Well, today proved to be pretty interesting for the fellas. I think they must have went into this trip with the intention of experiencing every kind of condition possible this time of year. If so, they succeeded. They left in good weather to go ride US 129 aka The Dragon. This is the famous road in North Carolina with 318 curves in 11 miles. Bikers everywhere love to challenge themselves on this road. Things were good and the roads were dry. When they were riding the Dragon the rain started coming down. They made it to Deals Gap and as it got steadier, they considered their options.
This is what they were looking at.
Rather than take the longer way around, they decided to go back through the Dragon and therefore take the shorter albeit more treacherous way back. Now this is what has happened to some of the bikes on this road if you think I'm just being dramatic. And these were probably not in the rain.
They call this the tree of shame in Deals Gap. On the way back the conditions just seemed to get worse. It was rainy and foggy. Their windshields and glasses kept fogging up. They said the Foothills Parkway was the toughest riding they had ever done. Now that's saying a lot considering Steve and Ironman have been through two tropical storms before. At one point Steve was going a bit slower because of the fogged up glasses and got behind. Rodney pulled over to wait on him and between the steep downhill grade and the momentum, the bike went over in the gravel. It kind of scared Steve when he came around the curve and saw that. There was a car there by him and he thought they might have hit him, but they had just stopped to help him get his bike up. In the end horse and rider were both fine. Rodney had a skinned up arm and helmet. His chariot had a broke turn signal, bent foot peg and brake assembly. They had to make some quick roadside repairs which is also miserable in those weather conditions and then they were off again. They were back at their room by 1:30 and ready to dry out and put their feet on the ground for awhile. If you'd like to see some pictures of their adventure, there are many photographers on that road most days. Here is a link to one. store.129slayer.com Look for them in the 9:45 and 11:45 time slots. And here's a another for now.
Even with all that rain gear he still got wet. I'm just glad my knight in shining (wet) armor conquered that dragon again. And I hope if he tries the challenge a third time (actually fourth since he did it twice today), that it will be on a dry road.
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