Memorable trips

[Tbeck]

Since we've been reminiscing about bike stuff, I got to thinking about memorable bike rides.
In 1982 I rode my magna from ft Walton to Little Rock. Got chased by a cop, frozen by an unexpected storm and hit in the face by every conceivably bug. Bought my first goldwing after that trip.
On the goldwing the wife and I took a ride to Georgia and ran into a little carnival so we stopped for a bit. By the time we left the temperature had dropped so low that frost was forming on the windshield. We hadn't packed anything warm because it was in the 90's when we headed out. Had to stop about every 10 miles to warm up, lol.
The Fontana trip was a hoot. Wife and I made it about 20 miles before it began to rain. We rode almost the entire day in heavy rain. Then if that wasn't fun enough, I couldn't find my side road I take south beside 77. I did 2 u turns on the interstate because I kept running into tunnels that I can't do. Finally said the heck with it and jumped on a southbound road, and then down another southbound side road. Wish I could remember that route because it was solid Twisties up and down the mountain all day. When we finally decided we needed to find a hotel for the night we found that we had ridden all day up and down that twisty road and only moved south about 50 miles as the crow flies. Good news is the town we were in had an entrance to the BRP just a few miles down the road. So day 3 was uneventful until we got 19 miles from Fontana when the skies let loose again and poured until we arrived at the rally location.
The last was again with my wife and we got lost following my GPS in northern Maine. Had me taking 4 wheeler paths through the back country and was telling me that these were roads . Turned out being a lot of fun and there wasn't a bit of traffic .
There's been many more memorable ride's like my trip to Yellowstone with my wife, or my ride to Alaska with Ed, but the funny thing is that the MOST memorable ride's are the one's where thing's go completely sideways.
I can't wait to read other's ride's

[MattSunn]

Most of my memorable trips were miserable trips and most of my trips were miserable. Bad weather and other not so nice stuff seemed to occur on most, at least 90%, of my motorcycle trips. After a while, the lure of the open road was not appealing.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Don't rightly know if this was a memorable trip or not but I have to say it was the most miserable I have ever been on a bike trip ever..
1970 or '71 ( I've never kept track of the years and for the most part depended on the few dated photos that I took on my bike trips)
Anyway, after spending 4 days in Daytona Beach for the Rally( we actually ran out of funds ) we decided to head back home early, bad move, the first day the weather was pleasant and back then there were very few sections of Interstate 10 that were finished so we kept to Highway 90W, most of which were good, maintained roads.
We made good time the first day and after finding a nice roadside park with plenty of picnic tables we stopped for the night in Pascagoula, Miss.
Headed out the next morning with threatening cloud cover and we knew we were in for it for sure and lo and behold the rain opened up in Biloxi, Miss with thunder boomers plus strong winds that were throwing our 883's all over the highway, had to stop numerous times to reposition our meager belongings. No rainsuits, I know but with limited storage space on our sissy bars, rainsuits were a luxury we did not have, but all of us had our Field Jackets with the liners to protect us from the elements.
We were hugging the coast all the way to Pass Christian, Miss and we thought for sure we had passed through the worst of it..wrong , it was just started..From then on we suffered terribly from a driving rain straight in our faces all the way to somewhere above New Orleans where we jumped on highway 190 west to avoid the Metro traffic, from there it was still raining but without the driving rain and thunder boomers.
Needless to say it rained all the way home.. 335+ miles of a living hell, the last 150 miles were not as bad but still a PITA
...don't remember how many stops we had to make, with smaller 2.1 gallon fuel tanks and a range of a little over 100 miles they were a lot of breaks thrown in for good measure.. only places where we could warm up and dry off a bit were the service station restrooms, if they were opened.
We arrived home after dark, 11 1/2 hours on the road, drenched and shivering although the temps were in the 60's, being soaking wet it still felt like 40 degrees.

We made two more trips to Daytona Beach, or should I say Ormond Beach where we set up for the nights there. None came even close to the misery of that miserable trip, although one was really cold as is the case of weather in the deep south even for March. But I would rather it be cold and dry!

ps: after this trip we decided if we were going to be making long distance trips a rainsuit, along with the other necessary items, would be a must item to have,!
And in our subsequent long distance trips were riding bigger bikes with much bigger fuel ranges and storage.

[Tbeck]

Isn't it funny that the trip ride's with the worst weather, always seem to be remembered? We all can laugh about it year's after the fact but at the time it sure seemed to suck.
I recall my wife and I, shortly after getting married, riding over to Pensacola FL from Ft Walton just for an afternoon ride. Heck we didn't even own rain gear back then. Anyhow the skies let loose on our return trip. Was raining so hard that I had a puddle on my lap. The worst of it is that it occurred on a stretch of hwy 98 where there wasn't any cover. We huddled beside a billboard for about a half hour to protect us a little from the driving rains. Soaked completely doesn't even come close to describing how wet we got.
We still laugh about that one whenever we are riding and get caught in the rain.

Another time the northeast IA member's decided to meet for a ride near wellsboro pa. I had to leave my house by 4am in order to make it on time so 4 it was. 15 minutes down the road it began to sprinkle and 5 minute's later HUGE bolt's of lightning were striking all around me so I sought out shelter in a carwash stall. Had about 10 more minutes of lightning before it cleared out and I could resume traveling. Even though the lightning let up the rain continued hard the entire way. By the time I arrived to meet the gang I was soaked clear through my rain suit jeans and shirt. Heck the rain even got into my helmet soaking my head. Good laugh's.