June 21, 2007 - Day 5

Today was a little different for us. We slept in and then spent another hour trying to locate a bike shop with a tire. With thousands of Honda's descending on the city, of which at least a few hundred are Valkeries or Tourers, I would have thought that at least one of the 3 dealers here would have thought to stock at least one front tire. None did. After finding that no one has one in stock, I ask how long it would take to order one. One day he says, so I ask if he could put it on tomorrow if I order it now. He transfers me to parts where after waiting on hold again, I got a good surprise. He ask me to wait a second cause the parts guy was hollering at him. It seems they found the tire I wanted. So we told him to hold it and rode to the shop. It was going to take a couple hours, so we decided to leave it and go to breakfast. A quick stop at (our choice, either Waffle House or Shoney's), we picked the latter this time. Then since we still had plenty of time and the shop was open till 6 PM, we decided to go to show's vender booths and check them out. On the way there, I saw the image of the reason they call them the Blue Ridge Mountains. We managed to score on a couple of items that we have not had luck finding before. One was a small packet of grommets that hold on the cover panels over the battery, some Lethermate for Karen's saddle bags, a quick strap release for my helmet so that I don't have to thread it each time I put it on, new night riding goggles, (Karen broke her's on the way down), new summer riding gloves, (I have been using the same pair for a couple of years with a hole in one because it is hard to find this kind.), and a few other select items. I did not intend to spend this much, but it is hard to find some of this stuff. After visiting just about every booth there, we made our way over the the ride area. Here you are supposed to be able to ride the new bikes from Triumph, BMW, Honda, and Victory. I saw one Triumph that I sort of liked. It was a big 6 cylinder Rocket III Tourer. We also looked at the current Honda's, but I was not all the impressed. Still I thought we my take a ride. We went into the tent and found that to ride, you had to be in line at 8:30 to wait for them to open at 9 AM, then after verifying your license and getting you to sign a waver, they would assign you a time that you could come beck and ride. Had we know that, we would have done so early that day, but since we did not and I don't really want to be there that early to be assigned a riding time tomorrow so that I can miss tomorrow's ride too. I guess I didn't really want to ride them anyway. After all that might just make me want to buy one. By this time it was already 4 PM anyway and we still had a 30 minute ride to the dealer, if I can remember how to get there. This town may have very Biker Friendly people, but the street layout and the Honda Hoot are NOT biker friendly. You have to park the bikes and walk everywhere and the close gates to the parking lot are not allowed. You have to walk to the far gate so that they can check your arm band, then come back next to the lot on the inside, even though they have the other gate open with people telling you that you can't use that gate cause a ride might come back any time in the next 30 minutes and they apparently cannot pass pedestrians with only a 14 foot opening. The Hoot entrance into the park is not at the park, but rather at the zoo entrance, etc. Whoever laid this out apparently either does not ride, or does not have to abide by the same rules that the paying customers do. Enough complaining, we found our way to the bike shop and picked up my bike with a new tire on it. Met another couple also having trouble with their bike and had a pleasant conversation. Then we came back to the hotel. We go gas across the street and decided on Hooters for dinner. The place was almost empty, but there were about 15 waitresses. I guess they were expecting a crowd later. We had a pleasant meal and conversation with Jessika, and then back to the room to try to get caught up for a change. Tomorrow we plan to ride the "Best Dam Ride and Fish Fry". This is only supposed to be about 90 miles, so if you are out there tomorrow, we'll see you on the byways...