During the conference, the AMA had put together several rides, some were self-guided, and some were “guided”. Barbara, Linda and I decided to take one of the guided rides to the Georgia Guidestones. We, and about 50 other bikes, met our guide in the parking deck. When we got there, he tells us that there are mistakes in the directions printed in our handbooks, and pass out

“new” directions on a piece of paper……Oh dear….why is he passing out directions if he is guiding us??? I got out the duct tape and taped them to my tank, just in case…..

We leave the parking deck, make a Left on to the main street, and lose the group at the first light. Well, having been on other guided rides, I figured that they would be waiting up the road for everyone to catch up. NOT!!!

No problem, I can read directions, the three of us and about 8 others who were behind us continue on. We find the next turn with no problems. The third turn is .07 of a mile…….only there is no road there… I continue up the road looking at every street’s name. We go three miles and no road. Well, maybe I passed it and didn’t see it; I’ll turn around….11 bikes make a u-turn in a cul-de-sac.

We go back to the point where we first turned, there is a Home Depot there and I pull into the lot…..10 bikes still following me. We have a group meeting, everyone decides to try again, Barbara pulls out the AMA handbook, and it says 3.07 miles…...they left off three miles on the “new” directions????? Sure enough, if we had gone one more block, before our turn around, we would have seen the street.

Stumbling block #2….it seems that different Counties use the same street names but they are not connected....of course we took the right name, but wrong road. This time we ask a Police Woman, parked on the side of the road, for help. Hah! She had no clue, I showed her the directions and she couldn’t help, it seems she only knew roads in her County. She pointed us in the direction of one of the main highways that was on the sheet…..it was the blind leading the blind. We lost 3 bikes at this point, they gave up.

Needless to say we finally fumbled our way to the Georgia Guidestones, ( The Georgia Guidestones - Crystalinks ) it was very interesting and well worth the trip. On our way back we stopped for gas and the owners drew us a great map on some great roads to get us back to Athens.

When we got back we complained to the AMA about the “guided” ride…..we were told it was a “Hosted” ride…..whatever that means??? Next month I’ll tell you about….our self-guided ride to Madison, GA.