Early in the spring of 2006 my brother-in-law Brian Jordan came to me and wanted me to go up the Blue Ridge parkway with him. He had in the last year bought a Suzuki Volusia 800. I thought it would be fun but time and money concerns led me to put it off. Not long after that Brian was diagnosed with colon cancer. I felt like I should not have put the trip off. Certainly I wouldn’t have dones so had I known what was ahead for him but hind sight as you know is 20/20. During the battle for his life he kept telling me he was going to make the trip. Prior to his illness we had talked about making it in September. A month before our proposed launch date it seemed impossible but Brian through great fortitude had managed to get healthy enough to do it. Many had warned me that he would not be strong enough to make the trip but I felt like I had to do this just in case he had a relapse and things got worse. Some things you shouldn’t put off.
Brian lives in Crestview Florida. He decided to bring a friend with him on the trip. This fellow who’s name was George Jernigan I didn’t know but I thought I could use the help should Brian have any major health issues during the trip. George and Brian showed up the night before we left from Crestview and I met George and saw his Yamaha Royal Star. Brian looked great and George seemed nice enough so I felt like this was a good sign. I woke up early on a Thursday morning and drove to my mother-in-laws house where Brian and George had spent the night. Jan my mother-in-law made us breakfast and we were soon saddling up. The weather couldn’t have been better. Blue skies and about 70’ish temperatures. We meandered northward though north Alabama and as we got into North Georgia and neared the mountains we could see a dark cloud on the horizon. We had seen a weather report calling for possible scattered showers, but this cloud didn’t look scattered. We stopped for gas and I could already feel it sprinkling. I decided to accept my fait and don the rain suit. Brian claimed his “leathers” had been sprayed and would shed water. I don’t know what kind of rain they have down in Crestview but let me tell you that in the Appellation mountains, Rain is more of a solid than a liquid. About a mile down the road the bottom dropped out and it was one of those rains where it is coming from every direction all at once. I was on my 89 Gold wing with a water proof joe rocket jacket, full face helmet, water proof shoes, and a high quality pair of rain pants. I could have ridden like that all day, but I looked into the rear view mirror to see one guy in leathers, one guy with a cheap rain top, and neither will a full face helmet. It didn’t take long for them to dive for the nearest gas station.
At this point Brian was soaked to the bone, George did much better but his boots were not water proof and they were now about as dry as the floor of lake Michigan. This fact would come into play later so keep in mind “wet shoes”. We drank some coffee and after about half an hour it let up. It was still raining but not so hard now and we still had a long ways to go. Brian had now put on a rain suit as he decided his leathers didn’t shed water quite as well as he thought. It rained the rest of the day and evening.
We had decided early on to head toward the Dragon, a.k.a Deals Gap, a famous motorcycle road and destination in North Carolina. Brian and George had never been there. I debated with myself the wisdom of "doing the dragon" in the rain but we really didn’t have a lot of flexibility in the days schedule as we had to pass through there to get to our final destination for the day. When we finally got to the dragon. It was raining off and on but the roads looked fine, I just took it easy and they sailed right through the dragon without incident. Despite the rain there were about 40 bikers on the Dragon that day which was a Thursday. We left the dragon and continued on toward Cherokee NC for the evening. Since it was raining and now turning much colder we opted to rent a little cabin from the KOA campground in Cherokee for the night. The cabin however to my surprise had no form of heat. So I’m not sure how much better off we were in there as apposed to in a tent.
The next morning it was very cold. We went to Shoney’s for the breakfast bar and headed for the Blue Ridge parkway, The plan was to just see how far we could get up the Blue Ridge and then find a place to camp. The rain was long gone and the sky was blue, the air crisp at around 38 degrees, even colder when we reached 5 and 6 thousand feet on the Blue Ridge. We reached the summit and wanted a picture of all of us at the summit. We noticed a tall gentleman who was filming with a professional camera. We talked him into taking our picture in front of the summit sign. The man was a local who worked for a media company and was taking film for some project they had going. We thanked him and continued on up the parkway. We continued on at a leisurely pace and about 20 minutes later, something happened that changed the course of our trip. At the bottom of a long hill in a sharp left hand turn around a ridge I saw in my rear view mirror George go down against the guard rail. It didn’t look to be too bad of a spill but Brian who was behind him and couldn’t overcome the centrifugal force tugging him toward the guardrail. George's head which was now in the road just over the stripe was struck by Brian’s foot peg as he struggled to avoid hitting him. When I saw Goerge's head snap foward when struck with the footpeg I had a feeling of dread as I didn't know if he would be alive when I got to him. Due to their exposed position in a blind curve I turned around and raced past them and parked my gold wing in the road. I jumped off to find George alive and slumped over with no helmet on. A stead stream of blood was pouring off his head like he had gotten dunked after a football game. Brian grabbed a rag and started to apply pressure and told me to call 911. I got my cell phone and thankfully had a signal, which surprised me since I rarely had a signal outside of any major city. I called 911, they asked me where I was and I told them I was on the parkway but couldn’t tell them where. They pinged my cell phone and got my location and said they would send help. Brian was able to get the bleeding under control but George was starting to get woozy by now, we had him sit down on the ground. Also at this point we had nearly gotten struck twice by people flying down the long hill proceeding the curve. I decided to move my gold wing to the side of the road and walked up the hill to slow down traffic so they wouldn’t get clobbered by someone. This job I found to be much harder than I expected as I assume the high altitude was effecting the higher reasoning skills of people driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway, dispite my frantic waving of arms and yelling several more people had to lock their brakes in the curve to avoid creating a Greek Tragedy. Meanwhile the photographer came down the hill and stopped to help. He spent the next hour holding George’s head to control the bleeding while Brian helped with some of George’s other injuries. Eventually the EMS got there and after accessing the situation decided that due to the impact speed of the footpeg that George’s life could be in jeopardy and they were going to air lift him to the trauma center at Ashville North Carolina. Eventually they left with him as he began to drift in and out of consciousness. Brian left to go to Ashville and I stayed with the bike. At this point the park rangers had not come to even make a report. A local EMT stayed with me in the curve with his truck because we were still getting folks coming down the hill too fast. On one occasion I dove over the rail to avoid a moron in a black pickup truck who was speeding. The EMT nearly bought the farm then too. Eventually the park ranger came made the report and got my cell phone number so he could let me know where the bike was going.
