My first Wingstock event
The second annual Wingstock event was just held on September 29th and 30th in Woodstock Georgia. It is a gathering of Honda Goldwing riders, and the event is hosted by Traxxion Dynamics, who makes high performance suspension parts for Goldwings and other bikes. I rode up with a buddy of mine from the Ocala Florida area, and we got there about 11pm on Thursday evening.
We had a dinner get together at Ryan’s Steakhouse on Friday night, and we packed their back room to the gills with riders.
On Saturday morning, there were a few local folks who arranged to lead some fairly long distance rides in the Georgia countryside. I chose a fairly tame ride, with not so many peg dragging turns, though we did negotiate quite a few twisties. Our ride left the Cracker Barrel restaurant at 8am, and we headed up to Helen Georgia, which just happened to be hosting an Octoberfest celebration. This ride was affectionately known as the trip to “Helenback”. We of course, took the long way there and would our way through some national forest roads.
The weather was absolutely beautiful, with not a cloud in the sky the entire weekend, and the temperatures were in the low 80’s. The view from the side of the mountains was stunning!
Once in Helen, which is a little biker friendly tourist community with lots of little boutiques and motorcycle apparel shops, we parked in the free bike parking lot and headed out to find a spot for some lunch.
We found this restaurant that was featuring German food, and they had a handful of menu items that ended in “wurst”.
I went for the bratwurst sandwich with sauerkraut and Swiss cheese. Yummy!
On the way back, we rode though a place called Wolfpen Gap, which is similar to the Tail of the Dragon. It has gobs of twisties and switchbacks to negotiate. I don’t have any pictures of it, since I was somewhat busy keeping the bike on the road! There is a gas station called Dale’s at the bottom of the road where all the bikers gather to fuel up and grab a drink.
We wound our way back to the hotel so we could freshen up and head out for the BBQ at Traxxion. They had a wonderful BBQ buffet, lots of Goldwings to look at, and a really great live blues band. It was awesome! Many thanks to Max and his Traxxion crew for hosting this great event. The rough head count was approximately 148 attendees. Rather than post a bunch more pictures, I will just post this link to the thread on GL1800Riders.com and you can see more pictures there.
We left late Sunday morning to ride back home, and except for the occasional shower once we got back into Florida, the ride was uneventful.
Special thanks go out to Dennis and Vanessa for inviting me to ride up and back with them, and for all Dennis’ help with the little odds and ends on my bike that I wanted to do. Dennis, if you read this, you are Da Man!!
I look forward to going again next year.