Tourer
Posts: 447
Cleveland, GA | I just took my two-week R&R leave from Kuwait and had the wonderful opportunity to make a 1,700-mile bike trip with my wife around Alabama, Georgia, the tip of North Carolina, across Tennessee, and back down to Alabama. What a blast! And we towed a Bushtec trailer the whole time. I'll post photos from the Dragon later, after I get the CDs from ZeeFoto and Killboy delivered to Kuwait. If you want to look them up, check out the photos of touring bikes on Sept 29, taken around 4 pm (If you set the viewing for 125 photos at a time, they are on page 4 of ZeeFoto and on page 6 of Killboy. There are two sets of photos on the Killboy site - different curves.) I don't know if this is the first Vision and trailer combo on the Gap or not. I did a search on this site to see, but didn't find anything saying that someone else was first. My bike is the first to have the hitch, but since I was overseas I didn't get to be the first to pull a trailer with it. I can't say enough good things about Bushtec - they are great people to deal with. We rode up through the mountains of Georgia in Hiawassee, then the 50-mile Cherohala Skyway, down through Deal's Gap and back on the Tail of the Dragon, then up to Knoxville, Tennessee. After a few days there with my daughter, we rode over to Clarksville, Tennessee to visit my son and grandkids, then back down to Alabama. We took our sweet time the whole trip, due to my wife's back problems, and we stopped every 30-45 minutes to let her stretch. The intercom system worked great once I learned to adjust the VOX settings on the fly in order to compensate for the wind noise. It was really nice to be able to talk to my wife while sightseeing. I've been married to her nearly 30 years and we've almost always been together. Some folks like riding bikes with their significant others because they DON'T have to talk, but I prefer to be able to. The trailer pulled like a dream. I actually never felt it behind the bike at all, and we averaged around 38 mpg the whole time - and we had it packed pretty good. The only incident I had with it was when I got to Hiawassee, Georgia, and discovered the trailer/bike electrical connection had come loose sometime and I had completely ground away four of the six wires in the connecting harness on the trailer. I walked over to a Dollar General store and, unable to find spools of electrical wire, bought a six-foot extension cord that was the same gauge as the trailer wiring. I cut two six-inch sections of the double wire, spliced the connecting harness, wrapped it in electrical tape, and rode on. It's a good thing I was allowing plenty of time for the trip, because with all the stops we made we spent a lot of time being ambassadors for Victory. People ALWAYS talked to us about the bike, or gave us the thumbs up, or whatever. No negative comments at all except for the joshing from the guy in a H-D shirt at a truck stop who said we needed to get a bike that wouldn't fall apart. Since it was said in a spirit of fun, I didn't say that I knew that 90 percent of all H-Ds are still on the road today - because the other ten percent made it home  . All in all, a fantastic trip. The weather was perfect and didn't start raining till after I got on the plane back to Kuwait. The daytime temperatures varied from upper 50s to the mid 80s, and the nighttime temps varied from upper 40s to the mid 70s. The adjustible windshield and the heated grips and seats did come in handy. Oh, by the way - be careful about making U-turns in east Tennessee. I got pulled over in some town around 60-80 miles west of Knoxville when I turned right, coming out of a gas station, then went to the center lane and pulled a U-turn to get back to the interstate. Blue lights immediately. The police lieutenant said most municipalities in Tennessee have no-U-turn ordinances (and there wasn't a sign posted). Fortunately he let me go with a warning, since I was from out of state and on R&R. I guess we didn't look too threatening, being grandparents with a touring bike and trailer. Of course, I took off my helmet and gloves as soon as I got pulled over, and kept my hands in plain sight. And I did notify him that I was carrying concealed, and had a permit, since my wallet was in a zippered pocket on the inside of my coat - right near my shoulder holster  . We talked about differing permit procedures in Tennessee and Alabama. As I said before, I'll post pix later. I'm at work now and don't have access to them yet.
Edited by Lone Ranger 2008-10-10 7:26 AM
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Rode the Dragon draggin' a trailer