“We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character” HD Thoreau
To start an adventure with little direction, vague destinations, and over-exhausting enthusiasm and to come out the other side with an understanding of once unknown faces and untamed landscapes and a memory that with stick with a person for a lifetime to come, is what defines us as motorcyclists. Thereau sums it up in his quote. First off, we should all make it home hahaha… But the discoveries, new experiences and even the perils, define the rides we take, the life we lead, and how a passionate motorcyclist carries himself.
This is where I start, reflecting on the past 10 days. Where I have been, who I have met, the places I have seen and the people that I was fortunate to share the experience with. I will explain the details in due time but to provide a glimpse into the past 10 days riding 2600 miles from the Missouri Ozarks down into the Arkansas Ozarks, Memphis TN, Nashville TN, and the Great Smokey Mountain National Park, I can say that we faced off against dragons, warded off man-eating swarms, met some interesting characters both previously acquainted and not, experienced a part of the country that I/we had never seen before, stayed at a fantastic cabin in Tennessee, and dealt with a few snags along the way.
Here are some of the characters from the ride.
Myself (Brian) – 1993 Yamaha XJ600 Seca II
Paul - 2009 Yamaha FZ6
Joe – 2012 Yamaha R6
Who most of the time could be found doing this
Jon – 2012 Yamaha FZ1
This trip incorporated so much in such a little time, what started off as the Annual Rally for the XJRider.com forum , matured into reconnecting after a year with college riding buddies, which then grew to a 9 day vacation with us 4 gallivanting around the countryside with only us and our motorcycles… For the first 3 nights we camped in Arkansas with a few people from the Rally which will be introduced later, and the last 6 were in TN with a layover night near Nashville, before making it to our final destination, The Great Smokey Mountain NP. Follow along with the RR and see what kinda mischief 4 college buddies on motorcycles can get into….
I will definitely show some more pictures throughout the report but to start off here are a couple teasers on how the ride went…
Find out where we were during these pictures:
Find out what the story is to these pictures:
And Ride The World…
Some photos were borrowed from Andrew Long Photography
If some of the text seems strange to you guys here on the XJ Forum, I am also posting this on the ADV forum so that is why it is written this way.