Episode 007 - Route Highlight - 2019 North Carolina - Andy Griffith Museum Transcript:

(00:00) we went splunking in Bowling Green for buried [Music] treasure hello and welcome to best motorcycle roads I'm Tom and I'm Todd we have over 30 years of motorcycling experience and 15 years of planning and riding motorcycle trips we're here to share with you everything we've learned over those years our goal at best Motorcycle Roads is simple make your next motorcycle trip the best it can be we'll dive into technology planning packing the routes other tips and everything in between from essential

(00:41) prep to Unforgettable routes we've got you covered before we Kickstart today's Journey we ask you to sign up for our BMR Rider alerts it's our way of keeping you in the loop with the latest rides tips and stories we promise no spam only the essentials to enhance your motorcycle Adventures join the BMR crew today we'll put a link in the show notes this segment about motorcycle gear reviews and tips we call the toolkit so first just uh talking about ear protection I know we've mentioned this

(01:12) before but uh man I wish that when I when we first started riding bikes I would have worn just just those little foam earplugs yeah um the wind noise I think is what it is for me and I I'm known for raring bikes without much windshield and it's a big difference uh the just that white noise I guess it probably would be called it's it's hard on the hearing for sure um I just go buy a big bag at the hardware store or a big box of them keep them in the yeah you tweet make them small put them in and they

(01:46) kind of get into your ear yeah um I know a couple guys have the custom earplugs too um if you have a funny shaped ear or have issues you can get those custom ones made but it makes a big difference and you know we talk about the communicators the helmets all the time but it's not a factor not at all no I mean and I I ride behind a large uh windshield on my Goldwing helmet on and you know the communicators but when I put the plugs in all that other noise is gone I can just hear the communicators it's fantastic yeah I love it couldn't

(02:18) couldn't recommend it more like I said if you want to start with the cheap ones they're they're not even a dollar prepare I don't think but so yeah totally big recommendation there so and then secondly maybe just some of the GPS is um not necessarily any but um so since I was starting to ride this 2022 Gold Wing they got carplay and Android auto on the dash unbelievable Game Changer and then right about the same time as I got that um they started to come out with the The Handlebar mounted versions at reasonable prices um yeah

(02:50) for just over 100 bucks you can actually get a cheap the basic model um this connects your phone whether you're Apple or Android um and and just brings it up glove friendly waterproof um kind of like a no-brainer almost like I don't know like you and I both like to have well you and Brad always have had your phone you know we've talked about the problems you had you know the third phone later that you've wrecked because of this allows you just to put your phone in a protected pocket where it's charging and

(03:22) then it's just connected and you can use your handset and man the one on the golden wing it's a little clunky to figure out all the the button this would be a lot easier with the with the you know with touch but it's so nice though um popping back and forth it reads to you you can talk to it through the headset um so this is this is a standalone 5 in yeah yep mounted on The Handlebar it's like another GPS it's waterproof has a little sun shade on some of them wow you plug it in you plug it into the bike bike turns on you turn

(03:53) this thing on it Bluetooth to your phone nice yeah I mean and you have all the apps so just like a you wouldn't a the cars that have Android auto or have carplay you have all it's the same app so sounds it sounds expensive though $112 for the cheap one really the most expensive ones are $300 to $400 and those include cameras and tire pressure monitor sensors wow so like again we talk about this a lot I know like you know we're not for everybody we're not trying to cheap our way into these trips

(04:23) but it's a no-brainer again I mean the cameras having video yeah um having the tire pressures monitors we've talked about the tire problems that we' had before yeah 300 bucks even for that uh I think it's pretty slick yeah I mean I think it's a must have all right you've talked me into it well you can get a new bike though like you can get with that too so maybe I'll do that in by the time you had a seat in one of these Todd you're pretty much all the way to a new bike all right

(04:50) that'll be the story right yeah yeah ridewise is the section we focus on planning and safety tips and when uh we're talking about like group riding rules um some of the things that I like to you know remind everybody is we want to communicate early uh want to M maintain our spacing and really want to be predictable for for other Riders you know that are behind you yeah um do your regular maintenance uh before you leave on your trip uh we've had issues because we haven't uh check your tire pressures

(05:23) uh look at the brakes uh check all the lights um check your oil levels your coolant levels and all that kind of stuff it's all vital you know for for your safety and weather awareness um you know adjust your riding style in in bad weather you know give yourself some more space slow down uh because a puddle in the road if if you're doing 55 60 miles an hour it can cause you to H hydroplane pretty easily so uh you know just slow down give yourself some more distance between Riders and between cars I've

