Nate's Solo TAT 2014

Hey inmates!

In September, I left New York City on a DR650 and rode it down to Tellico Plains, TN, and ended up in Port Orford, OR. It took me 33 days and over 6500 miles, but I did it - and I did it alone, with just 1 full season and a few thousand miles of riding experience.

This is going to be a fun story :)

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Nice intro, I'm in.

If larryboy is in on this one, I'm definitely in! I've been giving the TAT some serious consideration.

Day 1 (9/3/14): New York City to Strasburg, VA

Day one. I was a bundle of nerves leaving New York. I got up at 6am, kissed my girlfriend goodbye, and took the subway to the garage, where I had packed my bike the night before.

The Steed: Suzuki DR650

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Modded out for touring. Farkles include: Cyclops ADV headlight, Slipstreamer windshield, Moose handguards, centerstand, Wolfman bags, skidplate

This would be a whopper of a day - I'd end up covering five states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. The scenery, accents, and food would all become completely different, in just 300 miles and a day of riding.

The first bit of drama came in Pennsylvania - my windshield bracket had come loose and was tilting to the side. I pulled over to get lunch (at a McDonald's - it seemed appropriate for setting off on a huge road trip, somehow), and discovered that one of the tiny hex set screws on my Slipstreamer windshield had come loose and disappeared. Luckily the other one was still, so armed with that I was helped by the lovely (though slightly crosseyed) Carol from ACE Hardware. Feeling like a Formula One mechanic for having installed a new screw with some blue loctite, I trundled through Lancaster.

For this part of the trip, I was slabbing it to Tellico Plains, the start of the TAT. But instead of doing the interstate, I set my TomTom GPS app to avoid the interstates. This ended up taking me, accidentally, through Gettysburg on US 15.

Taken by surprise, I pulled in quickly to the visitor center. I didn't know this, but Gettysburg is basically a big park of the former battlefield. You can drive through most of it. So, armed with a map, I rode around the old battle lines for a while.

Your studly narrator on the left​

Gettysburg was a lot more interesting than I expected. The cannons are lined up on the side of the road, as if you just sort of drove up on them on that fateful day on July 1st, 1863, and the soldiers had simply walked away and gone home. They probably wished they had.

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I pulled into Front Royal, VA as the sun was setting. Front Royal is known as the beginning of Skyline Drive, the scenic highway that leads into the Blue Ridge. I pulled open the Hotel Tonight app on my phone to get a sense of where I could stay. The options in Front Royal all sounded kind of awful, and I didn't feel like camping in an RV park with a waterslide, but a tiny old hotel in Strasburg, nearby, sounded great. It turned out the Hotel Strasburg was inexpensive, and awesome.

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I got settled in easily enough. The streets of Strasburg were completely dead by 8pm, when I went for a walk while I called my girlfriend. It was incredible - all the houses had wraparound porches, everyone spoke with an accent. It was just like what I wanted the South to be. And it would only get better.

nice!

In.

I think you mean Front Royal... but stoked to hear the rest of your journey!!

I'm in! Sounds like a great trip so far!

Nnn

Waiting for more

Day 2 (9/4/14): Strasburg, VA to Montebello, VA/Blue Ridge (~260 miles)

Awoke in Strasburg to a lovely day. I hadn't quite figured out how to unpack and repack the bike yet, this being my first ever motorcycling trip, so it took me quite a while to get on the road. The Strasburg Hotel had an incredibly good breakfast on as well - warm food with good coffee. Had a good chat with an older gentleman about the Corvette he was driving with his wife on a road trip around the South.

I took about 80 miles of good county highway to get to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I decided to skip Skyline Drive after reading some not-so-glowing reviews here on ADVRider and instead decided to get to the goods on the BRP. This decision became one of many painful scope-cutting trip decisions. I quickly realized that, if you wanted, you could take years to get from one coast to the next.

In the South, the roads are basically paved with war memorials. I spotted a new civil war memorial basically every half mile.​

At the entrance to the BRP, I spotted two obviously lost young hikers, peering off down the hillside. I stopped for a moment and waved, and it turned out they were lost, looking for the Adirondack Trail. I pulled out MotionX, the GPS app I would use for the entirety of the trip (no external GPS device, just an iPhone 5), and tried to help them find it. I'm not sure they did.

The first section of the Blue Ridge Parkway was phenomenal - I started whooping and hollering in my helmet. The DR pulls wonderfully out of the curves in 4th gear. The views were great, but obscured by fog due to the drizzly weather.

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However, as I kept riding, the Parkway got a lot duller. Less curvy, and mountain views were replaced by straight, flat sections through the forest. Better than the interstate? Absolutely. I ended up not deciding to ride the full 450 miles of the BRP for this reason. I didn't do this ride to ride slab, of course

There were tons of bikers. I talked to a guy from Ireland on a rented Gold Wing - the new, futuristic looking one. The thing looked like a small bus. Also saw a guy on a Buell Lightning - you dont see many of those in the wild!

