It’s not a racetrack

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The Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort back in 2007, and the infamous “Tree of Shame”.

It was an often-sleepy little road back then; A 30 mph speed limit, and cut through a mountainous area requiring tight (and sometimes blind) turns around rock outcroppings, old stands of trees, and many spots with long drop-offs past an iffy shoulder beside the roadway. It wasn’t a heavily populated area, but to many locals it’s the road necessary for their daily commute. Since it’s a public road you’d see all kinds of vehicles, from pick-up trucks, large and small sedans, some sports cars, SUV’S, minivans, some recreational vehicles, even the occasional large commercial truck.

And LOTS OF MOTORCYCLES.

Let’s fast forward to today. Over these many years, the notoriety of that road has risen exponentially, and the area has been built up. So now folks come from far and wide to experience The Dragon!! And in the usual reference on the Facebook group, when someone posts about planning to go, or reporting on their ride after they rode it, they are either “coming to SLAY THE DRAGON”, or they boasted they “just SLAYED the Dragon”. And they buy lots of t-shirts and swag to show their friends back home.

A map of the general layout of the road- 318 curves in 11 miles.

Adding to this thirst for slaying is the fact that this road has recently received a much needed fresh layer of asphalt, which is like blood in the water drawing the speed sharks to feast. Some talk about which bike or car has done it the fastest, and some boast their times. How it can be done if there are so many folks who hold up traffic, except to say that somebody’s crossing the double yellow, and on purpose.

Now the posts on this FB group are mostly photos that pro photographers snap from strategic positions around the tight turns, and later sell to the drivers and riders as the ultimate take-home prize. If you’re on a motorcycle, what you want is that perfect shot of you leaned over on the sidewall of the tires, dragging your knee on the pavement, and looking sharp in your colorful candy colored leathers and helmet, just like the grown-ups look on the MotoGP racing circuit. The photos usually show a guy with his bike leaned over, but his knee pucks have nary a scrape on them, and won’t see any on that day either. He’ll tell his buddies that he had to pull up because of slow traffic ahead, but then he really got it leaned over a lot more, farther down the road. But at least they’re wearing protective gear.

If you’re a Harley or V-twin guy, on a big cruiser or touring rig, the uniform is often a pair of jeans, sleeveless t-shirt and leather patch vest, beanie helmet, and fingerless gloves. And if he’s riding two-up, his ole lady is dressed similarly, except she may be sporting a leather fringed halter top. I’m not sure what the car guys get, because if you’re driving a performance car, it has low profile tires and stiff suspensions, so you can barely detect any lean at all.

Now there are two distinctive types of Dragon group participants- unofficially, it seems to me that 60% or so fall into the category of “Ronny Racers” who post variations of, “Why do people have to use this road and drive 30 miles per hour, when I came here to slay the Dragon? Don’t they know they’re holding back a line of cars and bikes that want to GO FAST?  They purposely created some narrow pull-off areas to use when you see a line of vehicles behind you, so you don’t hold up traffic by going the speed limit. Why should they impede or limit my right to have a good time on a public road that my taxes pay for? I paid a lot of money for my Ducati Panigale, CBR1000 RS, Corvette ZR1, or Lamborghini, and I have a right to use it without some Grandpa in a minivan who won’t pull over to let me go. THIS IS AMERICA, DAMMIT!! I HAVE RIGHTS, TOO!”

The second category is what I call “Normal People”, who respond. Their purpose is to push back on the Racers and point out the flaws in their way of thinking and their arguments. By now I’m sure you’ve guessed that I fall squarely into this category. So, I too will relate an amalgam of responses to the complaints by those Ronny Racers:

“First, my taxes pay for this road just as much as yours do. And just because you have an expensive, high-performance vehicle doesn’t give you the RIGHT to operate in a reckless manner and endanger me and others while you do it. You also don’t have the right to FORCE me to use a turn-off, where I may have to wait 10 or 15 minutes before there is a SAFE break back in the traffic to pull back onto the road. I came to this road because it’s on my way to someplace else, (or it’s my daily or weekly commute) and/or I wanted to take a nice scenic ride, without a white knuckle amusement park experience. So there!”

Some “Ronny Racers” out on the “track”. Photo by Deals Gap Breakfast Club GP (their name says it all); An all-too-often crash on the curves. Photo by Ninja 400 Riders Forum.

Then there’s the, “Just because you can afford an expensive motorcycle or car doesn’t mean you know how to RIDE or DRIVE it. And no amount of electronic traction control and other modern safety systems can override the laws of physics. So instead of planning a trip to this particular stretch of public road to play Ronny Racer, why don’t you take that travel money and your expensive performance machine to a race track?  Sign up for a track day where professional riding and driving instructors will coach you up on exactly how to handle a machine with that much power, safely, securely, and much more enjoyably, with less worry about personal bodily injury, and damage to your expensive vehicle.”

Lastly, (and this is MY personal rebuttal)-  “Do you think you could find a single MotoGP or Formula 1 racer to bring his machine to a place that he’s never seen before, with 318 turns, many of them BLIND, and ride balls to the walls to ‘SLAY’ the public road, with all the dangerous drop-offs, rock outcroppings, and tree lined turns a few feet off the pavement, with traffic going in BOTH directions?? You see, you don’t just have to worry about staying on your own side of the road; you must watch out for the potential idiot coming towards you to stay on his side of the road. NO, you couldn’t get the top racers in the world to do something that utterly and famously foolish in a million years. But hundreds of amateur would-be riders and drivers think that winging it is well within their talents.”

The typical casual cruisers, sans any real protective gear. Photo by Dreams Abroad.

Whenever I watch the Isle of Man TT races each year, and see those motorcycle racers from all over the world race a 37 mile long road course at speeds well into triple digits through the little towns and villages with curbs, stone walls, trees, light poles, telephone poles, and road signs, (and no oncoming traffic) I say to myself, “They gotta be freaking crazy to do that.”  And that is AFTER they have ridden that course at least a hundred times first, and memorized every turn, corner, braking point, and racing line for the entire distance. But not one would ever think to try something as reckless as the complainers on the Facebook group.

ESPECIALLY WITH ONCOMING TRAFFIC.   

So I urge you to visit that Facebook group and check it out. This topic comes up nearly every day, so spend a few minutes reading some of the posts and responses. Then make up your own mind, and leave us a comment below on MY article here. Then come back next week, and you can read my exciting tale of my first Dragon run at a press launch hosted by Triumph Motorcycles. Let’s just say there was an encounter with the local law enforcement officers and it wasn’t very friendly to some of us.

Ken “Hawkeye” Glassman

*Top featured photo by Cosby Creek Cabins