Ominous clouds in the sky but you could see all the mountains around Atlanta – including downtown Atlanta from Burnt Mountains today. Stone Mountain is not visible that often from there. It is on the left end on the top picture. You can see the magnified picture in the bottom one. There was not much sunlight – but I suspect the lowering of pollution (shelter at home and the recent rains bringing pollen count down) had something to do with it.

It was windy and cold as heck. The views look great though!

After a long time, the three musketeers hit the road with the motorbikes. As always, Rakesh planned out the trip and led the caravan of three. And Avi stayed behind as the sweep to keep me safe. It was an absolutely enjoyable ride. Altogether, a little over 120 miles (200 km).

Of course, the serpentine roads up in the mountains kept me on my tenterhooks. Made a terrible mistake once of not relaxing my body and leaning the bike enough on a right turn. I had not slowed down enough, got scared and stiffened up and slipped over to the other lane for about 30 yards. Fortunately, there was no traffic from the other side.

When we stopped at Burnt Mountain look out point, while parking the bike on a steep climb, managed to earn my first distinction of “laying the bike down”. That is a euphemism for dropping the bike. Not sure what happened, but the motorbike leaned over while I was backing it in to park and I could not pull it up. Rakesh quickly came to help me. When he learnt that this was the first time I had laid my bike down, his only remark – after some 25 years of motorbiking was – “you have a lot of catching up to do”.

We started fairly warm in the sixties (I still had five layers on). But boy, it got real cold up in the mountains and the strong wind was making me wonder why I had not put another layer on. I think Avi bore the burnt of the cold temperatures – I believe he had less layers than me.

I am still bummed I made that mistake. Almost will make me go back there by myself and keep my speed under control this time (which is much lower than other motorbikers on the road) and make all those twists and turns once again without that mistake.

The view from Burnt Mountain Lookout Point was awesome. First time saw Stone Mountain and Kennesaw mountain. It was a cloudy day but perhaps the lack of pollution with all this shelter at home gave a clear line of sight to mountains that are 70 miles away from Burnt Mountain (as the crow flies).