RIDGE

摘要

It's the perfect road trip - 4 riders, 2 bikes and a 900-mile; quest to find the sweetest blacktop and tastiest BBQ in the South. We haven't moved more than a hundred yards in the past 10 minutes. That might be okay in a car with air conditioning and an ice-cold Diet Coke in each holster. But my wife, Dale, and I are astride a 2008 Victory Vision outside Charlotte, N.C., and the V-twin is radiating heat like a supercharged furnace in the humid summer air. As I frogwalk the Victory at 1 mph, it feels like the flesh on my lower legs is about to melt off. Auto editor Ben Stewart and his girlfriend, Ella, are riding a Honda Gold Wing. He's steaming-literally. And she's probably wondering why precious vacation days are being spent on the back of a bike parked on an expressway. A beach in Maui with a mai tai sounds pretty good right now. Heck, at this point, we'd settle for a beer in an air-conditioned Motel 6. After an hour spent baking on the tarmac, we get a reprieve. Cars start moving past that jackknifed big rig - and we throttle up the bikes, Finally... a cool breeze. So why would we subject ourselves and our mates to hours soaking in the hot Carolina sun?