Day 7 recap

Dawsonville, GA to Asheville, NC

It was finally time for a full day in the mountains. These are the kind of roads that have names like The Dragon, The Skyway and Hellbender. These are the kind of roads where you take extreme handling machines to their limits.

We left Dawsonville (known for nothing more than having outlets) on GA 19 north. It's a nice road. Twisty, but not unreasonably so. A good warm-up. We caught a couple minutes of light rain, but net even enough to care about.

We rolled through small towns, keeping an eye out for food, and came across a roadside BBQ stand in McCaysville, GA. I think the only other thing it's known for is being the station for the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway. We pull over as soon as we can, and shut off the bikes. I decide to move mine across the street, so we can see it from the restaurant, thus meaning we don't have to worry about locking up/carrying all our crap. Eric goes to pull Connie over, too, but she won't start.

It's clearly something electrical. We poke at it for a second, and decide to tackle it after lunch. The BBQ was good, but we were both a little distracted. We wrap up lunch, and start going through checklists, diagnostic steps, our own limited knowledge of electrics. No dice.

Eric's starting to think through the "dead bike, arrange a tow to a shop and kiss Moto3our goodbye" scenario. I'm looking up bike shops nearby to call. Finally he calls Griffith's Kawasaki and Gets Ted Freeman on the phone.

Ted takes a half an hour running Eric and me through things to check. He isolates it to a bad fuse (not blown, just bad) and Connie's happy again.

Add all this to a late start, and it's already almost 3pm. We're 40 miles from Tellico Plains, which is where the fun starts. So we head out.

On the way to Tellico Plains (and the Tennessee end of the Skyway) we have a nice but pretty uneventful ride up TN 68, until about 5 miles from the Skyway. On the other side of the road, a truck goes screaming by, with a Tellico Plains cop in hot pursuit. They must have been doing 90. On majorly twisty back roads. I don't think there's any way you can learn to drive like that on those roads, other than growing up in it. Barely a minute later, another Tellico cop goes flying by, chasing the other guys. And that opens the flood gates. Next is a sheriff car, followed by 3 unmarked black trucks, lights and sirens going off like they're announcing the rapture. After that it was a slow stream of cop cars coming from every direction, and funneling down 68. Even after we turned off onto the Skyway, we heard sirens for a while.

...Which means there were no cops to be found on the Skyway. I'm not sure they would have been out looking for us to begin with. The traffic was sparse. I saw a grand total of maybe 10 bikes and 5 cars in both directions for the entire length of the Skyway (36 miles). They probably don't bother with the mid-week stuff. I could have sworn Brian and I were there mid-week in 2006, but we came across at least 5 times that amount of bikes and cars. Maybe the rain forecast kept everyone away?

We had been lucky, and the rain had missed us all day. The Skyway was dry and clean. For those of you who haven't been on this road, you should go. I can't imagine it will be nearly as fun in a car, but it's still sure to be amazing. The Skyway goes from 900 ft to 5400 feet, and back, in those 36 miles. (Sorry, Brian. I hate to say it. But it's better than we remembered. It felt shorter this time, but better.)

It's twisty but very driveable/rideable. There are at least a dozen scenic overlooks along the way. The cloud line started at 3700 feet when we went through. Riding through clouds is surprisingly different than riding through fog. It's simultaneously easier to see and moister.

We stopped at the first overlook and chatted with some riders, and then hit the road again. I've known I have a good suspension/tire setup going on my bike, but this is where I got to learn how good it is. I came up behind two sport bike riders from Eastern Carolina (Tyler and Gary). Gary was out for a more serene ride, so Tyler and I took of for a slightly more spirited ride down the NC descent. The whole way down I was right with him. We hit the bottom and he flagged me down to pay me and my bike a compliment.

After the Skyway, we made our way over to the Dragon. I won't go into a long description, but it's the Times Square of twisty roads. (It's extreme, packed with people, some sort of center of the universe, sensory overload, the locals avoid it, people go because that what they think they are supposed to do [it's not lost on me that I say that, yet also picked it as a destination...], etc.)

I was expecting about 250 bikes, but there were easily under 40. It wasn't nearly the carnival it was before. Again, rain and mid-week were probably the cause, but I was still surprised. We chatted with some guys we met on the Skyway, and took a coffee/bathroom break. By the time we hit the dragon, it was about 5pm.

We pull out, to hit the road, and within a minute are behind a silver Ford SUV (with a Harley Davidson sticker and local tags) doing 25 mph. Now the speed limit on the Dragon is 40, but this guy is taking his sweet damn time. Now there are so many bikers on this road, trying to outride it, that cars always pull over. They have built in dozens of pull-offs, and drivers use them to let riders pass. This guy wasn't having it.

Eric and I were getting more and more frustrated. It's not that we couldn't tear through there at 60, it's that it's actually harder to ride a road like that at such low speeds. Motorcycles are very stable, but that stability is a result of forces in motion (If you lock the throttle and jump off a motorbike doing 60, it will keep rolling straight and upright until something stops it. You try the same thing at 15, and it will flop over.) We do this for 8 miles (the Dragon is 11 long) and hit the first overlook and decide to turn around, and ride it back.

The second run starts out great, but about a minute in, a thunderstorm comes out of nowhere, and I pull over to put on rain gear. Takes a few minutes, and when we go to leave, Connie won't start again. We spend 20 minutes on the dragon, in the rain, trying to get Eric's bike to start. And no dice. No cell reception, no traffic going by. Nothing. Finally, we decide Eric's going to ride my bike down rest of the way, and use a phone down there to get his roadside assistance on the case.

While i'm waiting for him to come back with an update, I start poking around and discover a loose battery main cable. I tighten it up, and Connie fires right up. I make a mad dash down the hill, and catch Eric on the phone. He calls off the cavalry, and we go over all the connections again, cleaning terminals as we go.

A few minutes later, we are back on the road, riding the Hellbender (NC 28) in sunny skies and beautiful weather. The road rolls along a river, which was filled with fog and was quite striking. Eventually we find our way into Asheville, and meet up with some fine NC hospitality (Neil and Jenny are getting their own post). BBQ, beers, conversation and then it's off to bed.