the day started with matt and i heading to north raleigh to meet the "brunch" group after a quick stop for gas. we met up with jim, dave, dana and steve. this was steve's first ride with us. we have plans to meet one more rider when we stop for breakfast in roxboro. since we're all here, we head out...
up six forks to new light, following bicycle 1 to 96 to oxford. a quick stop for gas in oxford and then on 158 to roxboro. we stop at burger king, for breakfast and meet up with mike - our last rider. after breakfast we head out of roxboro on 57 up to vir.
the ride up was great - nice cool weather. in fact, we had long sleeves shirts on to start the trip. i would much rather ride in cooler temps than warmer temps. after leaving roxboro, it had warmed up enough to ride with short sleeve shirt. during the last leg of the trip, the sky had turned cloudy and dark - i was wondering if we were going to get some rain. we didn't and once we arrived at vir, the sky cleared up again.
we were in for a little shock when we got to the gate - the ticket price was $50 per person. yikes!! so we're at the gate, sitting on our bikes, blocking traffic trying to decide if we're going in... i don't think any of us wanted to be the spoiler, so we forked over the money and headed in...
once we parked, we looked for the best place to watch the race. we scoped out a couple different places... this was the first time i had seen superbikes race and it was an experience. those bikes fly...
we also got to see a stunt show - talk about impressive... the skills these guys have to control the bikes the way they do - obviously these guy's have done this before - hahahaha...
unfortunately, we lost mike after the first stunt show - we tried to find him, called him, but no luck... we never caught up to him again...
after the last race, we made our way back to the bikes for the journey home... although they had attendants directing traffic out of the parking lot, getting out was still a mess. unfortunately steve got separated from us on the way out of the lot. not only that, we took the wrong exit out of the lot - not a big deal, just made our trip a little longer and put us in traffic longer. when we got on the road, we stopped to figure out what happened to steve. again, we didn't like getting separated, but at this point, there wasn't much we could do. we didn't know how far behind us he was, because we got separated in the parking lot, or how far ahead of us he might be because we took the long way out of the lot...
on the ride back, we stopped at an italian place in oxford for dinner. nice little quaint place... shortly after we sat down, we see steve riding by!!! he knew we were stopping for italian in oxford - and there's probably not more than one italian place in oxford!!
so, after an enjoyable dinner, we hit the road to head home... took a slightly different route back home, putting us on some smaller, twistier roads - always a nice treat.
arriving home was bittersweet. nice to be home, bummed the ride was over. but as always, it was a great day on the bike... we were gone a little longer, okay, a lot longer than i expected. again, my wife was wonderful about it - i am lucky to be married to her.
until the next ride...
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