A ride through Hell

I've already said my piece about riding in the rain. I'll take any day on a bike over any day in a car. That being said... My ride from Boone to Asheville was a bit of an ordeal.

The first leg of the trip was pretty tame. After a great time in a cozy town like Boone, I was feeling down-right warm and fuzzy. As we proceeded to make our way through the mountains, I felt the storm brewing, and knew it was time to face the music. I switched over to my rain gear and expected to get a little wet. "Maybe it'll be like my trip through Connecticut. Ooh, won't that be exciting!" I thought, naive head up optimistic ass. Turned out I was off by orders of magnitude.

How to describe this storm... I'm coming up with a bunch of cliche shit like, deluge of biblical proportion,  or sheets/buckets/fuckloads of rain, but you get it, it was bad. Roaring, surging waves of cold, evil sky-hate assailed me. It made me wonder how there could be a single desert on this entire planet when rain like that can happen. Cars were pulling off the road. Yes, cars. Pulling over because they feared for their safety.

I splashed through puddles that reached my brake rotors. I hydroplaned across rivers of run-off that crisscrossed the road. The speed I had to hold was fast enough to not get bullied off the road by the inevitable asshole that would wind up right behind me, but not fast enough to sweep the rain off of my face shield. The only way I could see anything was to actually keep my shield open and get peppered on the bare eyeballs. The utter absurdity of my situation was too much for me to bear with a straight face. Every blinding splash from an oncoming semi made me laugh harder at myself. I amused myself by playing the "what part of me is wettest?" game until it was a tie across the board. After that came "what part of me is coldest?" I didn't find it difficult to keep my spirits up. I thought ahead to the deep South, when I would be broiling hot. I thought of the open desert of the southwest, where sun and heat would surely conspire to burn me to a crisp and explode the air-cooled heart of my trusty steed. I shared a moment with The Monster.  "We're gonna remember this one!" Contentment comes easy when you leave sanity behind.

My Fellow Traveller and I descended from the mountains and circled the city toward our campsite amid crackling lightning. I think you can still see the finger marks on her steering wheel to this day. 

All told, it took five days for my boots to dry out completely. They still squeak when I walk, which I don't even understand. I think they are still wet on a sub-atomic level. The Monster needed a new chain and a front sprocket, but we survived it. Turns out, it will take more than that to stop us.

Coming in my next posts, Asheville, day trips up to the sky and back, and I finally introduce you to my hands-down favorite person of my trip thusfar: Yosemite Sam.