Have you ridden on 211 yet?

I have talked to several sportbike riders in the Bristow area and the same question always comes up; Have you been out on 211? I always answered 'No', and being male I never bothered to ask where it was. I did harbor a sense of curiosity about the mystical 211 for several reasons. One, there must be something about this road that makes everyone talk about it; two, my neighbor Steve broke his ankle in a crash on 211; three, it's a mountain road. This all adds up to a level of twisties you don't just see in the Virginia coastal plain.

Yesterday proved to be the perfect combination of available time and inclination, so I started up the bike (newly charge battery b.t.w.)and took off for 211. On my last ride I saw the exit to 211W in Warrenton, so I went 29S and went west. The first 40 miles of the ride were pleasant enough, albeit the swarm of holiday police radar traps and the extremely ordinary 4-lane highway route. I managed to avoid the police and stuck it out for the duration, noting that in the distance that there appeared to be hills, and the roadsigns indicated that Luray Caverns loomed ahead. More importantly I noticed several groups of sportbikes parked at Gas Stations and convenience stores along the way. For anyone who has ridden in Northern Virginia, aka Harleyland, this is somewhat unusual.

The sporkbike sitings suddenly intensified and I found myself on Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park. The road began to climb and the turns looked more and more interesting, but the traffic had slowed to a crawl because of the incline.

The view of the mountains and trees was breathtaking, at least I think it was, because as soon as the road widened into two lanes and I could pass the siteseeing cagers, all I saw were sweepers, hairpins, blind turns, s-curves, and all the other turns in the road that make life worth living. I picked up the pace, hoped that the police were busy elsewhere and began to feel that delicious sense of unease associated with riding on an unfamiliar road and wondering if you just carried too much speed into a blind corner.

I ran to the top and started down the other side of the mountain only to discover that the road was one lane down vice two lanes up. I was parked for most of the trip down behind a Surburban towing a trailer, but once at the bottom, I turned around and went back up the hill. Now I was back in two lanes, making it very hard for a slow car to spoil the ride. I had a quick encounter with a Silver RX-7 that decided he could stay with the R1, but for reasons known only to him, he could not. The second trip down was soon stopped by a Honda putting along in the now single lane traffic, but miraculously he pull over to let me by. I gave him a hearty wave and powered on down.

In short, it was a 110 mile ride for 5 miles of twisties, but worth it. If I ever have any riders on hand, we should definitely make the trip back.