Trip #2 had left Texas on the twenty-third of October. So, as it happened, did this one, a year later almost to the hour — although the intervening year had contained only the short December run to bring the motorcycles home from Las Vegas, and none of the wives. It had been, as Ray put it, almost a year since the last trip as a group.
The object this time was a single stretch of US 129 on the Tennessee–North Carolina line: eleven miles, three hundred and eighteen curves, and the most photographed piece of motorcycle road in the country. Everything else was arranged around it. Going in late October was deliberate — the Appalachians turn in the last week of the month, and the plan was to be underneath the trees when they did.
The party assembled in pieces. Aimee was not able to come, so Ray rode without a passenger; he and Jerry made the two long interstate days out of Austin by themselves, collected Robin from the Chattanooga airport on the second evening, and met Justin and Tiffany at Bryson City on the third. Where Justin and Tiffany had come from, the record does not say.
Bryson City was the base for two nights, which meant three days of mountain riding without moving the luggage: in over the Cherohala Skyway, a loop north to Gatlinburg and east through Harmon Den, and then the Dragon itself on the Thursday morning, followed by an afternoon working south into Georgia. That was the whole of the trip in three days. The other five were the price of admission.
The price was paid going home. Helen to Montgomery by way of the Atlanta airport, where Robin caught a flight back to Texas. Montgomery to Baton Rouge along the Gulf. And then, instead of the two days the plan allowed, the entire remaining distance in one — Baton Rouge to Austin, four hundred and fifty-one miles, with Justin peeling off at Houston and Jerry turning for East Bernard, which left Ray to finish alone.
