Crazy Larry's Excellent Adventures

Deals Gap. Tail Of The Dragon.



US HWY 129. 11 Miles, 318 Corners. The Number One Motorcycle Road in North America

Could be. I'm the wrong guy to ask. While I've driven a lot of really fun bike roads, I haven't driven all the other roads on the list. But Damn! It sure was a fun piece of pavement.



The problem was finding it, tucked away in the Ozarks in a remote corner of Tennessee. It was one more in a series of some of the most entertaining roads I've ever been on. The straight roads twisted and turned back and forth as they tried to find an easy way across all those hills and through all those passes. That's what Deals Gap is, a pass through the mountains running from West Virginia into Tennessee. Tail Of The Dragon is the name given to it by some smart guy in marketing. If you look at it on a large scale map it resembles a child's scribble.



I was on my way back from a Bike/Skydiving trip to Florida. Nathalie had sent me ahead pulling a trailer with the bikes and then flown in to Tampa a few days after I arrived. The part about her sending me ahead isn't exactly true, but I've enjoyed telling everybody that anyway. I volunteered. A few weeks before I left Ottawa Kevin brought his laptop over to show me a video of a bike making a high speed run down a piece of two lane highway called Tail Of The Dragon. The video was one of hundreds on YOUTUBE of that same stretch of road, and I discovered after further research that it is quite a tourist attraction, drawing people from near and far to drive it. It sure looked like the guy was having a lot of fun, I was headed that general direction anyway, it would only be a few hours out of my way, and it might be a long time before I was in the neighbourhood with a motorcycle again, so I decided I'd make a detour on the way back and check it out.



I knew I was on the right track when I passed a church and saw a sign. Not a burning bush, or something in the sky, a real sign. It was advertising Sunday services and said "Dragon Slayers Welcome". Then came a gas station called "Dragon's Lair." It had 4 gas pumps with a large storage tank behind each one. The first one was painted white and marked "Regular Unleaded" in large letters. The next one was painted yellow and labelled "High Test". The next, bright red and labelled "Supreme". The last one was fenced off, painted in a red yellow and black checkerboard and labelled "Rocket Fuel". It was looking promising!



Then, as I rounded a corner, there it was, The Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort. Not quite the biker equivalent of Mecca, but it's close enough. I pulled in around 9 a.m. after driving 19 hours out of the previous 24. I'd gone from the palm trees and heat of Z-Hills, through the moss covered oaks of Georgia, survived Atlanta and all it's late night traffic, into the cool of the Blue Ridge mountains, arriving to an overcast sky threatening rain.



The parking lot alone lets you know that you've arrived in Motorcycle Territory. It's all marked up in slots that are just the right size for Bikes. Cars and trucks aren't welcome. But, seein's how the lot was empty, 'cept for a pair of Harleys and a BMW, I decided to intrude. The BMW in the lot was the same model as my girlfriends, but with a unique twist. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to paint scales all over it, and eyes on the front fender, turning it into........ a Dragon. The resort consisted of a motel, a cafeteria style restaurant, a gift shop, a gas station, and in the center of the parking lot, The Tree Of Pain, Tree Of Shame. It was decorated with wreckage from some of the bikes that had been here before, and hadn't fared very well.



I was disappointed that there was hardly anybody there, in any of the pics or videos online the place was overrun with every type, make, and model of bike on the road. The girl in the gift shop said that in another 3 weeks the place would be jammed, but that actually worked in my favour. No bikes, no Cops.
I only stayed long enough to take some pictures and grab breakfast before heading up through the pass. I drove to the far end to get a first look at the road before pulling my bike off the trailer to play.

I've driven Notch road and Mountain road in Gatineau park more times than I can count, done the Jones Falls road at a dangerous speed, and been to Calabogie early on a Sunday morning with the fast crowd. I've seen good bike roads, fast bike roads, technically demanding bike roads, ones that twist and turn like a snake and force you to a near crawl, ones with long sweeping curves that dare you go fast, and every other type you can imagine. But I've never driven anything like this. It had everything I've just described and more. Not to mention the fact that I was driving a pickup truck towing a trailer loaded with 2 motorcycles. It started out looking like fun, but within a few hundred yards I'd started to sweat. 