(05:56) noticed too in the South the puddle the road sometimes a pothole pothole is sometimes a that's true a big hole a big hole you know um sometimes the roads you're riding on are back roads two lanes they're not getting all the attention always um as other roads so and then the other thing to do that kind of is really tightly coupled with that is look ahead to construction because now I've heard that maybe some parts of the taale of dragon in 2024 they're talking about resurfacing part of it so

(06:24) what you wouldn't want to do is get down there and it not be open or you know certain roads are closed certain Bridges um things like that um just kind of look ahead great great points Tom um you know know your know your limits uh as a rider and you know don't push it stay in your comfort zone yeah um the worst thing would be to go on a long motorcycle trip find a nice technical Road and then lay your bike down uh you know hurt your bike hurt yourself uh hurt your friends uh want everyone coming back in one

(06:57) piece so um just kind of know your limits and and don't go past that and and always always you know assume that you're invisible yeah when you're on a bike um not everybody looks for motorcycles uh we're we're easy to miss uh Believe It or Not uh I I know myself I've looked both ways and uh a third time just before I pulled out and here's a motorcycle that I didn't see at the first glance so um you know just a few safety tips to to always keep in mind and we've had I would say that every

(07:29) ride some there's a close call and maybe it's not super close but again I know we preach and continue to talk about helmet communicators but holy moly is it great to be like car car car you know like you know cuz who knows that person might be looking over here car coming from over here you know so um same thing with Road I know I've had a couple close calls with just almost getting off the edge because I was trying to figure out our next thing so yeah just um helmet communicators paying attention staying

(08:00) alert it's hard so yeah yeah a lot to think about the next segment is what we call the mile marker it's our story segment is this is a rude highlight this time so we're talking about our trip um down to see the Andy Griffith Museum which was fun um kind of a trip that was a little bit hard to plan I guess I would say mostly because when you start to factor in these things we've talked about all the time is like Maximum Ride days we proba we put about 400 miles on our Maximum Ride days and so uh Mayberry

(08:31) is about 750 mil from where we start off in Iowa so it's one of these trips and I think we've mentioned this before but sometimes you can have alternate routes this one was no alternates because it was like it was going to take us the full we really had to push it to get there and then you got to come back um so I think it was a 5-day trip for us and it was all you know we were just rolling um those those whole trips so um a number of great places for us from our Vantage Point coming a little bit from

(09:00) the north and west to visit though um and but one of the things we like to talk about is just doing those Googling of State landmarks state parks um biggest ball of yarn maybe I don't know um but then you can get into the city level like when we looked at Mount Ary which is the kind of Mayberry town you know we looked in yeah mount um then we looked at the city level what is the chamber coner have to offer you know I think that's where we found like maybe the restaurant 12 bones but um so 13 thank you it was 13 it's a a Baker's

(09:32) Dozen my bad um and then the first night so if we look at day one we stayed overnight the first night in French Lick Indiana home of Larry Bird um and there's um also the French Lick Springs Hotel I guess we didn't stay there it's quite a fancy place but they're known for their Mineral Springs um that they have in there so but it was kind of fun you know to stay in there day two we kind of we hit a couple different towns along the way Santa Claus Indiana which was kind of cool there's a toy shop and

(10:03) everything's Santa Claus themed and yeah it's just kind of fun when you go some through some of these towns that's the fun part I think is just seeing these and then for me the Hidden Gem on this uh was really the Corvette museum uh what a great experience and that's the splunking um not sure reference oh yeah yeah the sinkhole February of 2014 the National Corvette Museum had a sinkhole actually buried a number of cars uh a lot of vintage and even up to the new Corvettes at the time fell in the hole

(10:33) and that was quite a sight to see and there was there was a lot going on there yeah it was right right in the middle of the museum it just it opened up the floor floor fell in and all these cars went down and and it was a large Cavern it was a big hole it was a big hole yeah yeah um one of my favorite Parts about that is they kind of put a port hole in yeah and you could look down because they actually didn't take all the cars out which is kind of neat yeah yeah they kind of glassed over it so you could

(10:56) walk over it or look in I remember and it was not huge but but uh and then they had a couple cars that they had pulled out and didn't do anything with they left them kind of in a wreckage State I don't know it was neat um I did not know I'm not a huge Corvette fan I don't like hate Corvettes but wow what a history of and they had it really well laid out I thought it was kind of a indoor outside they kind of had like a yeah yeah I had a super uh appreciation for Corvettes right you know after going through that

