The Roundness of the Tires

Miles today: 227 (1,141.9 so far)

Hours in the saddle: 5:46 (30:45 so far)

Theme music: Metallica, Sarah Brightman

We packed up from the motel in Woodstock, VT and headed towards the Mount Washington auto road in New Hampahire. It was totally awesome. Jaron got the ride up on the go pro. I look forward to watching it...in 2 weeks. 🤣

New Hampshire is not a helmet state. Their motto is “Live Free or Die” which we’ve modified to “Live Free and Die” accordingly. Seriously though, it’s really green and pretty. 

The auto road https://mtwashingtonautoroad.com/ was a whopping $17 for each motorcycle. That’s more than Skyline Drive! (Which is waaayy longer) They even charge per passenger. It was really cool though. Apparently it has an average grade of 12% over 7ish miles. At the base the scenery was idyllic trees and groundcover and as we rose in elevation, we lost the trees and it was just shrubs and rocks. The elevation at the summit is 6,288 feet. 

We were above some clouds (which was concerning because we were riding in fog). The speed limit was 25 and passing was not allowed, so it was slow enough going that it was ok in a little fog. And everyone was going less than 25 mph. At some points this was hard on the bikes. Hard to go thru a steep hairpin turn at 2 mph since speed is what makes bikes stay up. 

There were lots of pull off areas for cooling your brakes on the way down. There was also a water spigot for filling up your radiator. 

Seriously 1/4 to 1/3 of the vehicles on this road were motorcycles. It was a narrow road and cars were definitely constantly crossing the centerline. At the top, we overheard someone asking a different motorcyclist if it was safer to be on a bike because we had more space on the narrow road. He said actually no, because of the roundness of the tires (presumably referring to the round edges and not the nature of wheels themselves) that in the turns the road tries to throw you off of the mountain. That’s a little dramatic. The round sides enable you to lean and turn more tightly, so I’m not sure what that was about. There were also several large SUVs and Super Duty trucks and I don’t think that would have been any fun. 

Here’s the foggy overlook. 

Here’s a view from the top when it’s not foggy. 

There’s also a railroad that people can take up & down. 

There was a snack bar where we got some emergency survival chocolate because we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Then we headed down to a restaurant which was fortunately in a hotel that had open wifi, because there was definitely zero cell service and we needed to figure out where we were going to stay tonight. 

We made it to Augusta, ME Sunday night, and tomorrow we’ll drive up along the coast on Rt 1 to Calais and then cross the border in to Canadaaaa.