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"You deserve some rest," Spurgeon said. His suggestion? Just take this motorcycle you’ve never ridden before to these locations you’ve never been before (known for treacherous curves and cliffs) during the biggest pandemic and bout of social and political unrest in recent history.
When he pitched the idea to me, my eyes crossed for a brief moment. But, never being one to consider reason of any kind, I pulled some gear from the RevZilla closet and two days later I kicked off a very memorable motorcycle trip.
Wait, let’s back up a bit.
Unlike many of the people I work with at RevZilla, I didn’t grow up riding motorcycles. Having an anxious single mother who once drew blood from squeezing a stranger’s arm during light flight turbulence wasn’t conducive to a childhood on two motorized wheels. On any given evening or weekend, you could find me in front of a TV, so becoming a video producer was a natural progression. Becoming a motorcyclist didn’t happen until later. And moving across the country to merge the two into a job at RevZilla happened two short years ago.
Which brings me back to Spurgeon’s proposal. He knew a few other things about me:
- I’d not taken time off or seen my family since Christmas due to coronavirus
- Flying to see them was out due to coronavirus and I don't own a car
- I like to ride fast and hard, but my Triumph Daytona 675R is not ideal for a road trip
Enter the Kawasaki Versys 1000 SE LT+
The plan was simple — at least to Spurg. "Grab the loaner Versys and head south... something something Front Royal... something Skyline Drive... The Snake... Tail of the Dragon... Cherohala Skyway..."
The route sounded ambitious. The bike looked tall and heavy. The side cases looked too small to fit much, but too big to make for a fun ride. The weather looked like it could go either way. But... I don’t get opportunities like this as often as Spurgeon does. And my kid sister had just moved to Clemson, South Carolina, and was feeling a bit lonely. So with Spurgeon’s bullet points as my guide and Bailey’s place as my finish line, I packed up the Kawi and left on a Monday morning.
Day one: 356.4 miles and "Wow, that could have been bad
My coworker and purebred southern boy, Brandon Wise, told me, "You’re gonna love that ride once you get a ways into Virgina, but the first several hours are going to be pretty boring."
He’s clearly not used to the flat, weather-chewed streets of the midwestern towns I grew up in because I was having a hell of a time zipping over the smooth highways of Delaware and Maryland. Any concern about the Versys being a lumbering, slow and boring bike disappeared in the first 10 minutes. The cruise control and windscreen made for a comfortable ride and the ol’ girl had plenty of sport when I needed to get around a slow truck.
I stopped for a late lunch at Front Royal, Virginia, a quaint, well kept town just north of Shenandoah National Park and right next to the entrance to Spurgeon’s first official riding-road recommendation, Skyline Drive. I Google-mapped the route. Plenty of time.
Skyline Drive was beautiful. A casual ride through beautiful mountain-top greenery with no shortage of scenic vistas along the way. I stopped at Skyline Lodge, the only amenities on the route, and as I ate dinner, I decided to make the last half of my ride a little more spirited.
Staying in third gear, I was having a blast leaning into the occasional sweeper and bursting onto the straightaways. On a Monday evening, as the sun was going down, the drive was eerily free of other people. The Versys had no problem climbing the hills at speed and the brakes were surprisingly responsive.
The Kawi and I arrived at the T-junction I'd been expecting, which meant the end of Skyline Drive, but it didn’t look like it should. My phone had no service, but a sign pointed me toward Waynesboro, the town where I'd booked my tiny Airbnb.
Five minutes passed, then 15 minutes. The sun began to pass the horizon as my gas tank passed the point of comfort. I knew I should have hit something by now. About 25 minutes past that T-junction, a couple bars of service sprang onto my phone’s screen so I immediately pulled over.
"Oh no."
Apparently, when I Googled the route earlier, the mapping software showed me a small highway parallel to Skyline Drive. I didn't catch that. With my gas tank well into the final tick before "E," I still had about an hour to go. My only option was to push forward and hope I reached the all-night gas station next to my Airbnb.
"Well, no point waiting around." Now keeping engine revs as low as possible, I pressed on. The gas gauge started blinking red and angry as the night grew colder and my anxious mind wandered.
"Is that episode of Seinfeld true? Could I also go as far past "E" as Kramer did?"
"Do I look like a murderer? Would someone pick me up from the side of the road?"
"Does Virginia have bears? Is my Reax jacket rated against large-animal bites and scratches?"
Well, I apologize to the reader for a fairly anticlimactic ending. I reached a T-junction that butted up to the bright lights and humming electricity that I hadn’t seen or heard for what felt like days. When I arrived at my tiny-home Airbnb, I didn’t even care about the homeowner’s mini-party of good ol’ boys getting drunk around a fire right outside my shadeless window. I found a late-night pizza place, ate an entire medium pepperoni-pineapple by myself, and fell asleep Googling "Black Bears Virginia."
Day two: 414.7 miles and 43 degrees never felt so good
Spurgeon’s original pitch was to head to Asheville, North Carolina, but I discovered that my sister's house in Clemson was only a six-hour ride away and was just as close to the Tail of the Dragon, so I opted for the free place to stay and company of my kid sister and her pooch.
I hit the road, optimistic that the blue sky would warm up and by the first gas stop I’d lose the base layers I'd thrown on. Not more than 20 minutes into my ride, a gray cloud of mist appeared on the road before me. The temperature dropped to near freezing and the Kawi’s heated grips were my only source of warmth. I cheered when it hit 40 degrees. At 43 degrees, I felt spoiled.