After that I got on the bike and followed the Blue Ridge parkway to Ashville North Carolina. The GPS located the hospital and I went to the trauma center. In the trauma center I found the photographer again, he had spent so much time with us he felt like he had to see this thing through. Fortunately and I'm still very surprised by all this it looked like George’s helmet had taken the majority of the blow and the gash in his head was simply a flesh wound. He had no concussion at all. They were going to release him in a few hours. At this point this guy is many hundreds of miles from home, he has no cloths, the ones he wore were cut off from him, we don't know where his bike is WITH the rest of his cloths, he's covered in blood stains and he has no place to stay. Brian and I rented a room in a local hotel and I piled this guy, all 220 lbs of his 6’4” frame on the back of my gold wing wearing scrubs and a pair of house slippers and took him to the hotel. I later got a call from the ranger and learned the bike was now at a wrecker service in Roseman North Carolina which was down near the South Carolina Border.
The next morning it was near freezing. We had to loan George some cloths and a helmet and we piled George again on the back of my gold wing and off we went. Let me say that Roseman is in about as remote an area as you can imagine, If you ever kill anyone and want to get away with it, Move to Roseman, they won’t look for you there. They haven’t discovered the internet in Roseman, I get the feeling phone service is concidered a luxury. I believe these folks viewed The Andy Griffith Show like we view CSI. There were strange folks living there. I think we went through a rip in the time space continuum and went back about 50 years. We eventually located the wrecker driver, you had to contact him via a convienance store clerk who had to call him on some form of 2 way radio. After finding the actual wrecker shop we got a look at the bike. All in all the bike didn’t have too much damage. We spent about an hour working on his bike trying to bend his highway bar out enough to allow his gear shifter to work. I brought duck tape as an afterthought and we used that to tape a few things down that were now hanging loose. Things like blinkers, passing lamps etc… Aside from the cosmetic damage however the bike looked to be in good working order and cranked without hesitation. So off we went. The road out of Roseman looked flat and straight, Good I thought, it will give George some easy roads to sort of let his nerves settle down. About a mile out of Roseman began about a hundred miles of curvy roads that rivaled the famous Dragon.
Let me say that this day we went on a bunch of roads that are NOT on the tour maps, but should be. We left Roseman on 64 going west through the Nantahala National Forests, Parts of this road make the dragon look like the road between Dallas and Fort Worth. It was stunningly beautiful too. We went thought some trendy mountain communities in Cashiers and Highland that look like a great place to spend a weekend shopping or just admiring the mountain beauty. From Franklin we took a completely unknown road that on the map is designated as 1442 or wayah road. This road is incredible; It was like driving through an enchanted forests in a Hollywood movie set. It also had some incredible changes in elevation and a beautiful lake that seems to have no name. This road after a long time dumps you onto 19 not far from the bottom end of 129 a.k.a Deals Gap road. At this point it was 3PM and we were all getting a little tired since we had spent about 6 hours driving roads that are almost equal to the dragon. According to the GPS we were only about 35 minutes from Ironhorse which was a motorcycle campground I had stayed at the year before. I decided to head that direction. We got there in time to snag the last three dinner meals they had available which was good because this place is nowhere near a place to eat. Ironhorse was well packed with bikers from all over and I spent the rest of the evening listening to their tails and they listened to mine. I set up my well worn tent and Brian and George struggled to put up their brand new one. That evening full of salmon and baked potato I drifted off to sleep. I awoke about 3AM when a wicked thunder storm came over. My tent however never leaked a drop. Brian and George however weren’t so lucky, as you could almost guess at this point. I did concider bailing for the lodge as the lighning got pretty rough, but by my counting the bolts never got closer than a few miles away so I drifted back off to sleep as the thunderstorm turned into a steady rain.
The next morning I think George and Brian had had about enough and were ready to head home. Especially George who was suffering a fair amount of pain due to his injuries. The trip home was uneventful and I got back around 3PM Sunday. All in all it was a good trip, and certainly one I will never forget. I will say that the MAD map I have is great if you want to follow the tours, but I think they were picking and choosing. Due to our misfortune we discovered there is far more to the North Carolina mountains than you will find on those maps. I will also say that George although a new biker, soldiered through a lot of pain to finish this thing with 21 stitches in his head, several in his elbow, and a bad knee, and he wore his house slippers the rest of the way home.
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