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Riding Safely Through Appalachia

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Tips for riding safely through our local twisties. Do these on top of your basic safety measures. This is not an instruction manual for beginners. 

Ride at a pace that is comfortable for you.

Don’t try to keep up with –or catch up to– faster riders. Why? On a motorcycle, the brain panics without warning; you could be going around a curve comfortably at 35, but at 40 get overwhelmed and crash.

The ego gratification or sense of belonging you might  get from keeping up is not worth the injuries that can permanently end your riding. Or end other people’s riding. 

We will wait up for you. We will not judge you for riding slower. We WILL judge you AND have a conversation with you for riding above your ability. You can always ride faster next year.

If you are riding with a group that does not wait for you, find a different group to ride with.

Manage your distractions.

Today’s electronics help reduce the incidence of low-sides, high-sides, and skids, but they provide a lot of data that can distract you during a ride. And, if you mount a phone on your bike, you are adding a second level of distractions. Just glancing at your phone for one second when a text or call arrives at the wrong time can make you crash.

Get into the habit of ignoring your phone and most of your dashboard during a ride.

Focus on technique; speed will follow.

You’ve probably heard the saying: “To go fast, get smooth. To get smooth, go slow.” Unless you are an incurable adrenalin junkie, good technique is more satisfying than mere speed.

Technique refers to things such as accelerating, shifting, and braking smoothly, without lurching. Choosing the best entry speed, optimum line through the corner, and correct exit point. While not crowding your fellow riders. Never EVER crossing the double-yellow on a curve. (In fact, if you do cross a double-yellow, pull over, turn off the engine, and smoke a cigarette to calm your dumb ass down.) On older bikes, it meant blipping the throttle while downshifting as you applied the front brake. Today that’s no longer necessary, but it was a challenging technique to perform smoothly, so it was fun. 

Safety first, courtesy second, fun third.

You are riding through other people’s home towns. Don’t be a jackass. If not simply out of courtesy, out of self-interest: the worse you behave, the more likely the locals will call the cops on you. 

So ride at a reasonable speed in the straights, with courtesy in towns and neighborhoods, and have your fun in the twisties. 

Leapfrog cars.

One rider at a time passes one car at a time. In a line of cars, the first motorcycle passes the first car. Period. The second motorcycle passes the first car only when the first motorcycle passes the second car.

On long straights, it sometimes makes sense to pass a couple of cars at a time, but be careful. The faster you go, the longer the stopping distance, and the worse the crash.

Don’t pass the asshole.

Some drivers are seized by an irrational compulsion to stay in front of us. I don’t know why that is, and I don’t need to.

On one ride through the Colorado mountains, I was last in a line of Ducatis. By the time I passed the car that had been holding us up, the car was doing a really dumb speed. I had to hit an even dumber speed to pass him. As luck would have it, about a mile later we ran into road construction that stopped all traffic. So I dismounted and approached the car politely. He rolled down his window. I asked him if we had done anything to upset him. He said No. His wife, however, was looking pretty heated, so I wondered if she was the reason he’d sped up. When I said that accelerating that way puts us all in danger, and asked if in the future he wouldn’t mind just letting us pass, he said he didn’t realize he was going that fast. When his wife started talking, he rolled up the window, so I waved and returned to my bike. 

The more we tailgate them, the faster they go, and the angrier they get. Which makes passing harder and more dangerous.

Better to follow at a respectful distance. As often as not, they’ll come to their senses, pull over, and let us pass. In that case, we just made the world a slightly better place. But if they don’t, we can pull over and smoke a cigarette until they’re far enough ahead.

Practice trail breaking.

It makes you familiar with your brakes in a curve, and gives you a soft touch that helps in an emergency. 

When you apply the brake in a corner, two things happen: 

  • Your bike stands up, which moves you out toward the outside of the curve
  • If you use up the available traction, you low side. If you have electronics, they intervene, but they may reduce the amount of braking you expected to have.

By practicing trail braking, your body learns how to anticipate both of these reactions and keep your braking under your control.

