Went back to the Triple Nickel area this Wednesday/Thursday. YouTube videos can't do this run justice. Last year I seemed to remember the tight repetitive turns lasted about 5-10 minutes. This run has to be trickier than the Dragon. Countless repetitive turns, up and down roller coaster, poor signage cautioning upcoming hard turns AFTER you've crested a hill. Combine this with all the crossroads, driveways and road apples, gravel in the road and it gets exhausting. Glad I took it and got it out of my system. I took another route north to Athens and up to a point midway west of Zanesville. Pretty cool and better than pretty much of anything in Michigan. Ohio's Windy 9 is definitely worth exploring and half the distance to the Dragon. How can it be safe at all for the Amish on horse and buggy with blind approaches on the rolling hills? Other than paralleling rivers or going up M22 there isn't much to be found in Michigan
Havent been out there for years, but yeah, that Ohio555 is one mean muther of a road. You have to keep your focus at 11 out of 10. The whole SE Ohio is a motorcycle playground.. great stuff.
The trick with the Triple Nickel is to incorporate it into the ride, for those geographically enabled, out to Mansfield in July for AMA Vintage Days. For those that haven't been, that's one of the country's best motorcycle celebration gatherings if not the best. I've been fortunate enough to do this 3 years running.
Now gentleman if you go 4.5 hours south to Southern VA and pick up 16 S. to Hungry Mother State Park, VA. My goodness folks you will become believers! lol
I prefer a north to south run. Since to get there, I have a 2 1/2 hour drone to Zanesville on I-70, then route 60 south then 555.
For me it's a minimum 6 hour ride to Zanesville. If I go again I guess I'd have to get a room there before heading down. It's getting too far for me over interstates to get to decent rides. I cringe at the 2 hour trip to Manistee and the start of M22 let alone to SE Ohio or the Smokies.
When a friend went, in the early 90's, we camped at Hungry Mother, I think he was riding a little turbo 600 something. But it like 25 or so miles, I don't think we got out of third gear.
We're so lucky here in CLT. Mountains are 2 hours away and spectacular and so many racetracks within 4 hours. I don't miss living in MA at all...
Went down again 7/18-19, 2024. Headed down starting about 8:30 am. First time down in '22 a semi hauling an empty 40' flatbed dragged his trailer into my lane on a sharp left hander in the tight wooded section. Fortunately I was down by the inside line as it wizzed by me and he was hauling ass. This time in the shadows in the tight stuff, a car swerved over the line coming at me. Really didn't have any time to react, just stay the course as he missed by 3 feet?
