We had our first good weather of the year this weekend and I was not going to miss it. This was the first real chance I've had to get the big bore out on the road for a long stretch as well so I was looking forward to this for some time.
It was a cool morning when I started off (40's ) but with no cloud in the sky and the new buff I'd bought it was far from unpleasant. I took the back roads south of my house and cruised through some of the old dying towns in BFE North Carolina, enjoying the scenery and stopping every so often when I ran across something of note.
The bike performed flawlessly. The new power of the big bore was a blast to play with. I will have to be careful in the future though as on several occasions when I was passing I found my self over 100 mph. A total of about 5 times during the trip actually. It gets there awfully quick these days it seems. With the pipes rumbling and the power coming on, the first thing on my mind was not watching my speed.
Outside of Red Springs I caught a glimpse of this 'bombed out' school building. It was an old 60's school building, just a bunch of connected boxes, left to die after it was closed, most likely to herd more kids into single bigger school systems away from their homes to save money... regardless, with every window in the place broken and ivy growing up all around I had to turn around and take a look.
(it turns out I also had to play around with some HDR photography tricks.... no I wasn't actually dropping acid at the time.
But the real destination of the trip was Florence SC. It seems in 1949 Triumph's managing director and lead designer Edward Turner was working on a design for a revamped and larger Speed Twin to sell to the American market. He was traveling in South Carolina and slept in a place named the Thunderbird Motel. I found out that it still stands and since it was within riding distance I had to check it out.
It's pretty much a two story old motel that's more than a bit dated, but they have a great sign. I parked below the sign and took photos for about an hour (crawling around on the ground, moving the bike this way an that). I'm fairly convinced that the cleaning staff thought I was completely mad. I got some nice shots, got to visit a bit of Triumph History on the back of some Triumph future. It was a good ride.
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