Late apex.

Late apex has three benefits that I am familiar with. There may be more.

  • As you enter the curve, you see more of the curve, which helps you avoid obstacles and get a better feel for camber and radius.
  • You exit the curve pointed away from the danger compared to a racing line. In a right-hand curve, your angular momentum is pushing you toward oncoming traffic, but your bike is pointed away from it. So if your exit speed is a bit too high, you have more room to maneuver. In a left-hand curve, your angular momentum pushes you toward the ditch, but your bike is pointed away from it, so you have more room to maneuver. 
  • It reduces your entry speed. First, because you are paying closer attention to the camber and radius of the curve. Second, because the initial turn-in is sharper than on a racing line, so intuitively you enter the curve more slowly.

Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ0Z5FfxxBE

Keep looking through the curve.

It’s human nature to fixate on a fixed point while going around a curve. Little by little, our range shortens and soon we’re surprised by a change in the curve radius or camber, or by an obstacle. Or maybe we just screw up our line. Force yourself to keep looking as far through the curve as the hillside lets you. Make it a habit.

Assume the worst until …

… you have evidence to the contrary. I assume there’s a broken down truck around every blind corner until I can see that there is not. Why? Because one time there was a damned broken down truck around a blind corner. Another time, it was a dead moose. Another time it was a line of cars that had just stopped. Several times it was ice. Countless times it was gravel. And once in a while it was another motorcycle coming toward me in my lane. 

Stagger the straights …

… single file the twisties. Simple. Easy. Safe.

Bad examples

Resources

You can find tons of resources nowadays, but these are three of my favorites

Regret the Third: Selling Every Softail Heritage I’ve Ever Owned

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Gringo was the second Softail Heritage I’ve owned, the third time I bought one. That’s because I bought Pretty Boy Floyd twice.

The first time I bought Floyd, it was brand new. The second time, five years later, it had about 12,000 miles on it. I would go on to own four different versions of the Heritage.

This is how that happens.

One day, I buy a Softail Heritage, the most beautiful bike Harley makes. Although it does not lean much, I love the bike. It is the perfect motorcycle. It glides. It’s balanced. It’s a work of art. I am a happy motorcyclist. I ride it everywhere. Nice and slow. I pose it for pictures. Because riding is about the moment, about the sights, about the scenery and the people, not about making the asphalt wiz past you as fast as possible.

One day, in my rear view mirror I see a Ducati gaining on me. Rapidly.

By the time I get home, the Heritage Softail is too slow, can’t lean to save its ass, uses ancient technology, makes me look like an old man, and is probably about to break down. What was I thinking when I bought it?

So I sell the slow-ass Harley and buy myself a Ducati. This is my 2005 999S:

Few motorcycles are as visually intoxicating as a Ducati.

Above is the 2019 Monster 1200R that I owned a few years later. Over the years I would go on to own an embarrassing number of Ducatis.

You see, when I turn the key on a desmo 4-valve engine with the 41 degrees of overlap, that heavenly engine explodes, pounds, burbles, and gurgles in a symphony that’s part Ode to Joy, part Stairway to Heaven.

When I throw a leg over the saddle and ride it, I transcend this earthly plane.

Soon I’m looking into track days, fitting myself for track leathers, painting half my face red, and learning Italian. Milano, eccomi!

Yes, the riding position is tiring, but I resolve to do more push-ups. Yes, my teeth hurt after a long ride, but I resolve to do more sit-ups. When I wind up riding for 7 hours because I took a wrong turn somewhere near Breckenridge, I lie down on the garage floor and beg God to forgive my sins.

A few weeks later, while I’m rubbing my back at a stoplight, a guy on a BMW GS looking like his mother dressed him pulls up beside me. He nods at me kindly. I ignore him, lean down, grab the bars, and blip the throttle. When the light changes, I drop him. He hasn’t even shifted into first gear by the time I’m dragging my knee across the asphalt at the next curve.

I cackle inside my helmet.

