hollywood Mordoresque vacuum of fog.
Boone to Roanoke, Virginia
(194 miles, 6 hours 53 minutes)
The parkway starts to descend in elevation here, but this section is a lot of fun and my favorite leg of the trip. In this region, we were able to see a lot of very cool things. At milepost 213, we stopped at the Blue Ridge Music Center & Museum and heard some live picking and history with their Roots of American Music displays.
Thirty-seven miles up the road, we stopped off at Mabry Mill around milepost 176, and this was literally one of the most picturesque places I’ve seen. It was a nice break.
The road in this region was just a ton of fun and smooth sailing nice turns, and the terroir had changed significantly. We ended in rain, so we had to get our gear out because it was pretty hard for a little while. A note to the wise: find out if Virginia Tech is playing a football game when you are landing in Roanoke because we ended up staying way out in arguably the worst hotel and were very happy to leave. That hotel is worth a story of its own.
Roanoke to Rockfish Gap
(158 miles, 6 hours, 25 minutes)
This leg starts out right at sunup. We made a stop off at a Sheetz for gas and some fresh-to-order brekkie sammies. About 10 miles into the climb, we hit fog, and not light, but the type of fog that you saw in the movie “The Fog.” We pulled over to a rest stop right by an entrance point of the Appalachian Trail, and there we stayed for a good 45 minutes, listening to the fog mist hit the tree leaves like light rain.
We did a bit of calisthenics and stretches. We tried getting back out on the road a couple more times, only to have to pull over and wait again. This was a little frustrating because you are all amped up and ready for your final leg and these beautiful views, but we were robbed. I started to have some more frustrating neck/trapezoid pain on this day.
Toward the end, things cleared up, and I was getting a little stupid. Faster than I should have been going into a tight curve and almost launched off the edge of a turn. This was awakening, but put the final miles into a bit of a tense ride. We stopped and walked around a little lake and went into a type of campsite and saw a bunch of deer. What started out hectic turned into smooth sailing all the way to the northern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway at Rockfish Gap. From there, we headed to Charlottesville.
I’ve never had that much fun on long-distance rides before, especially at my tender age of 52. We were not on big cruisers and comfortable bikes for long range. My body felt every bump, and I probably needed some sort of trigger point injections in my traps.
Every section of the Blue Ridge Parkway is an absolute gem, and something I will do again. The different terroir in the regions was amazing, and so many parts of the parkway are chock full of brilliant landscapes, turns and curves.
Next time, with a little more knowledge, I’ll be able to take even more in. Maybe I’ll lengthen the ride to spend some more time in the local communities to see more of their charm.
— Scot Blair
