I was up at 7, and went out for a little jog.  Now, I am used to jogging on Florida terrain.  There is not 100 feet of level ground in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and I felt it.  Eric was still snoring when I go back, so I rousted him up, we had breakfast in the hotel, and headed west, towards North Carolina 32.  Somebody on the Motorcycle Tourers Forum had told me that NC32 was the twistiest road he had ever been on, and, oh, my goodness, was it ever twisty.  Tight, technical, fun, challenging, amazing.  It all begins at a little bar called the Three Way Inn, whose name I found intriguing.  From there, NC 32 defines the northeastern boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  We started off stuck behind a pickup truck, but were able to pass him before the road got too tight, and had the rest of it all to ourselves.  The road was so narrow that the trees blocked out the early morning sun.  There were driveways along a good portion of the road, and I wondered what it must be like to live on such a narrow, twisty little road after a good snowfall.  I bet the folks living there miss a lot of work in winter.  We charged up the road, feeling great, enjoying the cool air, feeling energized and aggressive as we tore up the asphalt.  The FJR feels great, if a little heavy, in this type of riding.  It was mostly second gear work.  I am always amazed at how this bike performs on tight uphill sections.  I can work through a dense section of S-turns, and then twist the throttle as soon as a little straight section shows up, and the bike feels like it is going to run out from under me, the acceleration is so strong.  What a rush.

NC 32

 

Eric amazes me at how well he rides.  His bike has less horsepower than mine, less ground clearance, and weighs about the same.  Yet I really have to ride hard to lose him.  I don't know how many times I have glanced in my mirrors, thinking that there was NO WAY he could have kept up with me, only to see his headlight right on my tail.  That boy can ride.

32 crossed the Appalachian Trail at Davenport Gap and turned to gravel for 3 miles, where it became kind-of-paved (in other words, HUGE potholes) for a few miles around Waterville, where it emptied onto I-40. 

Waterville Power Plant at the end of NC 32

 

A quick run to the south brought us to Fines Creek Road, which let us to NC-209, one of my all time favorite roads.  I have to give credit again to the Motorcycle Tourer's Forum for turning me on to 209.  The internet is a wonderful resource.  Today it was completely deserted; we didn't come up behind a single bit of traffic.  Clearing one turn, I saw four wild turkeys on the side of the road.

209 took us to 208, then to 212, headed northeast.  I had never been on 212 before, and found it to be just another excellent North Carolina motorcycle road.  After a stretch of intense curves, it settled out into some long straights through valleys filled with farms and fields.  We were deep into tobacco country now, some still in the fields, some hanging in ramshackle drying barns.  The road tightened up again, and I began to drag pegs on the FJR.  I cleared one especially tight left-hander and set up for the oncoming blind right when I heard the sickening sound of metal on pavement.  That was more than a peg dragging.  I glanced into my mirrors for a millisecond.  Eric's bike was on it's side, sliding, and Eric was coming off of it. 

By the time I got turned around and back to him, Eric was on his feet, and a local has stopped to see if he was OK.  Seeing no pools of blood or protruding bones, I started taking pictures.

 

 

Thankfully, just a little road rash and a twisted ankle.  Would have been a lot worse without the protective gear.

A Camaro-driving local named Jack helped us get the bike out of the ditch, and told us of a Harley rider who had crashed in this area a few days earlier, and had gone home in a body bag.  He had owned the bike three days.

The local postman came along and checked on us, and we asked where there might be a body shop close by, since Eric's crashbars were bent up pretty bad.  He suggested that we head to Erwin, TN, which was along our planned route, anyway.

There we met Ellis.

We pulled up to a little local muffler shop/used car dealership.  Could anybody help us straighten these crashbars?  We soon found the owner, Ellis.  He said, and I quote "Hell, I just can't help you boys out.  I only got two guys here.  My best man, he didn't pay his child support, and the Sheriff done hauled him off this morning.  Came right in here and cuffed him, right where you is standin'.  They are real serious about child support around here.  Where did you say you was from?  Alaska?  Always wanted to go there.  My best friend lives up there, bout 300 miles north of Anchorage.  Got all burned up when a kerosene heater blew up on him.  Now he can't stand the cold, comes down here in the winter and spends the summer up there.  Name's George, do you know him?  I'm just ready to sell this place and go up there.  Never been there.  I would sell this whole lot for $300,000, inventory and all.  I would even throw in the house next door for $80,000.  I got five houses here, but I just want to sell that one.  See, I'm 67, my wife left me a few years ago, and all I got is this shop.  Well, that, and a big house down by the river.  You came right by it on the way into town.  Did you see it?   I've had a quad bypass and I am just tired of it all.  Want to go to Alaska.  Did you know that the Civil War was fought right here?  What did you boys want again?"

Eric: "A come-a-long".

Ellis: "You boys know how to operate a come-a-long?  Let me see what I can scrap up."

OK, that's not really a quote.  The whole conversation was more than 5 minutes.  I didn't think we were EVER going to get that come-a-long, but sure enough, Ellis found one, and we used a signpost as an anchor and got the bar a little straighter than it had been.  Not perfect, but better.

We returned the come-a-long and talked to Ellis a bit more.  He was a lot of fun, with a huge smile, and was fascinated that one guy from Florida and another from Alaska had landed at his shop.  Eric asked where a good local diner was.  Before the conversation was over, Ellis had give us directions to his house, told us where the key was, and said that we were welcome to go raid the fridge, hang out as long as we wanted, and use his fishing poles to fish in the river.

We politely refused his hospitality, and he gave us directions to a little local diner that he liked.  We saddled up and headed off, me in the lead, and, of course, in the wrong direction (I have a horrible sense of direction).  A couple of miles later, I was sitting at a stop sign, confused, when a car roared up beside me and a man yelled "YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY!"  It was Ellis, he had seen me take a wrong turn and chased us down.  He led us to the diner, waved us goodbye, and headed back to his shop and out of our lives.

Ellis was one of a kind.  It never occurred to me to take his picture. 

 

 

 After lunch, we headed up the Interstate to Unicoi, then took 107 to 19E to Banner Elk, and 194 up to Vallie Crucis.  Lana and I had spent our anniversary last year in a B&B in this area, and I had loved 194.  It is another one of those snakey little mountain roads, but proved to be in worse condition than I remembered, actually it was one of the worst roads on the trip, pavement-wise.

 


From there, we jumped on 421 and headed for another area that is fast becoming famous in the motorcycle world:  Shady Valley, Tennessee, at the crossroads of 421 and 133.  This area is called "The Striped Snake", and is supposed to be the next Deal's Gap.  I had been wanting to check it out since I had heard of it, and today would be the day.  However, as we headed north, we passed a large Honda dealership on the left.  Eric had wrecked his riding gloves in this crash, so we pulled in to see if they had any replacements.  They did, and at the same time, they offered to improve upon our roadside repair of Eric's crashbar (remember, it was good, but not perfect).  One of their technicians disappeared into the bowels of the shop with Eric's bike, a forklift, and a big grin.  I am not sure how he did it, but he pulled the bar back out so that you would never know there had been an accident.  It was perfect.  I asked him how the forklift figured into the repair, and he just smiled.

As we were waiting for the bike, we windowshopped a bit.  Boone Honda was a nice dealership, lots of cruisers and 4-wheelers, and some old bikes.  They had a very clean mid-70's CB750 for sale, as well as a parallel twin 175 of about the same vintage.  Of course the staff wanted to know where we were from and where we were headed.  When they heard we were going to Toronto, one of them said "You plan to go all the way to Canada on that back tire"?  Sure enough Eric's rear tire looked like this:

 

 It was time for a new tire.  They had one in stock, but the shop was backed up and it would be two hours before they had a lift free.  I thought about asking if they could use that forklift, but decided against it.  We would get back on the road and keep out eyes open for another dealership further north.

They didn't even charge Eric for the crashbar repair.

Just as we were pulling out, four FJR1300's pulled into the parking lot.  I thought that was pretty cool, since you don't see many people riding the same bike as I do.  We chatted for a minute or two, then headed north.  Within a mile we saw 2 more.  In the next hour, I counted nineteen!  There must have been an FJR rally in the area, there's not other way to explain it.

421 was pretty unimpressive up to Mountain City, but from there it turned into heaven.  Wide, butter-smooth, with beautiful curves heading up the mountain.  It such a wonderful road, I wished we had time to ride it a couple of times.

We stopped at the country store at Shady Valley.  They have a long way to go to equal the store at Deal's Gap, but they  are trying.  One thing I really liked there was a counter set up with stools and piles of maps: atlases, topo maps, aerial photos, anything you could want to plan routes. 

Almost shouting over the solo to "Freebird" which was blaring over the PA system, I asked a girl at the counter if she knew where the closest Honda dealership to the north was.  She didn't, but said "John just pulled up, he will know".  John and a buddy were in full race leathers, climbing off of super-motards in the parking lot.  They told us that there was a dealer in Whiteville.  Or was it Withville?  Or Smithville?  Between the blaring music and his heavy Tennessee drawl, I was having a hard time understanding him  Plus he kept changing his mind on the best way to get there.  Finally I said "I've got a GPS on the bike, so I can find it.  It's W-I-T-H-V-I-L-L-E, right"?  "That's it", he replied, and with that, we headed north up 133.

John couldn't spell worth a damn.

133 was a beautiful little road, so narrow that the trees canopied it enough that the GPS lost signal.  There was also a geological oddity along the way.

 

 

We stopped in some little town for gas, and I decided it was time to find Withville.  I entered "Withville" into the GPS...nothing.  I worked and fiddled and cussed for a few minutes, then pulled out the paper maps and started looking for it.  I finally found it...Wytheville.  Moral of the story: don't expect a guy with a mullet and a chaw to be able to spell.  I told the GPS to route us there on "minor roads", and just followed it's directions.  I have no idea how we actually got there, but can say that it took us on some great little country roads that we never would have found on the map, or have considered had we found them.  It was pretty fun. 

By this time we were in Virginia, and they are serious about traffic enforcement in the Old Dominion.  I had powered down the radar detector when we crossed the border (illegal in Virginia).  In some little town, we came up on a sobriety checkpoint, where all vehicles were stopped and questioned.  The Deputy asked about my headlight modulator, then asked where we were going.  "Toronto".  "You have got to be kidding!"  So I told the story about how Eric and I were old college buddies, we were in each other's weddings, and how we were going to visit the guy who had been my best man, that I hadn't seen since 1992.  He was impressed, and was convinced that we might be a little crazy, but not drunk.  We rode on into the lengthening shadows, watching for deer.

We found a Comfort Inn in Wytheville right around sunset.  A quick check of the phonebook showed that there was indeed a Honda dealer in town, but they were already closed.  The recording said they opened at 8:30.  We found a Ruby Tuesday a few miles from the hotel for dinner, returned some calls, and called it a night.  We rode about 300 miles today.

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