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Travel by motorcycle is great - the bike really seems to make people interested in speaking to you. Every other stop, I was getting into a conversation with a stranger about this or that. However, being just a day into the trip, I still felt like a big poser when I said "Oh yeah, I'm headed to Oregon."

I camped on the BRP - a managed site called Rocky Knoll (?). At this point of the trip, my nerves were still jangling. Solo travel is tough like that. Camping is the hardest - with no distraction of the Road, your mind is left to wander down infinite pathways of worst-case-scenario and what-if.

When I was in high school, I had an idea that I would backpack solo for a week along a portion of the Superior Trail in Minnesota. I ended up going out unprepared mentally (but prepared physically) and badly injured myself on the second day after rushing, trying to keep up the miles I had set for myself, cutting my trip short. I was determined not to freak myself out again - to stay calm, take it slow, and prevail in the face of fear.

Subways from the house to the garage, accents, different food....I'm in!!!

looks to be a great trip and a great attitude not to get in a hurry. Seems we all try to get to the destination in stead of just enjoying the path. Thanks for sharing and am looking forward to more!

Great story so far.
This is what my son and I want to do.
I'm in!


Jennifer

Day 3 (9/5/14) - Blue Ridge Parkway to Tellico Plains, TN (~305 mi)

I had got through the first night camping without incident. It actually went better than I thought it would, which was a good omen, since I had planned on camping for the majority of the trip. I slept really well for just the thin Thermolite foam mattress I had brought along, not a sore muscle at all when I woke up. I suppose being young has its advantages on these big trips!

The first half of the day's riding was great. Anxious to reach the start of the TAT, I decided to skip the final bit of the BRP and take the backroads through Virginia to Tellico. It was great - well paved and curvy county roads.

Along the way, I hit a really great canyon road. I think I was in far Western VA by this point. Super tight and curvy. As I rounded a bend, I saw a guy standing on the outside by the guard rail with his hand up, in a "stop" motion. I slowed, and saw a guy on a blue Harley had slid off the road into the guardrail. It must've happened just a few seconds earlier, as his buddies had just parked their bikes and were walking over to help.

Where the half-ton Harley had laid a few moments earlier. Check the ATGATT on the guy on the right.
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Thankfully, the guy was perfectly fine. The bike had tried to go down the ditch, but the guardrail had stopped it. It took about 5 of us to pull the thing out of the ditch, but once it was out, it started just fine and nothing seemed damaged other than a few cosmetics and chrome. It sounded like the guy dragged a peg, freaked out and let off the throttle, and the back wheel lifted as the bike leaned further in to the corner, sending him into a lowside.

Looking back on these pictures, I marvel at how clean my bike is. You can see some of that ubiquitous Southern creeper vine (starts with a K?) in the background.​

The last 150 miles of the day were a lot more boring. Long, straight, flat US highway to Knoxville. After days like this, my hands are still shaky at bedtime from the bike's vibes. The earplugs and windscreen are critical pieces of kit on days like this.

At Tellico, I pulled in to what would become an impromptu base of operations for the next few days: the wonderful Farmhouse Inn. It seems like the secret is out now about this place (which I heard about through ADVRider), so get a reservation before they start filling up and realizing they can charge more. It's a wonderful B&B run by a great inmate and his wife. I'll get more into them later.

Tellico Plains, TN is an interesting little town. Tons of history - but my first impressions riding in weren't great. It was so tiny you could barely even tell it was a town at all, and lacked the charm of some of the other places I'd end up seeing on my trip. But the riding - oh, the riding. I had no idea this was the base for something called the Cherohala Skyway and...oh yeah, Deal's Gap is on the other side, just a few hours away! Wow!

I wasn't in great spirits when I arrived at the Farmhouse Inn. It was raining, and the long afternoon of slab had vibrated my head out of place. The anxiety returned thinking about the days ahead. Where will I stay? Will I be to make it through all the crazy off-road stuff that laid ahead?

I made two promises to myself on that first night in Tellico: if it gets too tough, there's no shame in slabbing it around and getting back on the TAT past the obstacle. Riding solo, you just don't have the same "well-screw-it-lets-go-for-it"-ability as a group rider. Second, schedule. I wasn't worried about staying out on the road longer than I had planned, but I was worried about the oncoming winter. I told myself that night if it became unbearable, I'd put the bike in storage and come back next year. The only thing that mattered was the goal: Port Orford. How and when, I'd leave to the Gods of the road.

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Postscript:

Thanks for all the subscriptions, guys. It really motivates me to write these posts out when I know you're all listening! Any constructive feedback welcomed - I've never done an RR before so I'm sure I'm screwing it up somehow!

In! Great trip you have planned and so far think you are doing a fine job on the RR! Ride safe and have a fun adventure.

In. Keep the story coming...