July 4th Weekend Ride

It’s always been my opinion that long weekends were specifically designed for breaking new ground, expanding horizons, doing something new, and having a great time. So, at my insistence, DH and I were up and at ‘em at 7:30am. We sat in front of google maps on my laptop to dream up a route for a morning motorcycle ride. For the holiday weekend, I was determined that we were going to find a new route that neither of us had ever ridden (or driven) before.

This is actually harder than it sounds. We initially thought that we would ride for an hour or so and then have breakfast at the IHOP by our house. However, when you don’t have an actual destination, its hard to use mapping websites to plan a route; all you see on the map is a maze of little roads, especially in GA! So then we decided that we would head west and have brunch at the Mirror Lake Country Club where we were married thirteen months ago! So we put the address in and of course google maps wants to find you the fastest, shortest route. That really doesn’t work when you’re riding for fun. So then we had to modify the route piece by piece, back road by back road.

We finally settled on a route that was about 34miles long round-trip (I’ve posted the highlighted map below). The route started out on roads that we knew, but we were quickly on unfamiliar turf. It was a BEAUTIFUL day for a ride! Kinda warm out, but on shaded country roads, cruising along between 45 and 50mph around winding turns… what could be better?

After a great brunch we hit the road again heading back towards home. We actually got lost a little because we were unfamiliar with the roads and the area, but on the bikes it doesn’t really bother us! We just kept heading in the right direction and knew we would eventually come to a road we recognized. Next thing you know, we’re at Hwy. 5 and almost home.

This was when I realized that my fuel indicator light was on. I was a little worried because I don’t know what kind of range I have left after that light comes on (looks like I’ll have to do a little reading in the manual!). Fortunately, there is a gas station right around the corner from the house where we stopped. I ended up putting almost 3.5 gallons into my 5 gallon tank AND on 3.5 gallons we got 150miles! We are now at 250miles on the bikes, loving every minute of it, and still excited about it every time!