(11:27) entire Museum I I didn't know all the changes and Innovations they had made along the way and yeah there there were some great looking cars in there oh my gosh I think one of the neest things I think now and I I don't know what year they went to the Mid Engine Corvette you know the current Corvette but they've been working on that from like 70s like they were trying to find a Mid Engine Corvette that whole time and it just wasn't working out they were trying to turn it into you know modern day

(11:51) Supercar I it was just interesting to see the evolution they had the prototypes and but uh you know the other thing I think that for that day was hot it was a hot day and that stop was a great stop as a museum with air conditioning just it was a great stop you know I think thinking about that thinking about that weather we talked about a little bit ago here plan it out I mean two hours of air conditioning that day was what we needed because it was hot I agree so yeah so day three I think was the day we finally made it all

(12:21) the way out to to Mayberry a little bit underwhelming um for me I think my anticipation of what I was going to see was bigger than the thing but the museum was pretty cool I mean you got to walk through it was kind of like a do your own like um with headphone kind of thing and you got to hear you know so it was kind of like take your own pace which was nice so and there was some cool things to see for sure but it was just okay yeah it was just all right yeah but then on the way this is kind of one of our audibles that we found um

(12:52) coming away from the M yeah yeah this was one of my favorite stops it turned out to be U you know drive and I don't remember what highway or on but um just off to our left we could see the sign for Bristol and uh Thunder what do they call Thunder Valley drag drag uh there was the sign and uh you know I I we had the hel helmet communicators I said hey let's turn around and go back see if we can get a close look at this place because one thing I remembered is um I knew that place had like the high Bank

(13:22) turns because it was in the movie Cars yep it's a it's it's a short track so that yeah it's like a half mile a half mile track and uh I think in cars they made it look like it was a mile long oval but um so we went back and the gate was open there was nobody there that day uh there wasn't a car in the parking lot and it was like the whole thing was wide open in fact we rode our motorcycles like right up under the the stands the bleachers like underneath and and and got out and walked into the stands and

(13:51) we could go up to the curves and it was amazing it was amazing that it was like a Coliseum for racing it a great way to describe it it it was so cool and and just being there to see the those those angled turns you know the high banked walls you know wow you know it was unbelievable um and we weren't sure if there was any security there or not like up in the maybe in the Press spot or something but Tom was going I think we should take a ride around the track on our bikes better not there might be cameras

(14:24) Honestly though I don't think that there was I don't there was nothing stopping us from doing that probably nothing stopping us but we would have been on camera I'm thinking for sure ah you know whatever it would have been worth it yeah what's I mean the gate is open is it really illegal well good point we should go back we should go back oh so that was now they're going to lock that was a great day great find great kind of uh ad hoc add-on and then I think on the way back home we hit uh

(14:54) you know went through Kentucky we end up in paduk a lot there's one place we've always missed us one of these days when we get down there when I go it's like it's like the hole-in-the-wall cave but uh the bridge was actually closed when we were coming back through there and it was actually raining that day I don't know if you remember that it was a mess of a day but one of these times I want to get to that I think it's I think there's some Jesse James maybe somebody was like a hangout hold up you know like

(15:18) or something that sounds somay we'll get there yeah yeah yeah and then you know the last day a lot of times we're beaten at home and so there wasn't a whole lot the last day but really good trip lot you know didn't go down to the tail Dragon we were in the neighborhood we kind of stayed north of that um but yeah that that's fun to pick a theme um stick with it um we also like to do t-shirts you know we usually try to do a t-shirt but I don't know if I ever told you this but the t-shirt that I had for This was um

(15:48) it was actually I couldn't get it printed because they said I was stealing the copyright of Barney F oh but we did have T-shirts for this we did but it wasn't I got I got the yeah yeah I got banned I got Shadow banned on it or something yeah they wouldn't let me do it cuz I stole the image from the internet oh gotcha I was making print five it wasn't like we were uh we weren't selling them right so anyway I enjoy I enjoy the shirts you make because you always put the map like on the back and you know some of the places

(16:16) that's cool we need to make sure we keep doing that something fun that we do make make shirts and it's birthdays it's whatevers and you know like we we do I mean we always ride well not always but seems like we always end up riding on our birthday right Labor Day time is usually our birthday time and you know so yeah um but the shirts are fun um you know now it's gotten to the point now where people are just wearing only shirt for tri shirts yeah because we have so many now but uh they're totally worth it

(16:48) usually it'll throw something together on like uh one of the sites and just get them sent you know so we should probably make make way for the ones that we didn't we didn't get done so right but yeah so anyway the podcast can be found on best motorcycleroads.com podcast all the information you need will be there uh but you can subscribe on Spotify Amazon music apple pocketcast and YouTube this is the interactive segment we will be looking for input from you uh we want you to send us your questions and suggestions for roads

