Deals Gap & Charleston, SC: 2012

[CosmicCowboy]

Next time you're through Murfreesboro, be sure to wave.  

[Mastros2]

  That was great! Thanks for sharing the ride with us.  

My brother and his family live in Charleston and it was nice seeing familiar sites.

[cyjo]

Nice write up!

[naustin]

How 'bout a few positive rep points to dig me out of my hole?  

Thanks guys!

[sleazy rider]

Since I've finally made it to zero myself, sure.  +1 for you.  

[sagerat]

Rise up!  A +1 for you.

[st2sam]

Rise up!  A +1 for you.

 and another .....

[naustin]

   Making progress!  

[dan88z]

Nice report and pics! My wife's family is from Mt Pleasant and we spend a couple weeks there every year. They live right off of Shem Creek, and my brother in law has a tour boat that docks there. I suppose it's my 2nd home! We did a similar ride, I left Delaware and headed to SC to meet my wife, and then we road into the mountains and took a week to meander our way back home. It rained on us just about every day too, passing showers and then it'd clear up, that sort of thing. We did 1 full day on the BRP and it was in and out of rain all day.

[Hotbrakes]

With all the rainy bad luck your next trip should be great...unless it snows.  

Speaking of rain, how did the gear do?  A lot of gear claims to be waterproof, but the true test is a full day in the rain that tends to prove the manufacturer wrong or reveal some sort of design flaw.

[jesse v]

...or if they just can’t get along in groups larger than 10 because whenever there were more than 7 human beings within a square mile, they seemed to have their own Baptist church.  Communities with larger populations of 500 or 600 people might have have 3 or 4 different flavors of Baptist church, my favorite being the “Primitive” Baptist Church, which I inferred to mean that the congregation didn’t have the cash to build a nicer building.  

  Hilarious!  ...And I'm a worship leader at a Baptist Church.  (Actually, we took word "baptist" out of our name a few years ago for this very reason... it's just a word that scares people, and for that matter, really doesn't mean anything.)

THanks for the great RR.

[naustin]

Nice report and pics! My wife's family is from Mt Pleasant and we spend a couple weeks there every year. They live right off of Shem Creek, and my brother in law has a tour boat that docks there. I suppose it's my 2nd home! We did a similar ride, I left Delaware and headed to SC to meet my wife, and then we road into the mountains and took a week to meander our way back home. It rained on us just about every day too, passing showers and then it'd clear up, that sort of thing. We did 1 full day on the BRP and it was in and out of rain all day.

I would have loved to take a tour boat ride!   If we go there again - I'll have to get the details from you!

With all the rainy bad luck your next trip should be great...unless it snows.  

Speaking of rain, how did the gear do?  A lot of gear claims to be waterproof, but the true test is a full day in the rain that tends to prove the manufacturer wrong or reveal some sort of design flaw.

The gear did great, actually.  Of course, the Mesh outer shells get soaked through immediately.  But, the liners are virtually impenetrable.   Due to the large fairings on the ST1300, and the warm temperatures, I never actually used the rain-liner for the pants.  We just didn't need them as the rain stayed off our legs.  Both Ann and I did use the rain-liners for the jacket frequently.  The nice thing is you have two options - you can either wear the rain liner as a separate jacket, and zip it up like any other jacket and then wear the shell over it, or, you can attach it to the inside of the shell, and snap the sleeves and collar to the loops.   Either way, it worked great and kept out the wet.  I didn't bother attaching the liner to the shell, because wearing the liner as an under-jacket made it much faster to take on and off (which was an exercise we repeated roughly 7 times per day on this trip).  Ann found the jacket fit better when the liner was actually attached, so she did it that way with no performance difference.  I would recommend this gear to anyone it to anyone as a great value for the money. (Tourmaster Intake III Jacket)

  Hilarious!  ...And I'm a worship leader at a Baptist Church.  (Actually, we took word "baptist" out of our name a few years ago for this very reason... it's just a word that scares people, and for that matter, really doesn't mean anything.)

THanks for the great RR.

No offense, of course!    It really was just funny how many there were...  

[CJBurbank]

It had been two years since we have taken a multi-day trip on the motorcycle, and while we planned this trip several months prior, the day of departure snuck up on us quickly.   This “rushed” feeling would stick with us for the entire trip, and looking back, we realized that we tried to cover too much ground in too little time.

My wife and I had this very same issue when we did our trip to The Dragon a few years ago. Great ride report, I really enjoyed it.  

-Chris