It was a ride loop. I guess you’d call it a loop. I left my house, rode around with a group of other motorcyclists, and ended up at my house later in the afternoon.
It was sort of a quickly planned BMW MOGA club ride. A new club member over here in my neighborhood, wrote on the club forum that he would like to go on a nice casual ride to the north Georgia mountains, since he was a new rider and had just bought a used R1150R and needed some practice riding in the hills. Well, I had already befriended him online and felt compelled to join him on this ride. Then someone else piped up on the club internet forum, and volunteered to plan a route and lead if needed. Well, my new friend quickly took the other guy up on his offer and the route was planned. It wasn’t long before a couple of other fellows decided it would be a nice day to ride also and they joined in. Then, lo and behold, another new guy said he also wanted to ride along for some newby practice, and before we knew it we had 9 or 10 bikers all waiting for Sunday and chomping at the bit to join for this little club ride.
It was decided that the majority of the group would meet at Simply Southern restaurant in Free Home and depart on the ride at 10AM sharp. I got there about 9:15 and joined one other hungry rider for a bit of breakfast. I had my delicious oatmeal with brown sugar and banana with a cup of coffee, and after a while of eating and visiting, we noticed the group began to arrive in the parking lot one by one.
Sure enough, our entrepid leader cranked up his little phone GPS at 10 o’clock and the group quickly followed him out of the parking lot. I had walked over to my bike, which was in a different area of the parking lot, to get geared up to leave and when I was ready to go I looked up and they had all left me! What a bunch of goobers! How could they leave me?

Well, I took off, and knowing the planned route I caught up with them pretty quickly. We rode at a pleasantly casual pace to accommodate the newbies and made it to Riders Hill in Dahlonega at around 11AM where we picked up an additional rider. After a short break, and a visit to the men’s room, we took off again and headed up Hwy 60, took a right somewhere up the road and ended up at Turner’s Corner on 129 where we stopped for lunch. LUNCH!! I just ate breakfast at 9:30.

It was about 11:30, and since I hadn’t eaten anything for 2 hours, I was almost famished, so it was a good thing we stopped. I might have stared had we waited much longer. No one could understand why I only wanted a salad for lunch.

Once we were done with lunch, which took forever actually, from the very slow service, we got back on our ponies and went back the way we came, continuing up 60 to Suches. We all wanted to see the progress of the new T.W.O. motorcycle only campground which is scheduled to reopen soon. We didn’t stop, however, but took a right onto 180 and the turned onto Richard Russell Parkway headed toward Helen. By this time, I was kind of sleepy from the lunch and found other riders passing me to get around slow moving cages ahead. The whole group stopped at the stop sign and waited for me and the rear rider though…which was the new guy. Before the new guy could arrive at the stop sign, they all took off! I chose to wait for him and when he arrived, we pretty much rode alone on to Cleveland where we stopped for a drink of refreshment and much needed rest. The new fellow was cramping real bad and needed to rest, stretch and rehydrate.
He suggested I ride on without him to finish the loop home since he thought he needed longer to rest. I found out later, he had to stop a couple more times to stretch out more cramps. I found my way to 115 and the back south on 400 to hwy 369, which took me back to hwy 20, then East Cherokee Drive to Woodstock, where I completed the loop.
My new chain worked fine, but stretched out slightly from the ride. It is still within measurable tolerances so I won’t bother to readjust until later on. The three ounces of Seafoam I added to the day’s tank of gas gave me a little extra pep on the ride that day and I thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful weather on board Lil Chubb.