sprocket i/o

Today Dallas and I woke up without a real direction as to what to do with our Sunday. We wanted to do some room cleaning, but also wanted to get out of the house. Dallas had mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she wanted to see the sunflower field in this photo: “hide and seek“. She didn’t ask me again how far away the field was, so I assumed she didn’t care that it was 70 miles away. Dallas bought some motorcycle boots (Sidi Jasmine Rain) and a pair of gloves (Cortech DX) earlier in the week, so this was her first opportunity to use them. Here she is, just before we left the house at 11:30am:

For the way up there, I set my GPS to ‘shortest route’ rather than ‘fastest route’, as I had not yet taken Dallas on the motorcycle at a speed above 55mph. In fact, she had never ridden with me for than 10 miles before. She tucked her Nikon D50 between us so that she could take photos while we rode. We saw lots of farm area, with old shacks like this:

Dallas also got her first taste of twisties, though I took them pretty slowly:

After an hour of riding, we took a much needed break at Carter’s Dam. By the time we got here, Dallas’ fingers were going numb. Here is me standing in front of the Dam:

The place was hopping with an insect I had never seen before — I think these are Alderflies:

One thing I learned was that a DSLR just isn’t appropriate for the passenger to wear. Not only does it poke into your lower back while you ride, but it’s hard to take photos one handed with one. Here is Dallas’ attempt to photograph some cows:

Sadly, when we arrived at the spot the sunflowers were photographed, we instead saw a field of corn, with a handful of wild sunflowers nearby. The corn wasn’t interesting enough to be photographed, so we moved on to Chatsworth (15 miles from the North Carolina border)for some food. We parked ourselves at a Pizza Hut for an hour, and consumed mass quantities of liquid. The weather was starting to get worse, so we decided to take the faster way home. My low-fuel light had been on for the last 20 miles, so we took care of it before hitting the highway:

Highway 5 outside of Canton was Dallas’ first taste in high-speed travel (70mph zone) on a motorcycle. The wind was getting pretty rough, and Dallas began getting rather cranky about her hair tickling her face, so we stopped for a breather in Canton before moving on. Dallas’ words to me were “This trip is no longer fun. I want to go home”.

From Canton, we took Hwy 140 to Roswell, during which time it began raining. The rain alternated between light and medium, though we both found it quite refreshing. I had a mesh jacket on, and she mesh pants, so neither of us were completely waterproof. We were both really happy when we began seeing roads we recognized again, and we were home by 4:30pm. Here is Dallas on my 2003 BMW F650GS Dakar before we parked her in the garage:

We didn’t get to see any sunflowers, but I did get a 4-hour hug out of the deal. Not a bad deal if you ask me! For more photos, see my Picasa album “No Sunflowers” [map].