An hour later, I’m lying across a barrel at the local filling station, a little old lady beating my back with a cane because I paid her $20.

Between moans I hear the mumble of a boxer engine approach. The Momma’s boy parks, jumps off the bike, gives me a cheerful greeting, and walks inside. When he returns, he hands me an ice cold water bottle.

Turns out he’s ridden 600 miles already, wants to get in another 300 by nightfall so he can complete his Iron Man 1500 Bun Burner. It’s a warmup for his trip to the Arctic Circle later this summer. He asks me if I know of a gym nearby where he can hit the weights before continuing.

Next day, I’m trading in my miserable, impractical, poser Ducati for a brand new BMW R1250 GS.

The GS can stay with the Ducati or any other sportbike under most street riding conditions. Electronic this. Lean-sensitive that. Active cruise control. Soon I’m strafing asphalt with my left hand on the bar, my right hand around a stogie, the GS electronically maintaining a safe distance from the bike in front of me. I might even google “Multitasking on a motorcycle” for suggestions.

A couple of months later, I don’t understand why I’m just not that into riding anymore. I’ve strafed all the good spots within a day’s ride. I’ve taken long multi-day rides in total comfort. I’ve explored some local dirt roads. It was a lot of fun the first time. Not too bad the second time. But I’m just not that into riding anymore. Something is missing.

And then, because there is a God, I see glinting in the sunlight the most perfect motorcycle ever made …

A week later I got rid of that boring-ass BMW, bought myself another Softail Heritage, and I feel ALIVE again. ALIVE!

I hum me some Lynyrd Skynyrd as I polish that chrome, wax the paint, and lovingly clean each and every spoke on those wire wheels. Life is good again. I’ve been given a second chance. I have no idea what the heck got into me, and I swear, with the conviction that only a returning Harlista can understand, that now that I’m home again, I will never, ever, under any circumstance, let that happen again. Ever. No matter what.

And then …

Regret the Second: Selling my ’08 Ducati Multistrada 1100S

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I’ve bought and sold a lot of bikes. Too many, some would say. Maybe so, maybe not, but when you buy and sell enough bikes, you can spot the steals.

This ’08 Multi was one such bike. Some of you might not recall the ’08 financial crisis. It came close to being America’s Great Depression 2.0. If the government had not stuck its thumb in the eye of capitalist orthodoxy and temporarily nationalized America’s biggest banks, we would still be lining up to eat lunch at government soup kitchens instead of our favorite biker bar.

The government did, eventually, return those banks to stockholders, thank goodness. But yeah, shut up about the government interfering with free markets, will ya? Sometimes it actually rescues free markets.

Needless to say, around 2010, brand new ’08 motorcycles were relatively easy to find on showroom floors. And dealers wanted them gone. When I walked into my local Harley Davidson dealer in Colorado Springs, this shiny new S was sitting there, winking at me.

My first reaction was that it sure was odd looking, Pierre Tremblanche or no Pierre Tremblanche. Plenty of journalists thought the same thing.

Pic courtesy of TopSpeed

And yet, the more I looked at it, the more I was drawn to it. And little by little I realized that the design is inspired. Sure, it’s challenging at first, but then it flows. It surprises you. And it fits how the bike rides.

Oddly enough, many years later, I bought a BMW S1000XR, my favorite bike in a very long time, and it has dimensions eerily similar to those of the 1100S:

When I realized the ’08 was brand new and that the dealer was very anxious to get rid of it, I stole it. Then I rode it all over the Colorado front range. I wish I had taken more pictures, but I was too busy having fun.

I don’t actually remember what made me sell it. Probably the same angst that made Shel Siverstein write and Johnny Cash perform A Boy Named Sue.

Some girl’d giggle and I’d turn red. Some guy’d laugh and I’d bust his head.