Temps and spirits lifted as I ate at The Lunch Bucket in Austinville while watching The Price is Right and listening to the high school-aged waitress attempt to show a geriatric regular where the "green button" was on his phone that "held all those text messages he’s a gittin." My nose had just about stopped running when I hit the road again. When I got to Bailey’s, we laughed, got full on Mexican food, had some margaritas and laughed some more. A warm hug from my little sister was a great ending to a day that started off so cold.
Day three: 361.3 miles, the Tail of the Dragon and alien abduction fears
I woke up anxious. On day three, I’d ride the road that people travelled from around the world to ride.
The ride from Clemson to the Tail of the Dragon was the most beautiful of the trip. I-76 took me across the tip of northern Georgia, into North Carolina and through Nantahala National Forest. Mountain backroads curvier than Skyline Drive led to a 30-minute stretch of dirt road nestled alongside a wide river set beneath high, tree-covered mountaintops. It was so beautiful I actually doubled back a half-hour to run my GoPro through it.
The closer I got to the Tail, the more bikes I began to notice. I’ve never been one for the motorcycle wave, but knowing the treacherous road ahead and my penchant for pushing a motorcycle and myself to the limit, I didn’t want to mess with the mountain’s moto-juju, so I hit every rider back who flashed me one.
The southern entrance to the Tail of the Dragon felt like a movie. Dozens, if not hundreds, of bikes posted up on either side of the road. A giant metal dragon stood guard as engines built to a scream before disappearing into the tree-covered entrance as other riders burst out in the opposite lane. Cruisers. Sport bikes. Tourers. Even the occasional family vehicle packed with tourists. Everyone was present and about to take the Tail at a variety of speeds.
I wanted to take it as fast as the Versys would let me.
Despite the chaos I described a moment ago, the road was fairly open and I immediately got to work getting my bearings. The Tail boasts 318 curves in 11 miles, many of them hairpins. The Versys continued to astound, combining the speed and braking performance I’d experienced on Skyline Drive with a surprising ease of throwing the bike from side to side for the next turn. What made the experience more fun was the lean angle sensor on the dash that kept track of the furthest I’d leaned on either side. A couple miles in, I touched the left peg-feeler to the ground and puckered up pretty hard. But knowing I had a way to measure my performance in such an ideal setting only pushed me to get comfortable with it and keep moving.
I’m sure my Daytona would have brought quite a bit to that party, but I didn’t think of it once the entire time. Those few hours spent running the Tail of the Dragon were the best few hours I’d had in years. Each run down the 11-mile stretch and back took approximately 40 minutes, depending on the cars and slower bikes I’d get stuck behind. I made the trip down and back three times before I started getting too comfortable and making mistakes. The peg-feelers were about gone and the exhaust shield had started touching down on turns. I knew it was time to turn in. But the hardest part of my day still lay ahead.
After dinner, I checked the forecast. Apparently, the weather up in the mountains varies quite a bit from the surrounding cities. "100 percent chance of rain starting in one hour and lasting for the next 30 hours." Ugh.
Weary from the day’s activities and bummed over a non-refundable room fee, I still made the decision to start the 2.5-hour ride back to Clemson before the rain hit... making sure I had plenty of gas first.
Let me tell you, the loopy, lightless and lightly misted ride down that North Carolina mountain made the Skyline Drive fiasco feel like a joy ride. I didn’t pass a single vehicle for 45 minutes. The slick asphalt slowed things down considerably from what I’d been doing hours before and the tight curves constantly pointed me toward a black void of emptiness. To hell with worrying about what creatures might be lurking in wait for me in those shadows... this is the situation people are in when they’re abducted by aliens or veer off road to avoid a ghastly apparition of a woman that appears in front of them. The fatigue of the day on top of my nerves from the difficult ride gave me that feeling that something was always right behind me in the darkness. I couldn’t get down the mountain fast enough.
Day four: 61.2 miles, family time
This day was set aside for family time. Bailey borrowed a helmet from a friend and, with a single click, I set the Versys' electronic suspension for two people. We took off to Stumphouse Tunnel, an unlit, abandoned railway route that had been carved into the side of a Blue Ridge mountain. Super creepy, but right next door to Issaqueena Falls, which was beautiful.
We wrapped the day with an early, southern-style BBQ dinner at The Smokin’ Pig and a few matches of my family’s made-up card game, "Clueless Savant" (a game we actually named after Bailey, who seems to understand the rules least, but somehow wins most). Exhausted from the day and full of BBQ and beer, we went to bed a little early. Bailey had class the next morning and I wanted to make the entire 10.5-hour ride home in one day. To do that, we both needed some rest.
Day five: 634.4 miles, sport-touring enlightenment
With an early start I was more than halfway home before lunch. Other than the occasional hidden squad car throughout Virginia, the highways provided a stimulus-free place to reflect on the past several days. I had learned a lot about the east coast, motorcycle trips and the importance of regularly checking the map and weather when on them.
I also learned a lot about the kind of motorcycle I was riding. Before this trip, I had never ridden a sport-touring bike before. I assumed the only way to have a good time ripping around far from home was trucking a fun bike out or renting one that was already there. I'd left home with concerns. Sure, the Versys had a big engine and fancy electronic suspension, but would it be too bulky and boring on the Tail of the Dragon for someone used to a sport bike? Sure, it had comforts like heated grips and cruise control, but would I be happier just spending the money on renting a car?
I worried the Versys would be neither one nor the other, but instead I found it was both. Having an adjustable windscreen and a place to plug in my phone didn't mean it lacked the speed and agility to throw down on one of the most challenging roads anywhere. The big Versys took me everywhere I wanted to go on one of the best motorcycle trips I've taken and I have the pictures — and the memories — to prove it.
