CC20 - Day 17 Photos (Part 2)

CC20 - Day 18

Since my ears are still giving me some trouble with the ear plugs, I'm riding shorter days and take more breaks. I need to get this settled before I start my journey back to California. I might waste some of the rear tire tread, since I had the appointment planned for about 1000 miles more, but it is what it is now. I'm better off riding less and getting better. 

Regarding the ear plugs, I'm switching back and forth between NoNoise re-usable plugs and Howard Leight Max Foam plugs, both have their advantages and downsides, although I think I have actually less issues with the re-usable ones right now.

Today I rode from Knoxville, Tennessee to Asheville, North Carolina via Little River Gorge and Route 441 as well as a short part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Again, some of the roads were very busy, Little River Gorge was pretty much one continuous traffic jam ... It got better on 441 and even Blue Ridge Parkway was much better. So far, I can only say the roads here are great, but riding them is a lot less fun than it could be. Great nature, but it would be better enjoyed from something inherently boring ... 

Along Blue Ridge Parkway

So far, so good. 

Tomorrow I'm thinking of taking a closer look at Asheville itself. Basically take an Uber or Lyft ride into town and walk around a bit with a camera. So, likely no riding tomorrow.

Route from today:

Day 18 Route

CC20 - Day 17: Tail of the Dragon Photos (Part 1)

Photos from 129slayers.com

CC20 - Day 17

One of the bucket list items done:

Tail of the Dragon

I rode the "Tail of the Dragon" – a section of US 129 just East of Knoxville, TN. It's a really fun road to ride, with 318 curves in 11 miles. It would have been really awesome with less traffic though. There were some cars, but these generally pulled to the side when a motorcycle approached from the rear, the "bigger" hurdle were other motorcycles, namely big touring bikes from Harley Davidson, sometimes in groups of 5 to 8 bikes. A single bike is easy to pass, the groups have been rather annoying since they were really slow and didn't pull over because they were not aware of someone following the last one in the group (and probably didn't realize how impressively slow they were). 

On the other hand, these guys are tremendously skilled at slow speed cornering, I was nearly falling over trying to go the same speed through some of the turns. I stopped a few times to let them get ahead, but in the end they were so slow, it took only a dozen curves or so to catch up again. One of the sections I rode twice because I really liked the left/right changes and I had one of these groups in front of me the first time.

But anyways, it was fun, but not something I'm going to repeat, the road is nice, but not nice enough to deal with the other traffic. 

At the "Killboy" store, a photographer selling shots
from riders on the Dragon

 

I got some stickers, and that was it.

Great Smoky Mountains

Since I'm staying for two nights in the same hotel in Knoxville, I took the case off and put the bike into "hooligan mode" for today – with the master hooligan still on board:

Side Cases off

The Hooligan

It's really a beautiful area. I continued on "Moonshiners 28", a faster, less tight road and onto Cherohala Skyway, another road that is less tight and asks for faster speeds to be fun. There was a lot less traffic on these two roads and so I definitely had some fun there.

Along Cherohala Skyway, near Tellico Beach

It was a great ride today.

Click the image to go to the real map

CC20 - Day 16

Since it was raining most of the ride today, I didn't take any photos. Also, because of my ear issues, I've only done a short hop to Knoxville, TN. 

The rain was light, but pretty much during the whole ride. Sometimes just some drops, sometimes a slight shower. Wasn't too bad though. The only annoying thing was drinking. My drinking tube is in the tank bag and that was under the rain cover ... so, only during stops today. No big deal, the whole ride today was only three hours.

Trying something new today with the map: