Key West or Bust, Day 13

Don’t Worry, Be… Flexible!
Friday May 23, 2008

We have ridden the Blue Ridge Parkway southward over a dozen times. I once counted the curves on the BRP, and by my count there are 2,159 southbound curves. I imagine the number going north would be the same, but having never traveled the length of it in the northbound direction, I don’t know. We are traveling northward, but today is not a day for counting curves.

The morning sky is clear and the temperature is 67F as we roll northward on the BRP after a leisurely breakfast. We have just over 200 miles to cover today, all on the BRP. About 25 miles or so into the Parkway, before the road starts climbing into the serious mountains, we are surprised by a detour sign. Ok, we're flexible, we’ll follow the detour. The detour signs put us on I-40 westbound, followed by a single sign that says “Use Exit 86 for Parkway Detour.” Exit 86?! We’re at Exit 59. That’s almost 30 miles of Interstate, bypassing the most scenic part of the Parkway! I inspect the BRP custom waypoints I’ve downloaded to the GPS, and see that this puts us past Mount Mitchell, which at 6,684 feet of elevation is the highest peak east of the Rockies.

So I’m kicking myself for not checking the BRP road closures. I always check the BRP road closures before striking out on a BRP ride. Except not this time. The detour is a complete surprise! But not to worry… we’re flexible! We can cope.

After following the detour signs to Exit 86, where we pick up Rt. 226, we stop for fuel near Marion, South Carolina. Three bikers are standing around talking. But not to each other. They’re on their Blackberries and Treos. One guy finishes his conversation and I ask him about the detour. “Oh yeah, I saw it on the Grandfather Mountain website, www.grandfather.com.” I pull up the website on my own Treo and see that the Blue Ridge Parkway is closed from Milepost 355 southward to Milepost 375. For the entire year. The most scenic part of the Parkway is off limits in 2008. Mount Mitchell, which is one of our goals, is accessible only from the north.

The detour takes us up a very twisty Rt. 226 to rejoin the Parkway. At one point, hitting a steep left-hand curve a little too hot, my track wonders a little farther toward the edge of the road than I’d planned. “Yikes!” says Kitty in my headset. Well, yeah, my track didn’t quite work out as planned, but I didn’t think it warranted a “Yikes” even though, two feet from my bike’s tires, there was a narrow grassy shoulder and then a steep mountainside drop-off. But that’s because I’m the rider and the bike talks to me: I’ve locked in to the tactile sense of the handlebars in my hands and my brain, I can feel the bike’s angle, I know the reserves I have to play with until I run out of room or have to change something to survive the curve. The passenger has none of those benefits. I was on the back of a Gold Wing once as a passenger. That was often enough. It was very scary for me, because all the sensory input I’m used to getting from the bike was completely missing. So, Baby, it’s ok to say “Yikes.” I’m flexible. I’ll try not to do that again! And it does cause me reflect on how such a small difference could make such a big difference. On most of these roads, tracking two feet one way or the other could spell the difference in a fantastic ride or a fantastic disaster.

Ok, we are flexible. We’ll reach Mount Mitchell from the north. Which, as it turns out, means backtracking southward for 23 miles before riding the narrow 25-mph road up to the mountain. It’s a clear day and I’m looking forward to the view from the observation deck. Clear days on Mount Mitchell are pretty rare. We ride to the top, chat with another biker couple who talk about the same “upside-down” way of travel that I feel, where the destination is secondary to the ride required to get there.

When we walk to the observation deck, we learn that it is closed for the season. Well, we are flexible, so instead of going to the observation deck, we ask the ranger about the road closure. He says there was a major road failure near Craggy Gardens and the entire road in that section has to be rebuilt. It will take at least this season and maybe part of next year to complete the work.

We ride down from the mountain top and backtrack 23 miles northward to our original entry point. The BRP is always a nice slow-down ride, and after a while I wonder why anyone would ever want to ride faster than 45 mph. From the overlooks we can see mountain ranges behind mountain ranges, lapping up into the blue hazy distance like waves on a misty beach. Although we missed what I think is the most spectacular part of the Parkway, it’s a rewarding ride.

Kitty is exceptionally quiet today, and I sense she’s tired. I finally pry out of her that, inexplicably, she only slept a couple hours last night. This has happened to both of us from time to time; no known reason, just unable to sleep well.

Our detour and backtracking will add probably 50 miles to the day’s ride, so I slide out of “poke-around” mode into “riding” mode. We do stop several times, once for a little lunch of peanut butter, carrots and apples that we always carry in the Escapade trailer’s cooler, and we invite another biker over to share an apple and a drink. Steve turns out to be a railroad engineer, and he has tales of the railroad to keep us entertained until it’s time to roll northward. He’s heading south, back to his home in Charlotte.

We swoop through the afternoon. There are two more small detours but these are both pleasant rides through the countryside before rejoining the BRP. We’d planned to ride about 200 miles. By now it’s nearing 6:00 PM and we’ve ridden over 260 miles, mostly on the Parkway, to Fancy Gap, at Milepost 199 in Virginia, where I-77 crosses the Parkway. But it’s ok, because we’re flexible.

Normally we check in to our hotel or motel, shower and change, and then find a restaurant within walking distance. Tonight, though, because we are flexible, we decide to eat at the tiny Lakeside Restaurant just off the Parkway and then ride to the motel I’d booked last night while in Asheville.

And so a day of flexibility once more ends well for us!