398 Miles
A pre-trip snapshot of RiSTa... We left the house at 9:00 on Saturday, July 29th. I filled up a few days before but we had to add a little air to the tires so we made a quick stop to add some. We went the quickest route to I-81 south via I-84 to US209 through Milford PA, to US33 south to US22, I-78 for about 20 miles to the desired I-81S. Once we hit Harrisburg, we decided to stop for lunch at Crackerbarrel (~11:15am) @ http://www.crackerbarrel.com We weren't really craving it but we figured we needed to because it was the first stop - do it right.
RiSTa was running well. She pretty much stayed near C on the temp guage even though it was near 90 degrees outside. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I just about let her tip over on a slow left turn - not use to the additina weight. We figured that we were probably pushing the max weight of the ST. The Motocomm was working well between both of us. As we would speak, the music muted out - alomost perfectly. The only thing better would be able to turn each other off. :) We pushed down I-81S to near Hagerstown for fuel. Though RiSTa holds 7.4 gallons and we could get just over 300 miles on 1 tank, we did not push it because I did not want to 'push it'. We pulled into a gas station full of Harley's. They all looked at us like we where their worst enemy - we smiled and gave them a "how-do-you-do". I believe our style of speed, reliability, and performance scared them away because they all left as we were filling up (sorry Harley bro's... couldn't help it!).
We cranked further down the I-81S to Front Royal, VA in the planned time of around 5.5 hrs. We were planning on staying over in this area and hitting the scenic routes in the morning but we both felt pretty good and decided to continue south. Based on some of my fellow STOC bro's, I was encouraged to not do Skyline Drive due to the croad condition. Apparently, it has been getting pretty bad the last year or two. As we drove on I-66 to Front Royal, a friendly family minivan decided to move to our lane without looking. We veered left and escaped. Through the south side of Front Royal, we hit some rain for about 15 mins. We did not fit our rain gear because it felt so good since the temperature was about 95 degrees. We decided to run parallel with Skyline on 522 to 231 to 29 into Charlottesville, VA. It was a beautiful route; rolling hills, sweeping curves, all at 45-55mph. Really nice.
About 30 mins from Charlottesville (while on 29), we leaned into a left hand turn to find a row of cars in our lane all at a dead stop.
An officer was standing in the road telling each car that had to halt. We waited about 15 minutes before we started laughing about how the drivers would never be so patient in our home state of NY. NY'ers would be whipping 180 degrees as they yelled at the authorities and the person on the stretcher "You ^#$^&#! You suck!" Not here tho. We all took a nice break, ate some crackers and smelled the roses.
At around 5:30pm, landed at a Days Inn but they had no rooms available so I ran next door to Quality inn (rating 5 of 10) http://www.choicehotels.com/ires/en-US/html/HotelInfo?hotel=VA825&sid=VJOGM.O_V3MguYi.6&sarea=85113&sname=Charlottesville&sstate=VA&scountry=US&sradius=40.23&slat=38.0279&slon=-78.4917&schain=Q&exp=&scity=Charlottesville&sort=&nadult=1&nchild=0 and found a room. Ironically, it was the hotel that I had planned as an optional stop. We went next door and ate cat, I mean Chinese which was surprsingly good. When we walked in, there were only 2 customers in the restraunt so we almost walked out. It was good.After, we walked to the Food Lion and grabbed some snacks and water for the next day and walked back to the hotel. We were both pretty tired.
