This is the beginning of something special…

….or it’s just me starting a travel blog, which is special of course!

*Hold for applause*

We’ll call this Chapter 1 of many, because I love to travel, and I am normally up to some shenanigans when I do (especially with friends).

I figured I’d start this series because I normally tell everyone who is interested enough to ask, “What the hell did you do in ____?” or “Oh, how was traveling to ____?”. And people seem to enjoy my travel stories enough to listen for 10 minutes, so why not have a place all my friends can read about it?

So… Here. We. Go.

The Wild Hog Boys Take On Asheville

The perk of working for a company that makes motorcycles?

You get to rent out motorcycles.

and when you have co-worker friends that are just as adventurous as you?

You get to take road trips with your friends on bikes.

The boys in question: Me, Bobby, and Korbin.

The destination: Asheville, North Carolina.

The Ride Up

Since it would be a 3 hour ride, we decided to get up stupid early and meet up at Bobby’s place at 5:30 AM. We did a pre-ride check, talked about route details, then we were off.

For context, Bobby and I are newer riders, and Korbin has been riding for about 8 years. So riding on the highway for multiple hours was going to be new experience for me and for Bobby both with alot of learning opportunities along the way.

A crucial lesson I learned: Future is a terrible roadtrip artist. Especially when he’s in your ears for longg periods of time because you’re on a bike and you can’t skip a song while riding – sorry Freebandz.

We took GA State Route 74 that had us go from north GA straight into NC and rode under the speed limit the whoooole time 🙂 .

Being the young pup rider I was (which I am no longer, after this damn trip I feel like a vet 😤), I was taking it all in on the way up. The sights, the winding roads, and the long straightaways that felt like they belonged to us.

This is how I looked:

There’s something about being on open roads, surrounded by nature, with the adrenaline rush of going 75+ mph on two wheels as wind hits your body.

As we went up, we would change who was in lead, middle, and caboose.

We quickly found out that putting us in different spots led to different, let’s say…situations.

Here’s the rankings of our formations:

Bobby first, Josh second, then Korbin = GREAT formation and pacing (we would get complements from military groups)

Bobby, Korbin, then Josh = Same as above.

Korbin, Josh, then Bobby = Josh would egg Korbin on to speed up and Bobby would get left wayyy behind.

Josh in lead = doesn’t matter who was behind him EXTREMELY separated group as Josh would leave everyone else behind (1.7/10 formation and pacing)

As you can see, my pacing awareness wasn’t the best lol. So the first two orders listed above were best, and would actually come in clutch for dicey situations later on this trip (more on that in a few).

We left Georgia at 5:30 AM but didn’t get up to Asheville until 11 AM (definitely not record time), as we had to stop at many different points because of: #1. gas and #2. group separation (that I might have or might not have played a part in).

Asheville

I’ll give a brief summary here of the city and our time there.

Hot. Great mountain views. Hippy dippy. Nice people. Good food at a spot called Jerusalem Cafe. Hilly city. Walking around hilly city. Hot.

Caught some cool pics right out side of downtown, then we headed back to GA.

The Trip Back

Part of me would love to say the ride back to GA was smooth, but IT WAS ANYTHING BUT.

*Ahem* so let me explain.

So, as we’re heading back on our bikes to go home, taking the fast — and more boring I-85 south — way, I’m greeted by a text in my headphones an hour into the ride:

*in Siri’s voice* “From your girlfriend: ‘Careful driving back! There’s a storm! and a cloud with lightning emoji“

Since we were doing 70+ mph on the highway at the moment, I motioned over to Korbin and Bobby to get off at the next exit.

We pulled off by a abandoned convenience store about 15 minutes from the Georgia state line, and I broke the news about the text I got. So we came up with a gameplan of what to do if sh*t got real with the weather on the way back.

The plan was to have a crisis/ABORT MISSION signal that Korbin would throw up at the front of the pack that looked like this:

🙅🏽‍♂️

And hopped back on our bikes and we were on our way…

Spoiler – sh*t got real.

We crossed over in to Georgia from South Carolina, and looking behind us there was sun and nice looking clouds while ahead of us it was BLACK.

When I saw this I said to myself “Oh……my…….God”, then hoped for the best. The sky looked like Zeus was about settle a personal beef with us.

5 minutes later, all hell broke lose.

First came the rain, coming down at a force that I felt it stinging my legs through my jeans. Then came the wind….lord the wind.

The first gust pushed all three of us 12 FEET HORIZONTALLY on the highway while other cars were around us. Scary stuff.

As mentioned earlier, our crisis signal was  🙅🏽‍♂️

 🙅🏽‍♂️ = TAKE THE NEXT IMMEDIATE EXIT and we will wait out the rain under shelter.

When the first gust of wind hit and we were getting dumped on, I was ready for the 🙅🏽‍♂,️  so we could pull over and wait the rain out. As were getting close to the next exit with Korbin at the front of the pack, the exit came….and the exit went.

We rode past it, and no 🙅🏽‍♂️ was thrown up.

“Ohhhhh boy…”

At that point, the thought crossed my mind was that this could be it for me, and if so, my life was pretty dope and this was at least a cool way to go.

Much better than going out sad by catching a terrible asthma attack with no inhaler, or choking on a watermelon flavored hard candy at Thanksgiving (true childhood story – it felt like a pretty close call).

BUT THANK GOD, because that first gust of wind would be the worst, and though it was raining hard, it didn’t rain any harder for the rest of the ride.

One more gust of wind like that, and it might have been looking shaky for 1 of the 3 us (probably me since I’m the newest rider).

Side note – Have you ever been slowly entirely soaked before? No? Well that’s exactly what happened to me. First it started in my shoes, lower legs and arms. With the water slowly soaking into my clothes at my extremities, then working its way to the center of my body, with my drawls being last. All I could do was sit there and felt it happen. Fun experience.

After what was 30 to 45 minutes riding in the rain, but felt like easily over an hour, the rain slowed and we pulled into to a gas station to collect ourselves.

We had one of those “Yo did that just happen?” moments and processed what happened 30 mins ago when we all thought it was over for us.

Korbin said that in the 8 years he’s been riding that was one of the worst storms he’s ridden in. Aaand of course we talked about that 🙅🏽‍♂️ not being put up (which in the end turned out to be fine for all of us)…but in the moment me and Bobby were mentally like “Yooooo….uhhhhhh”. We laughed about it after the fact, but we sure as hell WEREN’T laughing 30 mins before.

From there, we pulled off and kept going back to Atl. The last last leg of the drive was MUCH better then the one before. The rain calmed all the way down and Zeus’ beef with us was settled. It was another 45 minutes, and we were back.

We were tired, soaked, and hungry but happy to be back. It felt like two days had passed since we left that morning.

In terms of my motorcycle experience, I was fundamentally a different person since leaving that morning. It felt like I had done all day bootcamp advanced rider course (which is what it basically was). I was happy though, I learned a lot about riding and myself.

I went home hopped in the shower, ate, went to bed and thought to myself “Lord Jesus what a day”.

I told Korbin that we’ll have to run it back, but going a longer distance in a different direction to somewhere like Texas. He’s game. Let’s get it 🤠.

More adventure blogs to come in the future.

Some some things learned/life reminders from the trip:

• Nature is beautiful

• Nature is also no damn joke, we are infinitesimally small compared to its sheer force power

• Storms come and pass not just in nature, but in life as well

• You create bonds others people when you make it through turbulent times together.

• The world is a cool place, stepping our of your bubble and talking to people is important.

• The biker wave is a thing.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.

— Josh