It’s all good, bro

Kurt, Steph, Jesse and Eddie on the parkway

AMHERST --It was all good, bro.

After some time contemplating the death and destruction that often accompanies my chosen lifestyle and method of transport, I finally hit the road and remembered why I love riding so much.

Even better, I got to hang with my Baby Bro, known on this site as Ray-Ray and Dirty Kurty to others.

Kurt came down from Michigan in more than a dozen hours on the Friday before the holiday, wearing a numbness into his arse that had only subsided a little by Sunday. We took Saturday off the bikes and enjoyed a little get-together with some MSF folks at AHS, including Rod and Keith and Joe and Cat and Ruth and Mo-Mac.

Keith, of Madison Motorcycles in -- you guessed it -- Ruckersville, is a hell of a cook and made up some killer grilled chicken, sausage, shrimp and veggies and Ruth supplied the cake and lemonade.  We talked, BS'd and ate for a couple of hours before everyone took off to go their own ways.

Kurt to the left of me, Maurice to the right: The McKenzie brothers and one Mackenzie

Kurt and I rode over to Jarman's Sportcycles where we BS'd with another Eddie, he of Professional Movers, who had brought his bad Triumph Sprint out for a ride. Then we sat on everything, bothered James Jarman and his father Jimmy and got some killer BBQ and hot dogs with wondrous baked beans

We continued to BS with some folks, something at which we are very accomplished, and then grabbed dinner at The Villa. Breakfast for dinner is always a good idea.

I hardly thought at all about the recent events involving Aaron "Dub"  Boyd and Corey "Megatron" Guthrie, Street Thundercats MC members -- Guthrie was prez -- who died this summer doing what they loved.

Kurt and I ride with similar styles -- I'm built for comfort, not for speed -- and we simply enjoyed the riding gig, watching for nut-arsed cagers and turds and twinkies.

The next day, Sunday, we met up with Steph on her Monster Duc to roll over the Blue Ridge. Steph has some track time and experiences and the Duc can out run my 30-hp Blast and outhandle Kurt's Yammie Star 950T, so the rules were simple: Roll the way you do and we'll catch up.

Kurt and Steph readying to roll

Steph's cool and a joy to ride with and we'd been looking forward to getting Dirty his first taste of true mountain riding.

He admitted later he was a bit worried, but the bike handled well and he did as well. It was all good.

We took the parkway south, enjoying the road and curves and ignoring the gorgeous scenery about us. The views and the beauty has taken more than a few riders for sudden off-road excursions and none of our bikes were set up for dual-purpose riding.

The traffic was steady, with a buttload of bikes coming at us, tossing The Wave. The turnoffs were pretty much jammed with cagers, but few got in our way.

We rolled for awhile, snapping a few pix and enjoying the curves. Steph seemed to be handling the job of leader well, keeping us in sight while getting a little wear on the sides of her tires. Hey, she paid for the whole tire, not just the center patch.

Why the parkway is so popular

Hunger, however, gnawed at our loins. Well, not really our loins, more like our stomachs.  I think my Freudian Slip was showing, so  let me rephrase that: Hunger gnawed.

We dropped off the parkway to Wintergreen and pulled into the Devil's Backbone brewery for a little respite. Burgers, fish and chips and a sampling of the wares was a great break. After waiting for an appropriate time, we were about to hit the road again when we ran into that filthy blue wretch (Smurf) known as Jesse and Eddie.

They too, had taken the road and stopped at the brewery so we teamed up for more miles.

The rules were the same. J and E were on Tuning By Bee  Ninjas, a ZX-10 and a ZX-7, and they took the lead, allowing them to roll on with the agreement that they'd wait somewhere down the line and we'd all catch up.

It makes sense. J and E ride harder and faster than Kurt and me and their bikes are far more capable at those speeds than ours. We're not going to try and keep up, but why hold them back?  We'll just meet up later.

To their credit, they kept us in touch and view and, although we strung out a bit, it was a fun and comfortable ride at a good pace with good people.

Packing up to go down US 60

We took the parkway to U.S. 60, one gorgeous, killer-diller, curvy section of road that rolls and sweeps and curls on itself all the way into Amherst.

The Blast handles the curves with aplomb and nearly no shifting. The torque curve is fairly flat and a few downshifts and a roll off before the curve and you can tip it over and roll on all the way through.

It is, perhaps, more challenging that most of the parkway and certainly as beautiful. Unfortunately, I have no camera hook up on Thumper with which to record the ride, but it's just as well: As much as a single shakes, the pics would be nothing but blur.

About halfway down I realized that my odometer was approaching the 100-mile mark. No big deal, but I usually get about 120 miles to the tank with a 60 mpg rating in the city.

I learned the hard way that 75 mph will get me 55 mpg and I had no clue how the rolling, twisting, braking turns I'd been loving were impacting the mileage, but I figured it wasn't good.

Cruising down U.S. 60  into Amherst trying to find a gas station on a Labor Day weekend  Sunday while the Blast sucks fumes only to find everything closed down is not -- and I know this is hard to believe -- a relaxing way to end a wonderful ride.

Sure, it's exciting. Pulling into the station only to see the pumps bagged and the signs saying 'temporarily out of gas' and then dropping a left and back onto the road with a cursory glance over the shoulder is a fave moto-maneuver of mine. Call me silly, but the thought of pushing a 390-pound bike a few miles to find petrol somehow kept me from really savoring the experience.

It's all good, bro. Seems the Blast was getting serious mileage on our little excursion over the Blue Ridge Parkway and down into Lynchtown's 'burbs and I actually had more gas than I thought. Heck, I hadn't even hit reserve, yet. I didn't know that my usual 60 mpg was hitting closer to 70 mpg.

We tooled up U.S. 29 and stopped at Steph's for some coffee and bull$#!+ and Kurt and I headed back home. We swapped bikes, though, rolling down the easy terrain of 29 getting a little strange. The 950T hummed. It responded well for a cruiser and kept wanting to head up toward 75 mph.

Kurt got the buzzy end of the deal, but noticed the tiniest Buell hit a smooth spot at 65 and again at 75. We finished up the day with a little Dominos Pizza and big Coke.

It was all good, bro.

Route: US 250 from Charlottesville to the Parkway. Parkway to Wintergreen and Devil's Backbone. Parkway again to U.S. 60 to U.S. 29 and back into town. Total miles, 160