Me and the pup went for a ~250 mile day ride Sunday. It was fun.
As all excellent rides should begin, we met up at Taco Bell. Maddie and I split a quesarito, which was some delicious conglomeration of calories and meat byproduct. Delicious.
My friend Freeman got a new bike, a V-strom. It is quite nice, with full luggage, crashbars, etc. We cleaned the thing up Saturday night, adding foglights and completely readjusting the suspension (including changing linkage to bring it up to a ridable height). It's a cool bike.

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We hopped on 400, one of the main highways out of Atlanta, and rode up and into Dahlonega.
Freeman holding up the ADV rider "salute"

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We kept going Northeast into Helen, GA. Helen used to be a logging town long ago, but when the industry died out, started catering to tourists by becoming "alpine themed." The entire town is supposed to resemble a German town. Even with my limited international traveling (read: none), I am skeptical.
Hmm, smells kinda like kraut.

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We rode over to Cool River Tubing (in the background of the below pic -- even the tubing place is themed), and parked our bikes.

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Luckily, the tubing company is fairly dog-friendly. They were impressed that Maddie just hung around us without a leash, and gave me a kids tube for her to ride on.

The tubing company is downriver from where we get in the Chattahoochee river to go tubing, so we loaded up the tubes they gave us into a trailer and boarded their bus. The bus went back through town. Maddie made friends with some girls behind us and rode in their laps for most of the short bus ride.

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We unloaded our tubes and hopped in the river. The water is perfect this time of year, and the air's not ridiculously hot yet. Maddie's been tubing a few times, she typically shares a tube with the beer cooler. We don't drink and ride though, so she shared the tube with a backpack. I clipped her to my tube so she wouldn't go too far away.

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Freeman didn't choose the thug life, the thug life chose him.

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Maddie hopped off and swam some, but rode most of the time in the tube -- the current's a bit too strong for her to swim the whole way.
We rode out the river and the small rapids on it, changed and dried off, then rode across Helen to look for dinner. Can you spot the scooter and adventure bike among the Harleys?

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Kraut dog for dinner. Delicious. I love sauerkraut.

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Maddie had some too. Omnomnom bratwurst!

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We were well-fed and ready to ride. It was still afternoon, so it was time to go enjoy some good mountain twisties. We headed out of Helen up to Richard B Russell Scenic Byway. It's always a good ride, with lots of elevation change and sweeping curves. The bikes performed beautifully, but we were constantly dodging gravel.
I'm on the right side of the double yellows, I'm just leaned way over and holding the camera way out:

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We rolled on through, and hit Wolf Pen Gap next. Wolf Pen Gap is a lot tighter than Richard B Russel Scenic Byway, but they were paving it, so we got to enjoy lots of fresh tarmac. But, Freeman just got an adventure bike, so we detoured off of the Gap and took off down a gravel trail.

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The PCX performed perfectly, as usual. It's a bit squirrely on the big gravel with such small onroad tires, but a bit of working the handlebars keeps the rubber side down. Maddie usually sits on my lap, but she stands when the going gets rough.
Freeman's V-Strom was a bit more well-suited for the application, with dual-purpose tires. He only had to wait for me once though -- the linked brakes on the PCX work way against you when trying to maintain control on steep gravel downhills, so I had to take it slow to prevent the front from washing out.

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Our offroading was cut short though, a HUGE tree had fallen across the path, and the woods are too tight to fit the V-Strom around.

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The woods are getting dark too:

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PCX in the wild:

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Time to turn back...

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And back on the road. We stopped to get out the camera, there was a black bear in the road. It ran off before I got my phone out to take a picture though. There are lots of black bears and deer around here. The bears usually stay small (under 50 pounds) and typically don't pose a threat. The deer can be way more harmful -- I've had more than my fair share of close calls with deer in the road in North Georgia. Never, ever ride faster than your headlights can see, especially at and right after dusk.

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We kept on down Wolf Pen gap. No wolves spotted, but plenty of other wildlife. The deer started coming out, so we burned our headlights on high, flipped the foglights on, and kept a hand hovering the brake at all times.

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Beautiful curves.

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We got out of the twisties and into the countryside. It's beautiful up here. Maybe I'll retire around this area someday.

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Some curves picked up again as we rode south down SR60, out of the Chattahoochee National Forest.

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We rode past Lake Zwerner and then rode back through Dahlonega.

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We stayed on Highway 9, avoiding the slab and cruising at a relaxed pace.

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We powered on towards home. Maddie fell asleep on her favorite spot in the whole world, tired from a long day of adventuring:

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