I love fog; it is mysterious spooky and refreshing all at the same time. Riding in fog is something that people have mixed emotions about. Do not get me wrong here I do not think I would like it if I was riding through Bakersfield California, I think this is more than just fog there I mean they delay school till the fog clears, now that is fog. But the kind of fog that comes off the mountains and rolls down the hills that is the kind I like…
I have rode through this thick Bakersfield fog twice, the kind where you can not see the end of your bike or the bike in front of you…The road under you is a cloudy gray mist not the black or concrete we all know… Even the fairing is fog in. you just kind of pray that everyone is all doing the same speed and sticking to their half of the lane…
The first time was riding in the smoky mountains, it was 2005 bike-about and there was 12 bikes riding in this group…I was riding on the back of Wooly “new wife” because I did not think it would be smart to make this trip on Mydol…Not that I do not keep her up and running properly just that she would have slowed everyone else down, and besides if I am riding on the back of the bike I can drink all I want and not worry about a D.U.I. or getting home safely…That was Wooly's job on this trip….
After riding in terrible storms for two days we finally get to Cherokee North Carolina where we was meeting up with the rest of the guys going on this little adventure…We actually spent the first eight days in full rain gear, it was raining and hard but nothing was detouring this group from riding the Blue Ridge Parkway. It took five years to get this group of friends together…The second we got dressed in the morning all rain gear was put on and off we would ride in the down pours...All the rain made the Smoky Mountains even more Smokey, it was probably on day four of this type of riding that we encountered the fog, not the smoke… It was Bakersfield kind of fog and riding on the back was freaking me out. I could not see the tail light of the bike in front of us, The headlight of the bike in back of us nor could I see our headlights or the white lines of the road or the road itself…I think that is where a few of my gray hairs came from….
The whole time riding through this fog I just keep saying I hope everyone is maintain the same speed or this could get ugly…Thankfully everyone did maintain the same speed and no one crashed or went off the side of the mountain. The biker gods were smiling down on us this day…This was probably one of the most intense rides in my life. I had no control of anything and things definitely needed to be controlled. The four hours till we stopped for lunch seemed to take days, the road was endless and lost in the fog, it was a nail biting experience for me…
Now the second time I rode through this kind of fog was Wooly and me on the old Shovels…(yes we still get our old bikes out too) We was riding back from Augusta Georgia where we had been on business and decided to get lost in the Smokey’s for a week before returning to our expensive storage locker… This time the fog was the Bakersfield type of fog but it was just Wooly and I not twenty other people to watch out for. I loved it I was having so much fun that I lost Wooly a couple of times and had to pull over in view points to wait for him to catch back up to me… I admit some times I have a speeding problem, you would thick that the fog was so intense it would slow me down but it just seemed to be like riding through clouds…
Now my emotions about the fog our mixed I love the stuff as long as I am in control of my own bike and do not have a bunch of other people to worry about. I still do not like the Bakersfield kind of fog but it’s not like it would stop me from riding and to be honest it probably would not even slow me down…