That was Dear Old Dad’s favorite song. Social media spreads such a strong sense of prosperity in American that it’s easy to forget that not so long ago life was hard around these parts. Real hard. And it’s still hard for a lot of us. The trauma of that hardship still gets passed down from generation to generation, so much so that we sometimes confuse it for our national character. It ain’t our national character. It’s just shame of who we are and what we love, passed down from one generation to another.

Anyway, after another year of grinding away at a soul-sucking job, or maybe after getting yet another performance review that included phrases like “egregious offenses” and “doesn’t follow direction,” I suppose I arrived at the conclusion that I wasn’t cool enough to hold up such an odd-looking bike. I probably bought something that made me feel cool, made me feel like I had a soul again.

Too bad, because the 1100S was one helluva bike. It was light. It was nimble. It had character. It was comfortable. And I loved to look at it. Just plain loved looking at it.

Years later, Cycleworld agreed with me. Comparing it to the newer Multistrada, they said:

Handling on this 13-year old Ducati is a revelation.

By turning its gaze further afield, by adding more tech, more performance, and more capability in its journey from Multistrada to Molto-Multistrada, did Ducati abandon what made the original recipe such a delicacy?

A delicacy indeed. I’m no fan of the 1200 Multi. I tried real hard to get used to the design, but have always hated it. No matter how much lipstick they put on that beak, it’s just plain wrong.

Pic courtesy of CycleWorld

And the 1200 engine kinda leaves me … I dunno … dissatisfied. CycleWorld again:

As excellent as the engine is, the V4 lacks presence compared to the Multi 1100′s desmodue. When cruising at 60 mph, turning 4,000 rpm in top gear, the engine all but vanishes from thought. The desmodue makes an impression that never quite leaves the consciousness, being so visceral and engaging that the experience of using it stays with the rider long after hitting the kill switch.

So yeah, whether by caring too much what others said about me, or by burying my real self beneath the responsibilities of the job, I wound up doubting my own preferences, doubting my own good taste, doubting my true self, and I sold a special motorcycle I should have kept.

It was not the first time I did that, and it would not not be the last.

– Rick

Regret the First: Selling My ’02 Softail Deuce

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The ’02 Softail Deuce was not my first motorcycle, but it was the first motorcycle I fell in love with.

I was living in Massachusetts at the time, a place that specializes in slow emasculation. That’s what the “mas” in the state name refers to. Live there long enough and you’ll understand.

To deal, I had to get out of town on what my riding buddy The Donster called “rage rides.”

They lasted about a week. I rode to Georgia. I rode to Wisconsin. I rode to Maine. I rode to West Virginia. Didn’t matter where. What mattered was getting out of Massachusetts. No better bike for a rage ride than the 5-speed 88″ Deuce. A 95″ motor would work, too, so long as it had a 5-speed.

And no windshield, please. Windshields on cruisers are fascist.

See, at 80 mph and up, a 5-speed kept you in the meat of the powerband. And the pipes loud. With my teeth clenched, my neck hardened against the wind, and my hands in a death grip on the bars, whatever was ailing me disappeared in the vibe of the motor, the roar of the pipes, and the blast of the wind.

I loved my rage rides.

I loved them even more when I started meeting up with other Deuce riders across the country for no damn reason except to check out each other’s rides and laugh. Damn, we laughed a lot. It was a time when laughter was valued more than sensitivity. People have forgotten how to laugh at themselves. And each other.

When I got home from my rides, I got to spend lots of time in the garage cleaning and caring for my Deuce, preparing it for the next ride.

What a treat that was.

Lo and behold, Covetousness crept into my little slice of heaven. The riding season in The State of Eunuch was short, and even shorter in the good riding country of Vermont and New Hampshire.

I was already using thick wind-proof fleece jacket and pants from Aerostich, plus gloves big as sleeping bags. It was not enough. So I bought a windshield to protect me against the New England November cold. That introduced me to the torture of buffeting. I tried to man up and deal, but I could not keep my eyeballs from rattling in their sockets no matter how long or hard I grit my teeth, so I bought fork-mounted wind deflectors.

The combination worked well, but it was, as someone in eMasculateachusetts would say, aesthetically inappropriate. Translation: fugly.

