"It's as good as Deals Gap," Jim said.
That got my attention. I looked at him with sudden seriousness.
"Really?"
"Yeah, really," he nodded.
That was years ago. Jim and I had been discussing good roads in the Mid-Atlantic region, as we often did. He had discovered this little treasure in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia on one of his recent adventures. And his comment had instantly made me want to go find it.
It didn't take long. On one of our trips just a few months later, Dave-another friend who was familiar with the route-had led us up Route 220 to where the secret road began.
Alas. It was a very nice road, to be sure. It wound for miles through an isolated, rustic canyon. It was a pretty road, one to enjoy for its mellow character. Most definitely a fun road.
But it was no Deals Gap.
Sure, it had plenty of curves. But the road was narrow and abrupt, with sketchy pavement in spots; and guard rails that frequently came to the very edge of the pavement, forcing a rider towards the center of the road and seriously limiting the line one could take. Most of the curves were blind.
It was a road you couldn't really get your suspension working on. You most certainly couldn't rail on it.
I marked it in my mind as one of those pleasant little roads I'd welcome visiting again, but probably wouldn't go out of my way to do so.
Fast forward a handful of years and that's what I'm thinking as Michael, David, and I cruise northward. We had left our homes in Northern Virginia early in the morning and were now long into a 400-mile loop through West Virginia. It had been a terrific day so far. We had enjoyed a mix of roads-everything from technical, out-of-the-way county routes to bigger roads with high-speed sweepers, to a single, gnarly, oh-so-cool mountain road that connected nowhere to nowhere and made me glad I had brought my GS rather than the Gixxer or KRS. Now we're heading back north on Route 220 and I'm wondering if we're anywhere near Jim's secret, good-as-Deals-Gap road. I wouldn't mind riding it again.
A few miles later I get my answer as Michael turns left. "Smoke Hole Road" is written on the little green sign. I smile to myself.
Michael and David are both excellent riders. Brothers, they grew up riding bikes. Now, decades later, they bring that relaxed assurance that comes from many years of riding. Michael is riding a Buell Firebolt and David is on an RC51.
Michael has led all day, adjusting our pace to suit the road we're on. I've been impressed by his judgment, running a crisp, fast pace where conditions warranted; pulling back our tempo where it wasn't.
Now, on this pleasant, narrow little road, Michael sets a relaxed pace that has us gliding through the turns with smiles on our faces. The road is demanding enough that even at our reduced pace there is little time for sightseeing, but we're able to steal the odd glance here and there at the bucolic landscape. The forest the route tracks through, the odd house or cabin that sit hard along the roadway, and the creek running next to us all add to the atmosphere.
It's around twenty minutes later, after we've run most the length of the road, that we come upon the truck. Because of our reduced pace we've been running pretty close together, our three bikes within a handful of bike lengths of each other. Third in line, I'm maybe two seconds behind David, just in front of me; and four seconds behind Michael.
I come around the blind left-hander to see a large, red Ford pickup halfway off the road, partially in the ditch on the left-hand side of the road. It's a surprising sight. He's deep enough in the ditch that his front axle is almost on the ground. It's the vision of that that has my attention in the split-second before I'm past him. It seems an oddly-poor job of parking if he was just fishing or hiking and it makes me wonder if he ended up there from having jerked to the side of the road to avoid Michael.