(17:21) topics and anything else you have on your mind today's roadside Q&A comes from James and and um James has a question that uh we have firsthand knowledge well this okay so it's he wants to know you know if there's any great places to eat you know that uh that are very memorable and on this trip right this SCP was perfect we we found a memorable place to eat and U well why don't you tell the story because so I was looking up places you know just trying to find unique places to eat that're local cuz we try to do

(17:56) the local thing and I found a place in uh Indiana Ed Edinburg Indiana the Edinburg Diner um has a it's a good siiz tender line good it had to be 20 in across it was like a pizza pan size I guess the question I really need to know is I didn't I should have asked this this this been a good question for we ask let me see the fryer for this thing cuz you're right yeah what are you you cook this thing think about that in a in a dumpster full of oil back there they didn't fold it in half no it's not

(18:34) folded so honestly it was that big and you could have put four buns on it and still not even maybe six it would have held like I'll bet 12 buns would have finally covered that whole thing it was so gigantic but what was also interesting about this is we had talked about stopping there on our way yep but we didn't NP so we said we're going to make sure we hit that on the way back well our friend Chris had to leave a day early right okay and Chris is one of these guys that always wants to you know surprise you and do something nice and

(19:06) do fun yeah he just he does this to us so so Chris left a day early and uh we were going back on our our route home and we're going to hit the Edinburg Diner right so we get there and sit down and the four or five of us you know all ordered The Tenderloins and they you know just covered the table these things were gigantic and then we went to pay and the waitress said it's all been taken care of they're like what do you mean what do you mean it's been taken care of well some guy rode through here

(19:36) yesterday and he he paid for all your meals so thank you Chris oh my gosh but that was awesome I don't know how he set that up or how he how he got that accomplished but uh can I just imagine them saying so you're saying that someone's going to come in here tomorrow tomorrow someone's going to come yeah what the so yeah Big T I would give it a shot yeah um I ate it I finished her uh it was a lot I was not even close there's another place that has a big tender line too I think I was telling about in Iowa and

(20:08) it's uh St Olaf Iowa oh yeah yeah there's a it may not be that big but it is probably twice as thick thick yeah I've seen it with four buns on it so it's only a four bunner oh this this thing had to be 12 I'm telling you that it was it was gigantic it was unbelievable um but these are the places that are fun to find um I love your tendin nurg but don't have the dessert um I'm just gonna say I hope they're not watching well you know facts are facts um but no I mean when you get

(20:40) ajoy these are the things like you say I just it's a Memory you know I mean what an you know an experience and you know we've been talking about it for years now so indeed edber Diner do it so now is the last mile it's kind of how we close the episode we talk about the things that we've liked the most about the trips um so Todd what what what do you like what was the well for this you know this trip you planned out to um you know the Andy Griffith Museum yeah you know whether we were Andy Griffith fans

(21:10) or not it was still a destination to go to but the cool places we found along the way are stopped at you know the Santa Claus Indiana the whole town is all Santa Claus and there's you know little uh toy stores and their Lakes are all you know themed around uh you know that and uh the Corvette museum fantastic yeah uh the Bristol Speedway is something I'll never forget um I have some great photos from there yeah just really be looking out for some of those things along it doesn't matter your final destination if you can find some

(21:42) great places you know hit along the way and on the way back absolutely um I would I would agree like the flexibility of finding the speedway was awesome I like the Corvette museum but I ALS it was I shouldn't bash the whole any group of things the town was cool uh it was yeah and it just kind of had a cool little Vibe um you know I think we lock walked around I think we kind of hit it in a bad time of the day too I think things were starting to kind of close down a little bit it was like later afternoon yeah so I think it would have

(22:10) been fun it seemed like they had kind of a a downtown that would have been fun to hang out into so yeah that I think for me um being flexible being alert and and seeing things and just not being afraid to pull in and and see the biggest ball of yarn somewhere or what what was the uh the statue we saw on the last trip Minnesota oh the Viking statue the Viking statue there was another one too wasn't there with the blue ox well no it no the biggest Blu Gill was a blue there was a Blu Gill oh those are the fun cppy maybe it's a giant C might have

(22:46) but uh getting pictures of those things you got to do it so yeah so check out the next episode overcoming challenges on the road how to be prepared to be prepared um if this episode revved up your day don't keep it to yourself like subscribe and share it with your crew we're about the thrill of the ride and the bonds it creates keep the spirit of Adventure alive and remember bikes friends and endless roads the stories ride forever take [Music] care