Now, you may not respect a Harley’s agility, comfort, or performance, but you must respect its beauty. That is non-negotiable. If you disagree, die.

Under the influence of Queen Covet, I set about looking for a bike that I could ride longer in colder weather. I ignored my instincts, told my gut to shut up, and forced myself to sell the Deuce so I could buy an ’04 Road Glide.

The Road Glide is a better bike. No doubt about it. It let me ride in colder weather and in more comfort. Unfortunately, it didn’t satisfy. I kept it about a year.

Many years later I bought another Deuce, just to relive the joy of the original, but I had changed. Motorcycling had changed.

Though I enjoyed riding it back to Colorado, Deuce 2.0 failed to satisfy. I wanted more than just a sweet engine. I wanted lean. I wanted a bike that could dance.

It’s true what they say: you can’t go home again.

Buying Motorcycles Is Maddening

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The most maddening thing about buying and selling motorcycles is that it’s not the same person doing the buying and the selling.

Men have traditionally complained about women being like the sea, every changing, unpredictable, emotional, defying logic, caressing you one moment, bashing you against the rocks the next.

That is no doubt true, but thinking we are different is a delusion.

Inside five minutes, I can go from adoring Harley Davidsons …

… to hating them.

From concluding that BMW’s are the only logical choice for every single motorcyclist alive, bar none …

… and then deciding if I were seen in public sitting on one, I would die of shame.

Living inside my head I have a wild child, a safety-conscious boy scout, a teenager who just wants to be accepted, an artist who jumps for joy at the sight of a glorious paint job on a swooping piece of sheet metal, and a snarling, drooling beast begging for somebody to start something.

Complicating matters further, is the memory of perfect moments that we are perennially seeking to relive.

Plus the fact that we never stop changing. One year we care about following our bliss, the next about announcing our presence with authority.

As if that’s not enough, there’s marketing. Do you feel uncool? Let us sell you a motorcycle that will make you feel cool.

Want to be perceived as adventurous? We have just the model for you right here. Charly Boorman, watch out!

And then you have the opinions of well-meaning friends.

“A Harley?” What’s WRONG with you?”

“A BMW? What, you never want to get laid again?”

“WTF are you riding? A Ducati? You look like a monkey doing unspeakable things to a football.”

All of this, plus the wife and perhaps grown children raising an eyebrow just a little bit higher each time you go out and spend your hard-earned money on yet another decision the neighbors will never understand.

It can sometimes be too much.

Ride Report: Chasing Ash Up Mt Morrow

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Written in Feb 2022

Riding along a mottled two-lane into the early morning sun between North Carolina’s bare February trees, the color of the land is reduced to the brown and ocher tones of old photographs.

It was 36 degrees when I left Winston, probably about the same when Ashish, Arvind, and Saurin left Cary. We met up at the Sunoco filling station in Seacrest. Seacrest is an odd name for a town in the middle of North Carolina, but it’s well known among the wives of motorcyclists for its independent pottery shops.

The night before, I had made the classic mistake of going out to dinner with friends instead of prepping my ride, so when I got to Sunoco, I had to inflate my front tire back to its normal air pressure. No matter how good your tires are, over the winter they lose air. Every winter. I suspect that as the temps drop below freezing, the rubber shrinks just enough to let a little bit of air leak out. In the other 9 months of the year my tires don’t lose any air. In Winter, they do.

Rumor has it, some guy named Behram is a master map maker. Apparently he’s plotted and ridden a whole lotta loops all over this part of the country. Ashish took us long one of those loops.

Motorcyclist Map

First stop, the Pisgah covered bridge. I had heard it was haunted, but I had never visited it. But I wasn’t too worried, since I’d read somewhere that only those who ride their motorcycles across it get haunted. I certainly wasn’t planning to.

Nevertheless, for reasons no one without a romantic soul can understand, covered bridges beckon us.

However, when the Pisgah bridge beckoned Saurin, it BECKONED him.

