Got back into town a week ago today. Where was I? Dale and I took our motorcycles and rode to the Smokey's in North Carolina. We have been doing this annually for the past several years (I have been doing this for over 10 years solo). There is a road there (U.S. 129) which is listed as one of the top ten motorcycle rides in the world. It is called the Tail of the Dragon and is 318 curves in 11 miles with roughly 1000 feet of elevation change through the southern Great Smokey's National Forest. Awesome ride although the word is out big time and it has become very crowded. To make things worse there are a lot of people there who think they can ride faster than they really can. This make for lots of accidents and deaths. The rumor mill says there is one to two deaths there every week during the riding season. If you ride like a sane person and remember that you are not on a race track, make room for those who are coming over the center line because they are riding too fast and remember that you are sharing this road with cars and trucks (sometimes Semi-Trucks) you can ride it pretty safely. Having said all of this, I truly expect I will stop going to ride this ride due to the over crowding and all the people who think this road is a race track. It is getting more dangerous every year and even though I ride a motorcycle, I do what I can to mitigate risk.

I will post more about our weekend in the Smokey's later as I have been keeping a diary during the lead up to this weekend and so on. The diary will follow in the next several days. For now, I will add a picture of me on the Tail of the Dragon taken by killboy.com