Sunday morning was a fresh start. We all got up around 9am and headed back out to the dragon. We got some gas at one of the only two gas stations in the 20 mile radius of our hotel and attempted to plan out the day’s event.
Around 10am, we left in two groups. The 3 Evo’s, M3, WRX and me headed out first, the other bikers ended up staying behind and went to get breakfast. I wasn’t hungry for food, but I was eager for some twisties. Right before we left, I gave the girl in the Evo my camera again (good thing too! For not a mere 10 minutes later, I wrecked the RR.)
About ½ in the dragon, I entered this nice long sweeping 15mph left-hand turn curve on the outside lane (close-side of the mountain). I entered the curve at about 40-50mph, accelerated in the apex and was leaning the bike to the point of where I was scraping pegs and really feeling the curve. There was a camera man with a telephoto lens taking some pics in that curve too, but I wasn’t pressuring myself to ‘pose’ for the camera. I hit the apex and kept on leaning in the curve, but then all of a sudden. The curve started to become sharper, but I didn’t panic. I just looked ahead and was looking at the next curve, which was very close by. I didn’t change my speed to drastically, I didn’t alter my trajectory, I didn’t alter my posture/seating position (as I was leaning over to the point of where I would have been scraping my knees).
Then at the very final exit of the curve, my front tire slips out from under me. The split second of when I detected the loss of traction, I knew I was going down. I had no inclination about it going to hurt. The only thing that was spinning in my head at the time was the thought of cracking the engine block again and having to rebuild the whole damn bike once more. I was cursing the whole time I went down. “I better not have broken another fucking engine” **wreck**
When I low sided, my body skips off the pavement and I went flying. I pretty much did a 180, impacted the side of the mountain with my back, and kept on tumbling like a rag doll down into the ditch. I knew that if I became stiff, it would increase the risk of me being injured so I just let it be. Funny enough, I didn’t hit my head once. My helmet wasn’t even scratched! I also had some luck because I landed on the dirt side of the mountain. If I wrecked anytime later, I would have hit some trees; anytime sooner and I would have gone splat on the rocky wall. I probably have the most luck amounts of being unlucky… if that makes sense. When shit goes wrong, I have luck on my side of where I have the right amount of parameters to get out of it. Doesn’t hurt to also be in full leather gear with my new Dainese back protector either… That thing paid for itself in just 2 days! Haha
The camera guy and a guy on a KTM motard bike stopped to help. They pushed my bike to the side of the road. The whole front end was damaged, the sides were hanging on by two zip ties and the lowers… well… they were just chilling. I waited on the side of the road with the photographer talking a bit. We both were just starting out in photography so it was nice. He had a very nice 30D with a 75-300mm telephoto lens that I got to play with a bit. He was telling me how he took some nice shots of me entering the turn and said that he stopped taking pictures after the apex cause he thought I was going to make the curve. I thought so too.
A local guy in an SUV stopped by to help me as well. I just told them I was waiting for my friends to come back so I can flag them down and get my tools out of their cars. Then the guy was telling us how some fast Evo’s were tearing up the road, pissing other bikers off. Haha. I was like “dude, those are my friends”. So after about an hour of waiting, I started to get worried since it was nearing noon time. We had a scheduled lunch at the deal’s gap restaurant so I wanted to get back. The SUV guy went down the road and tried to look for them. Not 2 minutes later do I see them coming down the road. I tried to flag them down to pull over, but they just ended up drifting through the curve, smiling and waving at me as nothing happened. I’m like… did they not see my bike all apart on the side of the road and me doing the international hand signal to stop? Guess not.
So, the SUV came back and I halted another biker couple on a Harley Davison. I needed to borrow a knife to cut the zip ties to get the broken fairings off the bike. I get the shit off and put them in the SUV. I get the bike started and hauled ass back to the restaurant. Let me tell you. I was mad about the bike, but wasn’t winded. I was still taking the curves as fast as before. I nearly wrecked two times again. The front fairing was broken a bit too, so I had to use two left fingers to hold the piece in place when I rode to prevent the piece from flapping crazily in the wind. That was pretty hard to do when your taking 10mph curves hard still… lol Did I mention I’m crazy?
So I get back to the place and just entered the restaurant all pissed off and yelled out in a friendly voice “Dude, WTF! You guys didn’t see me on the side of the road with my wrecked bike all over the place? I know you guys saw me cause you were waving back!” Apparently, the few that saw me thought nothing was wrong. They assumed I stopped to hang out with the photographer… And it took them so long to return on the road because they were waiting for me at the end of the dragon, then they went hiking.
