Tail of the Dragon
I’m back on the road. Today, I checked off a bucket list item, and rode the Tail of the Dragon in Deals Gap, NC. I eventually connected with the Blue Ridge Parkway from Albemarle, which is about 100 miles of sweeping curves and mountains for days. While not a technical ride, it was beautiful, and after a few hours (and a short hike), I found myself in some very technical back roads just southeast of Deals Gap. My bike was performing great, I was performing great. It was some of the best riding I’ve done in my life.
Arriving at the Tail of the Dragon, I realized that I was actually here, and I was about to experience what many consider to be one of the best motoring roads in the US, or at least the central hub to a network of beautiful, curvy, scenic roads that beg you to invent apexes and expect that familiar ssssssccrrape of your peg feeler when you perfectly nail the corner entry, giving you the right amount of adrenaline boost to lean your body out even farther past the handlebars to “pick the bike up” as you—honestly, there’s no better way to say this—drive the shit out of that corner.
I had a Dragon Sherpa™. This is not a real thing, but it should be. When I pulled up to set up camp, I ended up chatting with an extremely congenial chap named Chris, and also a frequent visitor to the Dragon, who offered to ride it with me and make sure he’d point out all the potholes in the road before I nail them at 40° lean. He was an accomplished rider, and it gave me a boost of confidence as I was able to tail his light 650 in my beefy FJR. I loved his riding style. It felt like I had a twin on the road. I could have ridden for hours.
After returning to camp, he offered me a beer. Thank you! Then a wife-made brownie. OMG, thank you!! Then dinner. What?! I kindly refused, because both my family and Katy’s family did a great job of fattening me up this past week, and also because I felt a bit like a mooch. He introduced me to the other guys in the classic two-stroke meet who were there, and a kindly, extremely talkative, extremely intelligent man named Paul told me—rather, read me, off the pages of his mind—every road and town in western NC and eastern Tennessee, where to go, what to see. About 20 minutes in, I realized I am active listening to be polite, but I’m forgetting literally every word coming out of his mouth.
These are the old guys I want to be when I’m an old guy. I’m teetering on the brink, but I realize that I’m young. And it makes me happy, because I have 10-20 years on these guys, 10-20 years to lean, to enjoy my life, and to make something out of it. To put down roots.
Roots—the thing I don’t have. Getting divorced at 30 after 10 years of marriage, and exploding effectively me entire life before that and leaving for the west coast, leaves you with a sense of freedom, but also subtly grafts peripateticism into your identity, always feeling like you are on the outside of whatever fascinating new thing you find, nostalgic for a history you never had.
