Triumphrat

roadkill · 05-08-2006

Well, my bike now has 60,500 miles from this weekend. Did 1400 miles sat and sun. Rode the dragon at 2 in the morning, my exhaust braket broke, then my exhaust broke in half.

I need to seriously get a nicer exhaust. ill post pics of the temporary job we did to it.

cheapbastard · 05-08-2006

cool Roadkill! I mean, sucks about your exhaust, but that's no biggie after 60k miles! I've never been brave enough to do the dragon at night, what's it like??? Absolutely scary?

Dobieman · 05-08-2006

Dragon at 200am

Thats a long term report I would say, 60K :upthumb:

Any other major issues during your ownership?

roadkill · 05-08-2006

Never been to the dragon, but when we got there at night. It was twisty, you coudlnt see anything in front of you. My friends headlight was in the back, by the time i went through a turn, his headlight was in front of me, then dissapeared. It was strange, it felt like a blind roller coaster.

They had a mini rally down there, so there was minis on the road, they pulled off and let me through, pretty nice.

The bike has been pretty reliable in the 60,000 miles. My thermostat went bad

cheapbastard · 05-08-2006

holy*****! I've been to the dragon atleast 7 or 8 times, and I'm still too chicken**** to the dragon at night! That's amazing! Yeah, they have all kinds of car rally's there too. The mini's are usually pretty cool cats! :-D

roadkill · 05-08-2006

Miles: 1450
States visited: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tenessesse.

I posted a group ride to Marion, VA. Many people were interested, but only one showed up. Wiagui was the only rider to show up. We met at the sheetz in haymarket at 7am.

Saturday was Beautiful, perfect weather. I couldnt believe no one showed up.

Here we are at the sheetz, waiting for riders. lol

Wilson, brought along this huge chain. It musth ave weighed about 30 lbs, he decided to leave it tied up in haymarket. Of course, this ties in to the story later on.

We took off from the sheetz at 8am, kinda late. Waiting for riders ya see.

Gto to harrisburg, via backroads and some larger roads in record time. I have never seen so many bikes at the gas stop in brandywine in such a long time. Man, we really got here fast, it was incredible, we were ;making great time, incredible. Nothing could stop our pace.. or could it?

Pay careful attention to my exhaust bracket. lol

after some riding, we get to some place in virginia. This town had really good looking girls everywhere.

okay, remember my exhaust bracket. It didnt do too well.

Right before my exhaust broke, we passed 2 guys on cruisers, they were nice, waved us past and we went on our way. When my exhaust broke we pulled off they came to help us fix it. Turned out they were locals, and knew where everything was. They told us about a triumph shop, a harley shop etc.. But after wilson found some wires and got some tape we just continued taking backroads. Wilson did a great job, his macguvers skills were very good.

so we fix the thing.

ahhh alls well..

If you havent been to route 16.. Go, its incredible and within a day from us. You can really go fast, the road was decently clean. The gravel was predictable.

after hitting route 16, we arrived at marion. Going around route 16(pretty twisty) my exhaust came off, it didnt stop me, so we kept on going and got to marion. Bamm, auto store. I went inside and bought a bunch of *****, like jb weld, duct tape and 16 GAUGE WIRE, and went to town.

now we are cooking. This was going to hold up. Sure the bike smelled funny from the duct tape burning. but it held.

Okay, we got to the destination. Marion, VA at around 4pm. All was well, got the exhaust fixed and everything. So we come up with the great idea of riding to Deals gap. Wilson has never been there. And Neither have I. but i didnt plan on going that far, so it was kinda risky.

Now on the gps, when you look at the distance between marion, va and robbinsville(deals gap town) its only like 4 inches away. So i figure in about 4 hours we would be there.

ahahah [:@]

Yup....

Took a bit longer.

we took more backroads, we hit the area around mount rogers(4 stars, definatly recommend this road).

route 58 was really good, it felt like route 16, but without the majestic scenery.

after route 58(damm its a good road) i had to take a piss

knoxville, TN

Knoxville is a huge city, i wish we didnt go this way, but it seemed like the fastest way.

Here we are on route 129.. yup, thats the dragon. Okay, we are getting closer. I suggested getting a hotel right here since it was midnight. But wilson wanted to just ride to robbins ville, which of course on my gps it looks like its 1-2 inches away. ahah.

You ever hit a set of tight twisties at 2 am in the morning. Well, when we got to the dragon it was 2am. There was no light anywhere to be seen except for my own headlights and the headlights of wilson behind me. But what do we see as we crested hills and pull offs?

MINIS

Minis

And

MINIS

these things. Apprently there was a mini rally at the gap. Great, now hotels were booked.

THE DRAGON

It's all what people say it is. Simply a nasty stretch of twisty road, that goes on and on. After riding 700 miles in a day, then the 50 over the gap and onto robbins ville we were happy to pull into a hotel.

There was a bunch of triumph bikes up front and a alot of minis. I went inside and asked if they had rooms. Yup 79$ for the night. Kinda expensive.

Now we made another mistake, we wanted a cheaper hotel. Now looking back we wished we stayed at this one. We rode for another hour and ended up at another hotel, that costed us 75$. grrrrrrr..

For a while we were thinking of sleeping outside, since we would onnly be sleeping a few hours anyway. We could just stay at a rest stop or something like that with a roof in case it rained. Then I suggested just start going back, in a couple of hours it would be daylight again.

But we decided on the hotel.

we parked the bikes got the room, and went to open the door. of course the lady in the desk gave us a bad key, so after spending about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to open the door we finally got her to give us another key that open the door. grrrr

We needed sleep, we were tired.

What will tommorow bring our heroes?

Will they have a quick ride home?

Stay tuned to this channel....

cheapbastard · 05-08-2006

nice story roadkill, tell us more, tell us more!!! Dang, I wished I would have known about the trip, sounds like alot of fun. 16 is awesome going into Marion! Once you were there, you should've headed over to Shady Valley(421). I think it's actually in Tennessee, but it's really close to Deal's Gap riding! You'll definately have to let me know about the next trip! I'm headed up 16 in a few weeks, we go that way to a route we take to Pikeville, Kentucky. Tell the rest of the story!!! Btw, nice workmanship on the exhaust! :-D

roadkill · 05-08-2006

Day 2: It got bad

So we went to sleep. We were tired. We wanted to wake up at 6-7 am. Instead we overslept and woke up at 9am.

Got up and looked outside

Wet everywhere. I went outside, and it looked okay. It was wet, but the sky was clearing. We wanted to stick to bigger roads, but the problem is that the roads around here are really twisty, so hitting twisties is not very fun. Just dangerous.

This area around the smokey mountains is amazing. I wish it was a nice day because we could have hit some great roads. I saw alot of minis around the place, everyone seemed to be having a great time. Alot of kayakers, hikers and outdoorsmen everywhere.

It wasnt raining, it was just wet. I wasnt prepared, didnt have anything. No rainsuit. Just my electric jacket. Which i didnt need just yet. Even thou it was wet, it was still warm. And that was fine.

We wanted to head back on the blue ridge parkway, but we entered the blue ridge, and quickly realized that this part of the blue ridge goes south then back north, we would lose alot of time. And not to mention that on the blue ridge its colder, and wetter and full of turns.

Right around here it got cold.

we took shelter in this gas station for a while. Had lunch. Man it was getting cold, we got in and our lips were shivering. It started to rain a little bit, but my weather proof clothes were okay.

exexir of life and newspapers

wilsons hands dyed from his gloves

There is something really depressing about seeing yourself on the gps, and you are so far out from home, and being so cold. Cold enough not to feel your hands, and unable to shift because your hand gets stuck in a position.

Its hard moving you feet and feeling frozen water inside your boot.

The weather was about 36 degrees, on the bikes with cold riders with little warm gear, it felt much colder.

I kept thiking that maybe we should pull over and get another hotel, but we braved it on. It was tough..

my bike, ready to turn over 60,000 miles

Right around here we had the bright idea of stuffing newspapers inside our clothes. You had to see the looks of old ladies sitting by the window i the gas station as I stuffed newspaper after newspaper inside my jacket and pants.

As the ride went along, newspapers fell through my pant legs onto the road from being wet.

The only real consolation was stopping every 100 miles to fuel up and to change the newspapers.

We also figured out that if you get a bunch of plastic bags, you can put them on your gloves and they will stay dry for a little bit. Only trouble is that my gloves were already super wet. We also bought some thin gloves at the gas station and stuffed them inside our riding gloves.

Our next stop at a gas station off of natural bridge we met this lady working at the counter, she gladly gave us all sorts of newspapers.

newspapers were like life to us. When we stuffed ourselfs with newspapers, they felt better for the first 70 miles, and then got soggy and wet. But they helped diffuse the wind.

No one would allow me to leave wallmart like this.

more stops

more newspaper and

more stops

more newspapers and

FINALLY front ROYAL

it was tuff, this last stretch seemed the longest.

and remember the chain from day 1? Wilson had to stop in haymarket and get it. That made us cold again ouch

heating gloves up... the real bikers way lol

radiator has alot of heat

it was a hard time thats for sure. AGV helmets suck when it rains, the water gets inside the visor and you cant see anything.

And our tires were wasted when we got to the gap.

Good times..

Illinilee · 05-08-2006

Sorry dudes but I'm laughing so hard I'm crying. Brutal man Brutal!

TrackerOldGuy · 05-08-2006

Sounds like my old days. Now I go 15 miles to lunch.

( nice BLACK bike----and it must be said that
the Cheapster would have NEVER paid that much
for a hotel :chug: )