Saurin was not content with simply snapping a picture of the bridge. He felt that in the interest of Art, he should ride out through the bridge.

Good thing he did, because after some … um … creative riding, he got his GSA into position to snap an epic picture:

(picture taken by Saurin)

The color palette was so promising that even Ash could not resist blending in.

The roads between the Pisgah covered bridge and Mt Morrow are gentle sweepers through rural North Carolina. Because everyone with a grasp of common sense was sitting by a warm fire at home, we had the roads to ourselves. A delightful route along farms, fields, forests, and small towns.

Somewhere along the route we wound up taking Ashish’s Honda Gold Wing and Arvind’s BMW R1200RT down some dirt roads. I mean, when you have a full-dress tourer, who really needs a dedicated dirt bike, right? Lord Saurin and I were on BMW GS Adventures, rather incensed that the Gold Wing and the RT were kicking dust onto the beautiful paint of our stylish motorcycles.

After a great deal of sulking, we got over it, mostly because our filthy, dusty, dirt route landed us at a delightful rest stop by the Low Water Bridge near Ritchfield.

Even among the cool temps and bare trees of February, it was a serene spot to pause and reflect. Saurin spent most of his reflection time wondering where he had left his motorcycle key.

I spent most of mine wondering whether to tell him.

After a snack of girl scout cookies (is there anything better, really?), we rode off to Jay Patel’s Coffee Central in the town of Richfield. Talk about feeling immediately at home. And delicious Chai. I was having such a good time I’m not even sure I paid.

As we struck up a conversation, the four of us realized we were in unanimous and enthusiastic agreement that fear of women was a clear sign of intelligence in a man. Conversely, a man who does not fear women can be dismissed us woefully unprepared for the realities of life. Not to mention dangerous company, given the proclivities of the godesses Kali and Durga, may they both forgive the sins of their humble servants Ashish, Arvind, Saurin, and Rick.

From Richfield we flew at the perfect pace that Ashish set for us toward the small country town of Badin. Assuming that in today’s permissive environment a motorcyclist is allowed to use that word without losing his reputation as a man of substance, the town of Badin is charming.

Nestled against a lake conveniently named Badin Lake …

… and astride the Yadkin river, Badin is the resort town for the area that includes Mt Morrow State Park.

Somewhere along the route we lost Saurin, but we attributed that to either the haunted bridge or a mood swing by Kali, so there wasn’t much we could do about it. But we did miss him.

Mt Morrow State Park is charming– oops –Mt Morrow State Park is well marked, manicured, and paved. If we hadn’t had a car in front of us the whole way we would have made it there in half the time. Riding behind Ashish, I had the distinct impression that he was exerting a supernatural effort to restrain himself from riding straight over the top of the car holding us back so he could enjoy the twisties.

No matter, because once we got to the parking area by the lookout, we were greeted by two C7 Corvettes.

The red Z06 was a stunner.

We wiped off our drool, took several pictures, met some riders from Charlotte, one of whom rode a Triumph Street Triple that looked really good. After several failed attempts by yours truly to coax the rider of the street Triple and Arvind into a grudge match down Mt Morrow and back, we settled into pleasant biker chats.

We also engaged the Corvette owners in scintillating conversation, as a result of which they offered to help us convince our wives that we each needed a Corvette for when the weather got a little too cold or a little too hot to ride a motorcycle.

Sometime after 2:30 pm we decided we’d better stop socializing and hit the road or we wouldn’t be home in time for sopapillas. Since I’d save over an hour by heading straight home from Mt Morrow, I took my own route home, and Ashish and Arvind completed the loop back to their abodes.

I don’t use turn by turn navigation, preferring to memorize the next half dozen turns from my phone’s map and then try to figure out where the hell I am after I invariably wind up lost. As a result, I wasted that hour I saved by taking the direct route. Nevertheless, I got to meet some gentle souls who were kind enough to point out which way North was.

The route was serene, the pace was perfect, the company like old friends. Can’t wait for the next one.