Tail of the Dragon is the right name. This thing was a continuous series of curves and switchbacks with nonstop level changes. it was impossible to say where one corner ended and another began. The posted speed limit was 30 miles an hour with signs on some corners warning you down to 20. Some of those corners have names, names like "The Wall", and "Gravity Cavity". I'd be surprised if I averaged half the posted speed limit pulling that trailer. On the hairpin turns I kept watching the rear view mirror expecting to see one or both of the bikes snap loose from the trailer and go bouncing across the road. The forest was all large towering old growth trees that reached out from each side to make a canopy high overhead. They were also pretty damn close to the road. The only places they weren't crowding the shoulder they were replaced with either a vertical rock face or a sheer drop into a ravine filled with more trees. At least the trees had no leaves so in the places where the road turned back on itself you could actually see far enough ahead that you could see what was coming for the next 60 or 70 yards.



Then I passed the first cross.



It was a small cross, painted white, with a wreath hanging from it, well off to the side of the road. "In Loving Memory" was written on the cross piece. It was the first, but it wasn't the last.


By the time I reached the parking lot at the lookout on the far side I had only been passed by a matched pair of Nissan sports cars I pulled partway onto the shoulder to let go by, and a half dozen bikes going the other way. Judging by the videos I'd seen on Youtube and all the photos I'd seen at killboy.com it was a very quiet day at the Gap.

I pulled My FZ6 off the trailer, geared myself up with all the protective ballistic motorcycle gear I had, and started to simultaneously psyche myself up while trying to call myself down. I wanted to be ready for this but I also didn't want to be over-amped and run right off the edge of my experience into one of those big trees.

 
My bike is a 2008 Yamaha FZ6S, and it's classified as a Sport Touring bike. The "S" in the model number is very important, it was the last year they made that model before they started detuning it and slowing it down to separate it a little more from their pure sport models. A review I read on it in Motorcycle Magazine called it "the Swiss army knife of motorcycles". It's not the best in it's size range at anything, but it's pretty damn good at everything. It's fast, scary fast. One night coming back from the drop zone I got it up to 239 KMH. Even at that speed it was rock solid, and still accelerating. But while it may have still had some balls left mine were shrinking fast and I decided I didn't actually need to know just how fast it could go. Even at that there are faster ones available. While there are bikes that corner even better it's still light on it's feet and very manueverable. There are bikes that are better suited for touring, but I wouldn't hesitate to load it up with luggage and take off for a couple of weeks of tearing up the twisties through New England. I've heard it called "The Old Man's Sport Bike" because of it's good manners and upright seating position. In fact, in Florida just 2 weeks previously a drop dead gorgeous young thing had walked by me and said "Nice Bike!" My ego leaped up several notches until she finished with "My dad drives one just like it." Pop! Psssss, went my ego as it deflated. It's comfortable, well behaved, and predictable. At idle, it's European style dual under seat mufflers are quiet, polite even. Until you wind it up to it's redline of 14,000 RPM and it screams like a caged animal finally demanding it's freedom so it can exact it's revenge on the world. In the right hands, with a capable rider in the saddle, it can hold it's own against most other bikes and riders out there. I realized soon after buying it that it's capabilities far exceeded mine so I spent a couple of days at Fast Riding School (go ahead, take a guess at what they teach there) to learn how to take advantage of what the machine was capable of. I've spent countless hours since running the 8 kilometer circuit of the on and off ramps at the highway 417-174 interchange, powering through the corners and working on my technique.


 
From what I'd seen of the Tail Of The Dragon when I came through the first time I knew that as long as I could keep it on the pavement I'd have an awful lot of fun. And if the cops showed up, as long as I was doing less than double the speed limit the worst they could do was give me a ticket, but I wouldn't get any demerit points because Tennessee doesn't have a reciprocal ticket sharing arrangement with Ontario. On the other hand, if I did get caught doing double the limit, that was classified as a felony which means my bike would seized and I would be immediately arrested and held for trial, in a foreign country, in a town that was probably a long way from the nearest Canadian consulate.


