I was on the RX3 and Blake was on his GSXR 750. Before we could leave the house our phones started connecting to each other's Sena headsets, so we had to play around with them in the driveway for a bit. While fixing the headsets a neighbor came by, who happens to ride a KLR and her husband rides a Tiger, and I finally got to meet her for the first time. She was mentioning that she hadn't ridden for quite a while as her husband has been away on the weekends and she's just not very confident on the KLR if something were to happen since she's not mechanically inclined. I showed her the RX3 and told her to swing a leg over it and she got a huge grin on her face and said "this is the kind of bike I've been looking for as it's the perfect size and I could pick it up if I had to." I told her that I could have picked up the bike by myself when I dumped it in Baja had I not been in sand. She seemed very impressed with the bike and mentioned she was thinking of going on a ladies camping weekend with some other adv riders in July and told me to look into it. Sounds right up my alley! So she continued on with her walk and we finally got our Senas sorted, so we left the house to go eat some breakfast at a local Cajun place not too far from us, Henry's Louisiana Grill. I forgot to check to see if they were even open for breakfast before we left, so we decided to ride around Red Top Mountain and just do lunch at Henry's. My gas light was blinking as we pulled out of the driveway, so we ride to the closest gas station to fill up. While there, 4 other bikes pulled in prior to heading out for their rides. This reinforced the feeling that it was going to be a great day to ride!! We were almost backed over by a lady in a BMW backing out of her spot at Dunkin donuts, but Blake gave her the customary good driver salute and we scooted around her. We successfully pulled out of the gas station for the start of our adventure.
We "thought" we knew some back roads to get us to Red Top so we headed off on our bikes for about 20 miles before realizing we had gone a different way than expected. We decided to just turn right on one of the bigger roads as we knew we had to get north and we're heading west, so we took a chance on a road that dumped us into familiar territory. We took our time riding through the state park and enjoying the beautiful weather and when we got to the other side and were faced with taking the interstate to Henry's, we decided to turn around and head back through the state park to some roads we knew and take back roads again. After riding mostly interstates on this bike for 5 straight days in Baja, it was a completely different ride having the bike in more of its element on the back roads at slower speeds. We pulled up to Henry's and parked across the street as the Main Street parking can get a bit hectic. We walked into Henry's carrying our helmets and were swiftly seated and then greeted by Henry himself. He threw some Mardi Gras beads around my neck and welcomed us back and then told us that in the future we can leave our helmets with the hostess and wished he was out on his bike today. It's so nice to be so welcomed as a rider in an establishment. It's surprising how many times I've been treated differently because I have my helmet in my hand.
I begged Blake to let me order a serving of beignets and much to his hesitation he agreed, not knowing what they were. The waitress brought us some complimentary biscuits and gravy and asked if we wanted beignets, to which I quickly replied "yes"!! We also ordered our meals and then snacked on the biscuits and gravy. Even though I've been raised in the south, I have never been a fan of gravy. I'm just not a huge fan of anything flour or roux based. However, this gravy was amazing! It was almost a mix of gravy and Alfredo sauce and it had bits of bacon and andouille sausage in it. It was drool worthy. Then the beignets came. A petite plate with 6 puff pastry pillows stacked on it completely covered in powdered sugar. It was beautiful! It also looked like the potential for me to make a massive mess as I am so clumsy! One sneeze or giggle and Blake would be looking like Powder (bonus points to you if you get the reference) Lol. Luckily we had no incidents with the powdered sugar and our food came out right in time before we inhaled the remainder of the beignets. Blake has eggs with boudin over fried Cajun potatoes and I had scrambled eggs with bacon and Cajun cheese grits. It was so much food that we could barely finish half of our meals, so we decided to box up the remainder and take it home. The only thing about that decision is that it meant we had to cut our ride short so the food didn't get all nasty in my top case (thank goodness for those stock bags- they are so handy)!
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| Biscuits and gravy |
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| Beignets at Henry's in Acworth |
I've never spent much time in downtown Acworth so we decided to take a walk down the main drag to see what was there. We walked by this interesting bookstore/coffee shop and decided to go in. When you walk in you are greeted by the cheerful owners and then immediately are surrounded by old war and military books, collectibles, and memorabilia. There's also an upstairs section with more genres and true little coffe shop tucked in the back next to their cast iron pans and Dutch ovens for sale. This was a neat, eclectic little place and I lost myself in it. The owners offered us a table to set our helmets on while we browsed through all of their collections. With Father's Day coming up, we figured this would be a great place to do some shopping! We found the sections that we though our dads would like and ended up buying them each a few gifts. I also bought myself a cast iron cookbook and have decided I will return in the car to purchase a cast iron pan for myself. I've always wanted one like my dad has, but the one time I bought one, I promptly ruined it by cleaning it incorrectly. Now I know better! As we were checking out one of the owners offered me a sample of their butter rum coffee, brewed locally in Marietta. It smelled divine and tasted great, but I was running out of capacity to carry much more home, so I decided I would buy a bag of their coffee when I returned to buy my pan. He then grabbed a small bag of butter rum coffee and handed it to me and smiled and said "thank you for your business!" Yep, it's little gems like this that remind me why I try to stay away from some of those larger chain stores. I will definitely be coming back here.
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| Front spot for the RX3 |
We walked out to the bikes and tetris'd all of the books and leftovers into my luggage (with no problem) and we decided to have an adventure home. We took the road the opposite direction from where we came and figured we'd find a road that we knew sometime, but after riding for about 15 miles we realized we had no idea where we were. We knew we had to go south and east to get home, so we made a few turns and somehow got to some interstate signs. On the way to the interstate, I saw a Yamaha logo out of the corner of my eyes and told Blake we had to turn around. He got a little frustrated as it was starting to get very hot outside, but he was very sweet and turned around for his crazy wife. I couldn't explain to him what I saw, I just told him where to go. We ended up pulling into a parking spot at a chickfila and we just sat in utter amazement at what we saw. It was a man-made pond and had these zip line looking things hooked up all around and the zip lines were pulling people on wakeboards around this man made pond that was fille with jumps! It was the craziest thing I'd ever seen! I snapped a few pictures so I could do some more research on it once I got home. It was awesome, though. Wake boarding without needing a boat... Pretty cool idea of you ask me!
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| I like the "bunny slope" for beginners on the left |
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| Terminus Wakeboard - will need to look into this! |
Once we started getting uncomfortably hot sitting still, we decided it was time to call it a day so we jumped on the interstate to go an exit or two until we found a road that we knew as we still had no idea where we were. We got on the interstate and got up to speed, but after a few minutes of cruising at about 65ish, the bike developed this crazy wobble in the front end. It almost felt like it was about to launch into a full tank slapped, so I rolled off the throttle and once I got down below 60 it sorted itself out and ride fine. I told Blake I had read about another guy having this same experience, but what baffled me is that after riding for over a thousand miles on almost all interstate in Baja at average speeds of over 60, I never encountered this. It was bizarre to say the least and the only thing I can think of is that we had let some air out of the tires before we left, so maybe we had let too much air out? I'm not sure, but will need to look into this a bit more. As for the rest of the time on the interstate, I kept it below 65 and didn't experience the issue again. The next exit was a familiar road so we got off the interstate and back to side roads. I was a bit uncomfortable on the bike as that wobble definitely shook me up, but after a few minutes on the back roads I was feeling completely comfortable again. We took some great twisty roads back to the house and had a great remainder of our ride. Once we got home, we parked the bikes in the garage and unloaded the luggage. 6 large, hardback books, a small bag of coffee, and 2 togo containers fit with no problem. We were Actually a bit amazed with the capacity as we thought we had misjudged the sizes of a few books.
Overall it was an eventful, non eventful day, made even better by standing on the pegs while going over bumps and then listening to Blake moan while going over them on his GSXR. Lol. I still love this bike so much and have so much fun on it! I will need to do some more research into that high speed wobble and it's also time for me to do my first valve adjustment, so keep an eye here for updates on that!
