Time to turn off the Wayback Machine for a Sec

Well, I've been trying to do this in chronological order, but seeing as how I haven't even gotten out of 2008 I figured I'd stick in this post about the happenings of the past weekend while the memory is still fresh. The event was a lil' hootenany called British in the Blue Ridge, a long running Brit bike rally in Hiawassee, Georgia. We've been going to this for years, all the way back to when George an' I first started screwing around with old bikes. Its one of my favorite events, being incredibly laid back and mostly involving drinking beer and sitting in a creek all day. I was particularly excited this year because I missed the last one due to our race schedule. If you like old British bikes and creek sittin' you can't find a better event. This year we changed things up because there are trails all around the rally site, including a couple George found just twenty minutes or so from camp. Max wasn't able to make it, but Jay brought along his bike. You'll notice a few differences from the previous posts, which will take a long time to catch up to, so I'll just summarize. First, George is present...

...which is good, because back in 2008 (where the ongoing postings are), he was still slowly recovering from his foot mangling. He was out on his Triumph Tr5t

 He was generally having a grand old time. He recently had a kid so was pretty happy to get permission from the wife to abandon the family for a weekend and go play in the woods. The second big change is Jay's bike. He's currently on some bit of fancy modern hoo-ha, having burdened another friend of ours with the Field Pig. He's currently putting together a sufficiently freakish old Greeves based critter, so hopefully he'll rejoin the ranks of the mindlessly anachronistic soon.

And finally, its not overly visible in the pics, but the Stomper is no longer a Triumph T100 based critter, but is in fact now an AJS Model 20 in a modified version of a '50s trials frame.

The first set of trails we went to that day were closed due to logging activity, so we had to hit a set that were closer to camp, but described as "difficult" to "most difficult" which had kinda put us off. In the end we didn't have much to worry and the trails were great, with nice scrabbly climbs, slithery downhills with no real horrors all linked up with nice rolling bits.

Oddly enough it was toughest on Jay's modern mochine, though only because he had vaguely dual sportish tires that just couldn't get a grip. He had to keep speed up as he got to climbs, while he described downhills as particularly "puckering" moments.

 George an' I had no such problems, being on high quality British devices

And that was that. We packed up and retired to the campsite to eat incredible ribs (if you're ever near Blairsville or Young Harris in N. GA., be sure to drop in on Bitter Creek Meat Market on 76, you wont regret it), drink beer, and sit in a creek.

And with that, we'll get back to where I left off in 2008.