 
My first run through the Gap on the FZ was quick, but not excessively so. I mainly wanted to get a feel for it and try to figure out which corners were the most likely to catch me off guard. Starting from the Tennessee end the curves are mostly of the long sweeping kind, the road more sinuous than twisting. That gave me the chance to relax a little as I imagined all the bikes that had gone screaming down here before me. As I went further along and climbed higher into the pass the corners came more frequently and would often suddenly tighten up. Instead of being constant they would start decreasing in radius partway through, like they were some sort of trap lain for the unsuspecting motorcyclist. The curve would invite you in, as you tried to pick the best line you can for a road you can't see more than a second or two ahead, and suddenly you're grabbing for the brake lever while simultaneously leaning even further into the corner wondering just how sticky your tires really are. It was easy to see why the crosses were there.


 
When I reached the resort I circled the parking lot and headed right back. This being my third trip through I had started to get comfortable and felt confident enough to push it a little more, sliding further off the seat into the corners to change our center of gravity, doing light trail braking as I went into the corners, rolling the power on earlier and quicker as I came out of the corners and started setting up for the next curve. I had started to pick up on the landmarks and felt more confident about knowing what was lurking around the next corner, but was still very conscious of the crosses and what they represented.


 
My heart was pounding when I reached the lookout where I had left the truck, and I didn't even pause as I turned around to blast back up through the pass. This run was FAST. I pushed it further than I had on the previous runs, feeling more and more confident about my ability to handle the road, and just as importantly the tires ability to hold now that they were heated up. I tore up through the sweeping turns in the lower part of the pass, taking full advantage of the fact that on this part you could see a good distance ahead and using the whole road to set up for the corner and get as much speed as I could. I'd get set up, leaning in, weight shifted down and forward into the corner, head up, looking through the corner to see what's coming, outside arm relaxed, steering with the inside arm, keeping the RPM high so I've got lots of torque to roll on at the first opportunity, applying brake more and more heavily as I got further into the corner, trying to hold onto as much speed as I could for as long as possible. As I passed the apex of the turn I'd ease off the brake and wind in more throttle, accelerating through the exit point and start setting up for the next turn. I was totally focused on finding the best line I could: Entry Point, Apex, Exit Point, as I came out of each turn I was already setting up for the next, and the next, and the next. 318 Corners, 11 miles. The distance between the corners became less and less as I continued to climb up through the pass until it became a series of nonstop never ending turns with me continuously sliding off the seat from one side to the other, the engine screaming as I kept the RPM as high as I dared, more afraid of the thing exploding beneath me than I was of the cliff or the ravine as I switched back and forth between first and second gear.


 
I snuck an occasional glance at my speedometer and knew that if I did meet a cop my best bet would be to throw myself at his feet and beg for mercy. I have no doubt that he'd have simply clapped me in irons and dragged me off to rot in prison as I cried like a baby. I didn't care. Adrenaline had taken over.


 
When I suddenly rounded the last corner and the resort came into sight there were about a dozen people in the parking lot with their faces all turned up towards me. I found out later that they had heard the racket of me coming a couple of miles back and had been speculating about who it was, and what kind of bike it would turn out to be. Nobody was expecting a middle aged guy on an FZ6.


 
By then my knees were cramping from the workout they'd been getting and my hands and forearms were numb from the death grip I'd had on the handlebars for 33 miles of mixed terror and exhilaration so I pulled into the gas station next to the Inn. I climbed stiffly off the bike as I cautiously straightened out my legs and the feeling of pins and needles began to attack my hands. When I looked around I noticed that everybody was still staring at me, and one of them was even coming over. He looked friendly enough, but I found myself hoping I hadn't broken some unwritten rule about how to behave on The Dragon, after all, this wasn't my neighbourhood.


 
Turned out he was a local, he wasn't offended, and after some small talk he said that he and his friends were planning a fast run through the Gap and was extending an invitation to join them. At first I was flattered as it seemed my obvious skill at handling my bike at high speed had got his attention, but they were inviting everybody in the lot to join them. Pop! Pssssss.


 
After I filled my tank, I went over to join them. Just as I pulled up one of them left and turned up into the pass. The guy who invited me over explained that they were sending a scout ahead to make sure there weren't any Tennessee Highway Patrol lurking in wait. He would call and tell us if it was clear once he reached the lookout on the other side, and he would call us again once we'd started our run if any cops did show up. The guy leading the pack would have his cellphone in a pocket inside his suit with it set on vibrate. If he slowed down, we'd slow down. He leaned over to me and quietly said "You got lucky, you caught them on their coffee break."


 
Since we had some time to kill we all did what bikers do when you put at least two of them together and started to size up each other's bikes. I quickly started to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Two of them were obviously tourists like me, but the 3 guys who were going to lead this parade were something else entirely. Their bikes were a Suzuki GSXR1000, a Honda CBR1000RR, and a Ducati Monster 1100. For anybody who doesn't know much about bikes, let's just say I felt like the kid who showed up at a drag race riding a tricycle. Every single piece of unimportant hardware had been stripped from the bikes. The center stands, rear foot pegs and mountings were gone, the turn signals removed and replaced with tiny little LED's to reduce weight and drag, all the fancy plastic covers missing, the stock seats had been removed and replaced with even narrower ones to make it easier to weight shift. The wheels looked to be very special castings of aluminum or maybe even titanium. The tires were worn and abraded all the way out to the sides indicating they spent a lot of time leaned over to the side at high speed. They all had fork and frame sliders, meant to protect the bikes and minimize damage in the event they went down. Every single one of those were damaged, indicating the bikes had gone down at speed. Even without taking a close look or hearing the bikes run I could tell there was no way the exhaust systems were road legal in any jurisdiction in North America. They were wearing well worn, one piece leather racing suits, that all showed plenty of damage from what had to have been some high speed slides along asphalt. One of them seemed to have chunks of gravel ground right into the kneepads on his suit. These guys were obviously dead serious, hard core speed freaks. I wasn't simply in over my head, these guys were in a whole different league.


 
This was going to be fun.


 
Before we left, one of them set the order we'd ride in, putting me in the 4^th slot directly behind them, and explained some simple rules. "If I slow down, that means the THP has just entered the pass from the far side. That means you need to slow down. Stay in order, don't pass another bike in the pack. Most importantly, if you can't keep up, don't try. Only go as fast as you feel you can safely handle." Obviously 'Safe" means different things to different people. He went on to say that they would take it easy for the first mile or so to get the tires warmed up, then pick up the pace as they went on. His phone rang, the pass was clear. We pulled on our helmets and gloves, closed all our snaps and zippers, started our engines, left the parking lot and started our run on US Highway 129, The Tail Of The Dragon.


 
The leader set a quick pace from the moment we left the parking lot, but it was easy to keep up, he was obviously holding back. Anytime the 3 guys in front of me weren't actually leaned over in a turn they would slalom their bikes back and forth to help speed up the process of heating up their tires. The hotter the tires get, the better they grab the road. We were going fairly fast, but my last ride through the pass had been faster. Until we finished the first mile.


 
Suddenly all the weaving stopped, the leaders fell tightly into line behind each other and began to accelerate. I slammed open the throttle and put myself as close to the third guy in line as I dared and the chase was on! With only a few corners behind us I could quickly see that they did indeed know what they were doing, and that this was their road. Their setups for the corners were perfect, the line they took was dead on every time, and we continued to accelerate. It was like being at Fast Riding School all over again. Follow the leader, and do what he does like overgrown kids playing Simon Says.


 
As I tried my best to imitate the live demonstration of the perfect high speed riding technique that was unfolding in front of me I couldn't help noticing how easy they made it look. They smoothly slid from one side of their seats to the other, reaching out and down with their knees until they almost touched the ground, the bikes leaning over so far it was hard to understand why they didn't fall over. Every movement was fluid, effortless, with no wasted energy. I could see that even at the speed we were going they weren't really trying, that they were relaxed and enjoying the ride. In contrast I felt like I was wrestling my bike through each corner, riding that ragged edge dividing positive traction and disaster.


 
I willed myself to relax, to breath slowly, and just keep following their line, doing what they did. Slide off the seat into the corner, getting my whole body off the bike with my knee out and leaning the bike over so far that at first I was almost cringing, half expecting the bike to surrender to the laws of physics and flop down pinning my leg beneath it as we shot straight off the cliff into space. But it never did. In fact, as we got further down the pass and the corners started to gradually open up, I started to forget about the cliff, the rock face, the huge trees, the little white crosses, and the only things I saw were the bikes, riders, and road in front of me. Just like riding at Fast, I didn't notice that the masters in front of me had been constantly picking up the pace until everything that wasn't directly in front of me had become a meaningless blur. Setup, Entry point, Apex, Exit point, Setup, Entry point, Apex…… Sliding from one side of the seat to the other, getting as much weight as low as I could to make the bike lean further, go faster. There were now 4 machines moving as one entity, as if they were all driven by the same person. Try as I might, I will never be able to truly describe what it was like to become part of that run through Deals Gap. To this day I am convinced it was the best riding I have ever done, period.


 
I foolishly snuck a look at my speedometer as we accelerated out of an extremely tight corner and saw I was moving at over 100 kilometers an hour. I read the number, I remember seeing it clear as day, but it didn't mean anything until much later because the number was so ridiculous. I couldn't possibly have taken that corner that fast.


 
As we reached the last few miles some of the corners became long sweeping ones, and in the middle of one the rider in front of me seemed to reach just a little farther down with his knee, and as the skid pad on his suit made contact with the asphalt a sudden sheet of sparks came shooting back! What I had taken to be small pieces of gravel impacted into his pads were flints! I so want to be these guys when I grow up!


 
When there was about a mile and a half left, in the middle of another sweeping corner, the rider in front of me turned almost completely around in his seat, driving his bike around that corner on memory and faith. Even through his full face helmet I could see the grin on his face, and he gave me a big thumbs up and a goodbye wave before he turned back around and the 3 of them pulled away. I didn't even try to keep up. I had nothing left to give.


 
A couple of minutes later I pulled into the lookout where they had stopped next to my truck. Their helmets and jackets were already off, and they welcomed me like a long lost brother. The consensus seemed to be that I "Did okay for a rookie." As far as I was concerned I hadn't just ridden the Dragon, I had Tamed It! Been there! Done that! Got the T shirt to prove it!


 
It was a full 5 minutes before the other 2 bikes caught up to us. I had forgotten all about them. We spent the next 10 minutes laughing and loudly dissecting our run, arms waving, hands moving back and forth mimicking the way the bikes had moved. As we stood there 3 Tennessee Highway Patrol cars came tearing around the lake and disappeared up the road. It was time to get out of there before they decided to come back and talk to us. My new friends helped me load my FZ in record time, and with mutual promises to all see each other on the Dragon another day, we left.


 
By the time I had found my way out of those hills and back onto the Interstate headed north my detour had added a day and a half to my journey home. And I couldn't have cared less. I will probably never go back, there wouldn't be much point, it would be almost impossible to equal let alone improve on that ride.


 
I had spent a month on the road. I had driven to Florida, spent a week on my bike tearing around Florida, Nathalie and I had spent another week on both bikes touring up and down the Atlantic coast and down to the Keys, we'd spent a week and a half doing high quality skydives, everything from 4-way all the way up to multi point 60-ways. The whole time we were there I had been expecting a speeding ticket every time I got on my bike. But even when I got pulled over by a local Sheriff for passing him at Warp 6 I had been set free. Until I was in upper New York State, an hour and a half from home, at 6 o'clock in the morning, the only vehicle on an arrow straight stretch of 4 lane highway, and received a speeding ticket for driving 11 miles an hour over the speed limit. That cop probably still wonders what I found so funny.