First Group Motorcycle Ride

Logan and I took on another project.

I know, I know, who's shocked? *listens to the crickets*

But seriously, I'm so tired of only knowing other motorcyclists who basically race when they ride together and don't really ride together. Plus, most of them appear to be in a contest to see who's the most suicidal.
Not my gig- I don't have a spare parent for the Wolfcub if I decide to get myself killed.

But I knew that I had to know some other riders who ride more reasonably... so I set out to find them.

I started a group on Facebook for folks who wanted to ride, and sort of cruise the many awesome backroads of north Georgia- and most importantly, who didn't mind our kids being involved. So now we have a small group of other riders, and we get together once a month or so and go spend a day riding together. We use MSF standard group riding techniques, but since Logan and I have bluetooth-linked helmets, we ride head and tail most of the time to make communication easier. We also have a chase car for the kids, so that they can meet us- and, in the case of this first ride, bring dry clothes!

For our first ride, we started a bit of a clusterfisk. I was running late coming back from a wedding, and everyone else was running late as well. We ended up leaving a solid hour and a half later than intended, to the point that one rider had to go home rather than ride with us.
We met at Logan's shop, which let him check over all of the bikes easily, but got caught in a pop-up shower that further delayed us. At least we only had 2 children, instead of 5-6, so our chase car was my little Yaris with its 30+mpg, instead of Britt's Honda Pilot.
When we finally left, we took 400 north to Hwy 369, then popped onto Hwy 9 for a nice easy cruise to Dahlonega. Since it was our first ride together, we chose a very easy route to ensure we could stay together and our chase car could keep up (although they had the route and rendezvous point in case we got separated).

We eventually hit Dahlonega, dried out at Bourbon Street Grille with the kids, and wandered my favorite small town for a little while before heading home. OVerall, it was a good shake-down ride.

Riding up Hwy 9 in staggered formation

Wolfcub on Uncle DJ's bike

The ladies in the chase car

Turning in a staggered formation (we dropped to single file in the twistier areas)

Lessons from it:

• Plan to rendezvous at least 45 minutes before anticipated ride time. 
• Leave without people if necessary. Seriously. 
• Where possible, have folks bring dry clothes if the forecast shows a likelihood of showers. That's part of what a chase car is for. 
• Make sure, next time, to bring more entertainment for the kids, as a fun ride for adults on motorcycles is not nearly as pleasant for toddlers trapped in a car.