Been There, Done That, Got the T-Shirt

Today was a long but great day.  I rode from about 8:30 to 7 pm, but only covered about 320 miles.  The day started when Carolyn and I met Mark and his friend Stacy at the local breakfast place in Kingston after they had ridden over from Russellville the previous day and spent the night in Kingston.  Mark and I are examples of contrasting riding styles.  He rides a Harley with semi ape-hangar bars and loud pipes, and he wears the chopper kit complete with chaps and Nazi helmet.  How such a nice guy can look so bad-ass is a miracle to me.  I, on the other hand tend towards the practical long-distance sport touring bike and gear.  Check us out:

We rode the Cherahala Skyway that I mentioned in the last post, and then got over to the Dragon.  Anybody who rides a motorcycle for any length of time.....especially a street motorcycle......knows about the Tail of the Dragon.  It's claim to fame is 318 curves in 11 miles.  There are several websites devoted to it, but here are a couple if you want to read more: http://www.tailofthedragon.com/ and http://www.tailofthedragon.com/maps_dragon_road.html

I was shocked at how many riders were gathered at the resort that is at one end of the road.  I expected that on a Monday in October it would be relatively empty, but not so.

The parking lot:

Including this crashed bike (the little note on the tank is a for-sale sign):

And this bad Harley dude:

One of the landmarks is the "Tree of Shame" that has lots of parts from crashed bikes hanging from it.

And the three of us:

I took some videos while riding the Dragon, but they take so long to process and it's late and I'm tired.  Maybe I'll get it done tomorrow.  But long story short, the road pretty much matches it's reputation.  For my buddies back in Woodland, it's a lot like Green Mountain road, but longer and without the houses and driveways.  I happened to hit a spot where there wasn't much traffic ahead of me; only one guy towing a trailer who really blocked me, so I would stop and let him get ahead for a ways and then take off again.

After the Dragon we worked our way over to the Blue Ridge Parkway.  First, though, we plodded through the Great Smokey Mountain National Park.  This looked good on my Garmin software when planning the route, but the reality was not so good.  It was beautiful.......and that was the problem.......there were TONS of looky-loos poking along at less than the already way too slow speed limit.  If I have any criticism of the roads back here it is that the speed limits are too low, passing zones are rare, and there are TOO DAMN MANY PEOPLE.  Once we got on the actual BRP, there was much less traffic and the pace picked up.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed and appreciated the amazing fall colors, but I was living in it, not having to try to get a peak through the windows.  I took this picture of my Zumo, which shows what a good GPS route looks like:

The day ended on a misty, rainy note as we neared Asheville, NC.  I stopped to put my rain suit on, so naturally, it quit raining.  Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy, though.

Oh, I almost forgot; the T-shirt: