April 2023 - The Burger Bus Ride

A short, but circuitous ride up to The Burger Bus in Ballground for lunch had been curated by our illustrious navigation master, Larry. Unfortunately Larry got sick and couldn't make it, but four of us (Mel, Dan, Dennis, and Bob) decided to ride.

We met as usual at Timothy on Arnold Mill and realized that in Larry's absence none of us had set the route in a GPS, so we did the best we could with Google Maps. After working around the limited waypoints in Google Maps we had a route set and headed out.

The day couldn't have been better for riding; bright skies, dry roads, and a great temperature. The first part of the route was straightforward, with very familiar roads that we regularly ride, but once we got onto Henderson Mountain Road the ride started to resemble a scavenger hunt with frequent stops to figure out where we should be going as there was obvious misdirection from Google Maps.

Part of the route took us along Damascus Road between Waleska and Ballground, which seemed like it should have been fine and it was a road we had ridden many times before. However, it seems we have not ridden this road recently, and the weather (and no doubt some maintenance issues) have taken their toll on the surface, leading some of us to speculate if this was a bit of off-roading thrown in for good measure. There were several points that were so bad, it was advisable to ride standing on the pegs!

All in all though, we did sort of follow the route laid out by Larry, despite Google's misdirections and in some cases our own bad override decisions.

We arrived at The Burger Bus in Ballground for lunch right on schedule around 11:30.

As usual, food from 'the bus' was awesome, after which we headed home taking a more direct, but scenic route back to Macedonia and then south.

A great day, great ride, and great friends!