The Call of the Dragon: Part One
It was 3:00 in the morning and I was staring at the ceiling, wide awake. This was not a rare occurrence. Even as a child, I had trouble sleeping at night. I’d wait until my parents fell asleep and I’d sneak downstairs and watch TV. It was cool when I was kid. Like a superpower. I didn’t need to sleep like regular kids. As an adult, it wasn’t so special. Going to work, for example, on no sleep was much more difficult than going to school and afternoon naps were harder to squeeze in.
But I digress. The point is I could tell it was one of those nights where I was not going to sleep at all. My mind was a circus of random thoughts and one that took hold was from an article I’d read recently about a road on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee called The Tail of the Dragon. This eleven mile stretch boasted 318 curves and dared motorcyclists from far and wide to test their skills. No, I told myself, absolutely not! It’s 3:00 in the morning! If you can’t sleep, read a book or watch television like a normal person. Besides, that has to be least 9 or 10 hours from here.
But it was too late to talk sense. I was overdue for a bike trip and I had a few free days to play with. I pulled up a map on the internet and once I realized I could take the Blue Ridge Parkway for a huge chunk of the ride, it was on! I grabbed a couple changes of clothes, a toiletry bag, motorcycle gear, and a camera I bought recently that attaches to the bike. By 3:30, I was on the road.
Even at that hour, there was traffic in the DC Metro Area. Where were all these people going at 3:30 in it morning!? Traffic was moving fast though and I went west for about 40 miles, then I started heading south on the Virginia Byways. Here, I had the road all to myself. Let me tell you, it is a special thing to be roaring through the Virginia countryside on a chilly October morning just before sunrise on a motorcycle. Bliss, I tell you, pure bliss.
I rode right into the rising sun and outside of Waynesboro, where I would pick up the Blue Ridge Parkway, I stopped at a diner for breakfast and gloriously hot coffee. After I’d shaken off the chill, I headed for the parkway. But first, I attached the camera I’d been eager to try out. I will be honest with you, the first 10 or 12 pictures I took looked like this:
The Blue Ridge Parkway is almost 500 miles of mountains and scenic beauty; it is said to be one of the most gorgeous rides in America. No argument here. I figured the camera out and got these:
And I even managed a video…
I stopped off at a Visitor Center—there are many of them on the parkway—and a very helpful but rather stern woman gave me some tips. “There’s no gas on the parkway,” she snapped. “You can’t just stop when your tank is low. You have to plan ahead.” She showed me a map. “There are only certain places where you can get off to fuel up. You just take a random side road, and you’ll end up lost.”
“I have a GPS,” I said.
“Put it away,” she said. “They don’t work down here. People get lost all the time relying on those things. You follow the map and the mile markers.” She reminds me of a football coach. Harsh, no nonsense, and yet, likable. “Once you get off at these designated places, you will have to go anywhere from one to eight miles to reach the gas station, so don’t cut it close. Play it safe. Get gas before you are low.”
I made a mental note of this as playing it safe is not my strong suit.
“How far are you going?”
“Not sure,” I said. I can tell by her expression that this is the wrong answer. “Probably the whole way.”
“It’s getting late. You’re on a motorcycle, traveling alone. I recommend you stop for the night.”
“Yeah, I was thinking I’d stop in Roanoke.”
She nods her approval. “That’s a good 90 minutes from here. You know there’s rain coming, right?”
“Yeah, but I should be in Roanoke long before it hits.”
“Should be,” she said, cocking an eyebrow ominously, “but you never know. Weather forecasters are about as accurate down here as your GPS.”
Back on the road, the ride was amazing, but less than a half hour after leaving the visitor center, the sky grew dark, the wind picked up and it started to rain.
And rain hard.
