Unfortunately our lunch is 400 miles away! I think we're gonna have to leave early!

The plan is to head down I-85/I-185 into Columbus, then follow 431/231 into Florida and ride the Gulf coast a bit into Apalachicola. After lunch we'll head up the Georgia-Florida Parkway and then ride I-75 back home.

A cold and early Sunday morning:

We roll out just after 5am. Did I mention it's cold?! Air temps are hanging around 33 degrees. I knew it would be low 30's for at least the first two hours of the trip. Fortunately Dan (BlueLghtning) had a set of Hippo Hands he was not using that I could borrow. I've got the heated grips but the likelihood of being in the 30's for at least 3 hours made me think they may not even be enough. Fortunately they worked pretty well! But I do have to say that they are by far the most "uncool" looking thing I've ever put on a motorcycle. I know it goes without saying, but they definitely earn their name "Hippo Hands".

The first part of the trip was relatively uneventful. We hit some major fog going down I-185, and knowing that Mikey was a little late this morning due to technical difficulties from a fogging visor, I'm sure he was not enjoying it! Fortunately the fog clears up after about half an hour and we make it into Columbus. Gas up the bikes and we trek over to a nearby Waffle House to take a few minutes to warm up. Without any heated gear I could only imagine how cold the ride down was for Mikey! We roll into Columbus around 36 degrees.

Ready to get back on the road:

Head down 431 towards Dothan, AL. It was relatively uneventful, but I think the animals of the area did not want us there. We saw a huge group of deer next to the road, and shortly thereafter I had a bird which at the time closely resembled a Boeing 747 fly right in front of my face. I could have punched the thing had I not feared that it would fight back. I thought it was a crow at first but when it did the flyby the damn thing had to of been a hawk or something. I swear I saw it had a lit cigarette in its mouth, a "Love Mom" tattoo, and was flipping me off at the time. Serious!

As if that wasn't enough we had a pair of dogs run out in front of us crossing the road. Yikes. It was still better than what we were to see in Thomasville later that day.

Stop in Dothan for gas and a quick snack to hold us over before lunch, temps were around 42 degrees due to the remaining overcast clouds blocking the sun:

Get into Florida and the temps squeak into the low 50's, which really feels nice about now!

Ride into Panama City and head down 30 into Tyndall Air Force Base. All our directions had us going into the base, although at this point we still weren't sure if we can go through there or not. I figured we'll know for sure when we get attacked by the MPs. Riding through the AFB all I could think about was the base requirements for motorcycle riders and how we didn't qualify. So we just kept it at the speed limit and pretended like we knew what we were doing.

Head into Mexico Beach and Port St. Joe where the road follows right next to the coast for about 20 miles, which was pretty cool, a real nice change to the crappy weather north Georgia has been having. We couldn't have asked for a better day to ride down there. The roads are definitely straight and boring but the sights I'll admit are very pretty, even in winter.

Head into Apalachicola, we've reached out destination!

We sit outside and get a nice view of the dock for the boats that catch our upcoming meal, although most of the boats were out:

We saw a pair of tugboats trolling along carrying a very large length of pipe down into the bay. Not sure what it was for, but the pipe was huge and I can only imagine how heavy the whole thing was:

The birds were going crazy and were even trying to pick a fight with one of the restaurant cats that hangs out and eats up some of the table scraps at Boss Oyster, he was putting up a good fight but the birds outnumbered him real bad:

There were a bunch of crows making a racket for a few minutes, we realized what had the birds all worked up, a group of hawks or something chilling out in a nearby tree. You can see the larger birds in the middle and the crows above them:

Finally, the food arrives, VICTORY!

Five seconds later, it was gone!

What can I say, give me oysters, crackers, and tobasco sauce and I'm good!

Finish that off with a shrimp po'boy and fries and I had a great lunch!

With lunch done, it's time to head back home!

Head back up through some serious Florida forest, make it past I-10 and soon after I get us lost! To conserve the battery I had the GPS off and missed what appeared to be an obvious turn on GoogleMaps. We take a few minutes to figure out what we're doing and I re-plan the route to take us to I-75 quicker, going through Thomasville and Moultrie.

A good route but in Thomasville somebody decided not to look where they were going and attempt a left turn in front of us!!! Damn, I think I'll take my chances with the homicidal hawk! The guy was a complete idiot because there was a minivan in the lane next to us just a car-length ahead, so somehow he failed to see a minivan and two bikes all at once.

Got my heart rate back down to planet Earth and continue on into Moultrie. Stop and get gas in Tifton before jumping on I-75:

Slab it for most of the tank and then hit another gas stop in south Forsyth for the home stretch!

At this point I'm getting pretty tired but stay focused to get back home, but I'll admit these last 100 miles I was thinking of only one thing and that was my warm bed!

Finally make it home, safe and sound, I head to bed. Tiff tells me how tired I must have been later as apparently I told her I needed to go back down into the kitchen and eat something since I didn't really have much of a dinner, but ended up passing out immediately after saying how hungry I was. I did have a hell of a breakfast the next morning though, after oversleeping my alarm for work!

But it was worth it!!! A great ride!!!

Oh and I made sure I got a shirt after all that effort:

Boss Oyster: Shut up and shuck