Road Kill Diaries

Unlike some who live in areas with winter climates, I ride year around. Riding in crisp, cold air is -- to me at least -- invigorating.

The temperature was 28 when I headed out the other morning for a ride down to North Carolina. The forecast predicted highs somewhere near 50 so it wouldn't be freezing for long. I don't use heated gear but choose to layer up with thermal long johns, heavy jeans, leather chaps, a wool vest over a sweatshirt and heavy denim shirt and two pairs of thermal socks. I top it off with a heavy leather Navy flight jacket and lined gauntlet gloves, a balacava and three-quarter hemet with full face shield.

The Super Glide doesn't have heated grips so the cold eventually gets to my finger tips but I just stop more often for coffee.

Fully layered, I headed down Virginia Rte. 8 and Woolwine Mountain. Once past Stuart, I turned right on Rte. 103 and headed towards Mt. Airy. By the time I hit Mt. Airy, the temperature was near 40 and I stopped to warm up with some coffee at the Blue Bird Restaurant on Main Street.

I headed back up U.S. 52 and Fancy Gap Mountain. At the top of the Mountain, gusty winds buffeted the bike as I turned north on the Blue Ridge Parkway for the ride back to Floyd County. At the Parkway's intersection with Va. Rte. 8, I stopped at Tuggles Gap Restaurant for more coffee and then rode the files miles into Floyd and a late lunch.

While sitting in the Floyd County Store having a bowl of warm chili and coffee, a tourist came in, looked at my leathers and said: "You're the idiot on the bike? Are you crazy."

"Yes," I said, "I'm the idiot on the bike but my mama drowned the dumb ones."

Erik Buell has always gone his own way when it came to motorcycles and now he's leaving the company that trashed his dream of fielding an American-made sportbike.

After Harley-Davidson shut down production of the bikes that bore his name, Buell severed his ties with the company and launched "Erik Buell Racing" to continue fielding a American challenge to Japanese and European competitors.

Buell, under a license from Harley, will continue to develop the 1125R, which won the American Motorcylist Association sport bike championship this past summer.

Been away from the fold for a while, wrapped up in an IRS audit of my business. It ended, fortunately, in my favor.

Still, I've put 16,500 miles on my '09 Harley Super Glide since buying it in February of this year. So much for those who claim Harley riders don't spend that much time on the road. I expect to hit 25,000 miles by the time the bike is a year old.

The temperature in the Blue Ridge Mountains is expected to top 50 today along with sun so I will be out on the twisties. My goal, as always, is to find unexplored roads and see where they lead. If I get lost, the Garmin Zumo 550 can always get me home.

More later.

Headed South out of Floyd County on a chilly November Saturday. Not sure where I wanted to go so I carved the twisties on U.S. 221 from Floyd to Willis and stopped for breakfast at Jim's Cafe.

After scrambled eggs and pork tenderloin, I topped off the tank and stayed on 221 South to Hillsville. Decision time at the stop light: Left of U.S. 52 and down Fancy Gap Mountain to Mt. Airy, NC, or stay on 221. Opted for 221 and headed for Galax and Independence where another decision awaited: U.S. 58 through Mt. Rogers to Damascus or stay on 221. Once again, 221 won out and I headed on to Boone, NC. The highway offers a lot of twists and turns as it leaves Virginia and enters North Carolina and the Super Glide carved them with glee.

Lots of traffic in Boone so I pondered another decision: Stay on 221 south to Blowing Rock or take U.S. 421 North.

I've been to Blowing Rock so I opted for 421 -- a road I've never traveled. Didn't have the foggiest idea where it would lead but soon after leaving Boone I found myself in Cherokee National Park (above) and a road with lots of hairpins, switchbacks and tight turns. After 10 miles of scraping pegs, the engine guard, the kickstand and a few other things on both sides of the bike, I hit a straightaway for a few miles and then 10 more miles of great winding road with turns galore. This road makes the Tail of the Dragon look like an Interstate. In fact, many of the mountain roads within an hour or two ride of Floyd are far more challenging than the stretch of road that runs from North Carolina to Tennessee and has gained so much undeserved fame.

Stopped in Mountain City, TN, for gas and some refreshment before continuing on U.S. 421 to Bristol, a city where State Street is the dividing line between Virginia and Tennessee.

After a bite for lunch, I turned north on U.S. 11 to Abingdon and then turned right on U.S. 58 for Damascus. Beyond that popular tourist town, the highway winds through Mt. Rogers nature preserve and, again, provides more challenging turns than the Dragon.

With the sun setting in my rear views, I hit the last stretch of U.S. 221 for the ride home.

A great day...and a great ride.

A friend who put a set of the new Harley-Davidson EPA-certified Screaming Eagle slip-on mufflers on his dresser reports the SE pipes aren't any louder than stock mufflers at idle and that they are only slightly louder at full throttle.

The mufflers do, apparently, offer some performance advantage but for those looking for a throatier sound will be disappointed.

Screaming Eagle street slip-ons were never that quiet but the new ones, which cost more than the older SE models, are very quiet -- probably the price Harley paid for getting an EPA stamp on the newer models.

The controversy over loud pipes on motorcycles isn't going away and bikers who run straight pipes are more to blame than those who choose aftermarket mufflers with some baffling. While my Rush slip-ons are louder than stock mufflers, they have 1.75-inch baffles that reduce the exhaust noise to a rumble instead of an ear-splitting roar. But while the Rush mufflers will past the noise test of any locality that uses meters to measure decibels, they do not have an EPA stamp and would be illegal in cities that use the EPA standard rather than actual noise limits.

The American Motorcyclists Association (AMA) urges governments to use noise standards and not the EPA label tests. Many older bikes don't have an EPA stamp anyway and some are on the inside of mufflers and would require dismantling the bike to find.

Says the AMA:

Since its inception in 1924, the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) has maintained a position of strong opposition to excessive motorcycle sound. The AMA has funded information and public relations campaigns in support of quieter motorcycle use, and was the world’s first motorsports sanctioning body to regulate and reduce the sound level of racing vehicles.

The AMA believes that few other factors contribute more to misunderstanding and prejudice against the motorcycling community than excessively loud motorcycles. All motorcycles are manufactured to meet federally mandated sound control standards. Unfortunately, a small number of riders who install unmuffled aftermarket exhaust systems perpetuate a public myth that all motorcycles are loud. Efforts by regulators to rein in excessive motorcycle sound often miss the mark by singling out motorcyclists with ordinances and laws that are unfair, impractical and unenforceable.

Riders can do their part by not going out of their way to annoy people with their noise. Revving the engine at stoplights, roaring through towns at high RPMs, goosing the exhausts while riding through residential areas and other childish stunts just add to the public belief that all bikes are loud.

The noise issue isn't going away -- but we can do a lot to quiet it down.