No need to hold back going up to the highlands today.

[GreenMachine]

It was pretty nice out today.  Warm enough for a good couple hours of buzzing around down south.  They've salt washed the highway going up, but it still has full grip.  Even the 270* on I-395 onto S. Virginia before 341/431 was plenty fun for getting a nice scrape on.

About 7/8ths up to the highlands, I had some kid in a fart-can rice burner see me coming up on him at a pretty good clip, but I was only getting the corners in and going his pace in the straights.  He was still several hundred yards in front.  When I saw him take off in a belch of black smoke I thought, here we go  , but then I thought I'd have some fun.  It was on that last set of bends before the highway heads directly eastward.   The poor kid was erratic on the brakes and throttle trying to get way, so I kept my distance, but sat right there with him.  This was on my second run up, so I knew what kind of grip to expect, which was more than I needed from today's conditions.  A couple turns and I turned around.  There wasn't much more to have fun on and I didn't want him to feel compelled to drive faster than what was necessary, for safety's sake.

On the first run up, the section past the highlands was sanded enough to take notice, but in both instances going down from the highlands to Mt. Rose was gravy.  That's as far up as I went today.  Oh there was gravel in the northward bend, the one you can see straight up the highway from the bottom.  Not enough to brake traction though.  My puck was skipping the pebbles up onto my leg.  I think one bounced off my chest too.  Should be clean by tomorrow.

Still a fair amount of traffic to/from, but if you're patient like we do on our group rides, you can have a clean run for at least half of it before stopping and without traffic having to use the turnouts.

[288RR]

I wish I would have gotten out today,  but as you could probably guess. I was working

[Mel]

You always have clean runs without traffic on the goat roads !! Haven't your heard the term "adapt and overcome"...learn to manhandle that Kawi and attack the goats !!

Mel

[Tahoebrian5]

Are we riding or hunting goats?