Poor poor RR; just when I got it back on the road.
After lunch, I went with the Evo guys again, but this time I took the camera and went shotgun in the WRX and an EVO on the way back. The ride was damn scary and intense. The cars were taking the damn curves so fast. The Evo was achieving 1.25 lateral G’s! I could not believe how well they could stick to the curve so well. The driver of the red evo, he actually tracks his car at VIR so he’s the best driver out of our group. He mostly stayed up front as the pace car.
On the way up there, we get tagged by some crazy ass sport bikes; some local riders that were tearing up the curves. They were crossing the yellow lines to pass us in mid stream and just passing us like we were nothing to them. They were so damn fast.
We stopped near the lake off the dragon to turn around. I was in the WRX and on the way, both the driver and I smelled something burning. We thought it was the brakes but didn’t think much of it. We turned off the side of the road and roll up to the red evo and said to my friend “Man, our breaks are smoking!”. Not even realizing that in fact… they were smoking… Haha. The WRX guy pretty much cooked his pads down to nothing. He had to go back slow so I hopped in another Evo for the ride back.
A split second before this picture, the rear end of the red Evo was in mid air; effectively making the car into a tripod. It’s actually a series of two small tight curves and he took the 1st curve a bit too fast and had to trail brake to correct himself and stay on the road.
And the start of this curve, that is where I wrecked. I was going in the other direction.
This series of pictures shows how well my camera skills are at taking pictures while leaning outside the window, looking through the viewfinder, holding onto dear life and taking turns at 1+ G’s… Not only that, but multiple shots are awesome on the Rebel XTi. Fantastic action shots and I can get multiple shots for one curve.
After all of the fun in the cars, we headed back to the cabin and pack up to go back home. I got my tools out (thank god I had the saddle bags cause I packed every tool imaginable in there. 2 ½ ratchet, 3/8 ratchet, and a ¼ ratchet set; Allen wrenches; wrenches; screw drivers; vice grips; pliers; wd40; chain lube; brake fluid; zip ties. Not only that but I also had my camera bag, tripod, laptop, ipod, extra pair of shoes, 3 days worth of clothes, and some extra parts for the bike. And I still had room to spare!). I took the whole front end off and used electric tape and zip ties to hold the front end of the wiring harness to the triple tree. Put the extra shit in my friend’s car and we headed out around 3:30pm.
Before we did, my friend’s M3 broke down though. His rear trailing arm went kaput. We attempted to bang it out but it was mostly unsuccessful. He replaced it when he got back.
As you can see, the RR is fully packed and missing a front end. It would take a miracle to get back to Raleigh before night fall.
The trip back home was also eventful as the trip to the dragon. Lots of crazy shit happened. The girl on the sv650 laid her bike down due to sand on the road. The same road where we were there the day before waiting for them to finish putting down the sand! It wasn’t too bad of a fall. We were hanging a left turn and the road is a bit embanked to the right. She stopped right on top of the sand and her foot slipped. I knew from experience that sand is bad, so I stayed off it when I came to a stop. When I saw her about to put her foot down, I knew instinctively that she was going down. If the road wasn’t such at a steep embankment, I would have gotten of my bike, put it in park and run to aid her. That’s how slow she fell. She got pretty bummed out about that.
Then some where near Winston-Salem, we again stopped for some gas. The girl finds out that she lost her wallet on the highway. It just flew out of her pocket. Some of the cars that were with us saw it flew out, but thought it was a piece of cardboard and didn’t think much of it. That was some 60 miles ago. We stayed around while she calls her bank to put a stop on the cards. I was getting a bit worried now because the sun was about to set, I have no head light and we still had a long road ahead.
Pretty much for most of the way back, I was drafting my friends red evo to have some sort of wind coverage because riding 70+mph constantly is pretty brutal on a crotch rocket. Not to mention I actually don’t even know how fast we were going. I can say for sure that we were definitely speeding most of the time, like 100-120mph. The guy in the M3 was in front because he had a valentine radar/laser detector. So I was thinking I would be safe… wrong
Apparently, someone on the highway called in reporting a motorcycle racing a red sports car. I got pulled at 10:43pm at night, west of Chapel Hill. I mean I was playing the odds, but I honestly didn’t care. I just wanted to get home any means possible. The trooper was pissed off cause I apparently didn’t stop fast enough (no mirrors and was deeply concentrating at not wrecking the bike in the back of my friends evo. Plus I couldn’t see shit with no headlights). I finally see the flashing lights and pulled over. I was pissed; the cop was pissed; just another chapter in the trip to deals gap I suppose.
