Home Again

I made it home in 3.5 hours...more to tell, but sleep now.

....adding info after time and sleep has occurred...

The alarm clock went off at 4:15 a.m., and I finally dragged up by about 4:35. I'd packed most of my stuff the night before, so my main job was to wake up and get dressed. I wanted to be on the road by 5 a.m., but instead, was just leaving my room by 5:03 a.m. Down to the bike garage I crept, slightly wincing at the noise made by the electric garage door raising to give me access to Clyde. Once inside, I loaded him up and rolled him quietly outside, shutting the door, before walking up to the main building to drop off the room and garage key.

I fired the bike up and rolled away quickly from the cabins, heading out onto Hwy 68 at 5:17 a.m. The next 20 or so miles are quite curvy and the trees cling to the edge of the shoulder. Lots of places for forest rats to lurk, and I kept fully in mind that my sight distance was my braking distance. Thankfully, no large animals appeared, and through the course of the morning, I only encountered one fox (running away from me) and one cat (crossing the road).

The temps dipped to their lowest when I got to Murphy, NC, just over an hour after I left (and still dark). In addition, this is where the fog started. It would come and go in spurts, but was heavy enough, I couldn't always tell when I was out of it, since my face shield would stay misted over from the condensation. All the way to just past Hiawassee, the speed stayed pretty conservative with the fog, but shortly after leaving Hiawasee, I started climbing in elevation and the fog lifted. Oh joy! The temps stayed in the low to mid 40's until around sunrise, and finally started to edge up. My heated grips and vest were given medium duty, and both performed admirably (once the controller on the vest stopped having fits).

Once again, Highway 76 heading south into Clayton was a beautiful sight to see, and with the fog gone and the sun finally starting to lighten the sky, that road was great! I made it to Clayton right at 7:15, and filled up, back on the road at 7:30. It was such a relief to ride those roads without the clogging traffic I'd dealt with on Friday, and the overall trip ended up being 30 minutes faster on the return.

So, I've come through dark, twisty, foggy, animal infested roads, and it wasn't until going through Clemson that a student talking on her cell phone decided to change lanes into my space as I was beside her. I love my air horn. She jerked and got the car back over, but never missed a beat on the stupid phone. Rer.

I rolled into my driveway at 8:47 a.m., exactly 3.5 hours after leaving, made a quick trip inside to unpack, change clothes, make a cuppa joe, grab a quick snack and head back out to church. Someone at work suggested I could have found a place closer to Tellico to attend, and yeah, I probably could have, in hindsight. However, I'd not done any prior 'vestigating, so I just headed back home. My Sunday afternoon nap was on the intense side :)