The cop rolls up slowly and cautiously to me with his hand on his firearm. Takes his Mag light and shines it in my face, then on my bike. Then he asks “When did you wreck your bike”. I responded really fast, “About six hours ago sir”. Then his face kind of got stunned and he relaxed a bit. I took off my helmet and gloves and gave him my driver’s license. He kept on looking at my bike then posed another question “where’s the inspection sticker on the bike?”. “Oh, that was on the front fairing, which is currently in the red car”.
He goes back to his car and starts entering in paper work, so I again, thought ‘hey, here’s an ample opportunity to take a picture!’ lol. So I pulled my camera out and started to take some flash pictures on the side of the road with the cop. The cop got pissed and honked his horn. I went to his window. “If you take another picture with that flash, your camera will be up on the side of that hill up there”. I apologized and put the camera away. So again… I thought, ‘hey since I’m on the side of the road and the trooper has his spot lights on, why not I work on my bike’…
I went through my bags and took some tools out and began to work on my bike. The officer got nervous and made me sit in his car. I told him my story, how I wrecked in the mountains, where I was going and explained to him why I was drafting the red car. He kept going on of how dangerous it was and how he could throw me jail and give me some other trump up charges, but I honestly didn’t care. He also said there was some discrepticy and said I didn’t have a motorcycle license and go “yes I do, I have a permit”. “Oh, you should have given me that”. “Sorry sir, but you did ask me for my license” and I acted like I was a retard and didn’t know shit, but I did say it very politely...
He finally gives me my citation for “Following another vehicle more closely than was reasonable and being prudent”… I asked him to stay a little bit so I can work on my bike. I readjusted my chain, lubed it up a bit and bleed my brakes; Took about 20 minutes to do. I merged into traffic with no headlights and took the next exit. I called the cars that were ahead and no one picked up. I waited about 5 minutes then the second when I was about to head out, one of the guys calls me back and tells me that they are almost in Raleigh. I checked the time and it was already 11:45. I was like, fuck it, I’ll just ride by myself without a head light.
I get back onto I-40 and merged again with traffic, this time it was pretty much big rigs. I had quite a few scary moments of big rigs coming into my lane almost side swiping me. Then after I past Chapel Hill road, the whole damn highway cleared up fast. There was no one else on the road. Luckily there was half a moon out so I had some night vision to actually see the painted lines a few seconds ahead of me, but I went like 45mph the rest of the way home. I take the off ramp from I-40 to US-1 south and that was probably the only time I’ve shitted in my pants the whole trip. The whole ramp was in the shade of trees so I couldn’t rely on the moon light. I went like 10mph estimating the curve and used the perforated dips on the sides of the road to guide me to US-1.
So I headed south on US-1 and then all of a sudden, I get pulled by a local Cary cop. Its like close to 1am, tired as shit, dark as hell and I have no headlights… Great… The Cary cop takes his time to get out his car, I guess checking my plates and what not. He finally comes out and informs me that I’m running a motorcycle without a headlight. I informed him that I’m fully aware of the situation and explained to him that I’ve been riding 300+ miles after wrecking the bike in the mountain nicely. I also showed him the rashed up leathers and the prior ticket. He lets me off with a warning saying that I was crazy to ride at night with no headlight, but I was close to home.
I finally get home like around 1:15am, get on the computer and sent out an email to my co-workers, giving them an eerie message “I will be out of the office on Monday and Tuesday due to a high speed motorcycle accident in the mountains this weekend. I will return on Wednesday. Sorry for the inconvenience”. I then proceeded to the nearest couch and crashed in full leathers. I was dead tired.
The following morning, I messaged a few friends that were in my class and informed them I won’t be in class and to tell the professors. See… I have a lot of charisma of where I’m noticeable in class and the professors actually know who I am, so it’s hard for me to skip class undetected. Then I proceeded to check my cell phone that I left in the bike. I got like 20 messaged from friends and co-workers. All the friends that were with me thought I was in jail and all the co-workers thought I was missing a few limbs… I just took Monday off to get some well needed rest.
My friend calculated that we rode some 32 hours the whole weekend. Boy was it crazy, but fun. Even with the wreck, I had a good time. And remember, proper riding gear does save lives!
