Just back to toymakers, we had a good time and everyone in our made it home safely.
Seven savages made it to the overlook before we parted ways.
Lots of curves, camera man musta thought wtf all these singles come from.

I got home OK at 11:01 Sunday night.

It wuz fun, from the beginning to end.   We had a blast.

We had zero mechanical problems and no breakdowns or spills of any kind in our Savage clan.  Nobody got hurt in our group, but a guy on a squid bike did get killed on Saturday (he ran slam off the road at high speed on an outside curve & ran deep into the woods down the side of the mountain --- it took like half a day just to find him once he was reported missing).   BTW, none of us had anything to do with the death, it took place before we got there.

Take a look at the various camera sites, Killboy etc because the camera men were out and all 3 camera companies took pictures of all of us going both ways several different times on Sunday around 9:00-121:00 AM Sunday June 28th.

There were more harleys than Savages out on the mountain, but we out counted every other type of bike but the harleys.   We had more Savages staying at the Gap hotel than any other single type of bike.

Ya shoulda went -- it cost us $25 each to split a room and we had cold AC air, hot showers soft beds and TV (and a kitchen and a fridge)

MM Ranch Checkin In

What a TRIP !!!!!!!!!!! That was my first time at the Dragon, Its kinda like "Disney World", THE FUN IS JUST BUILT INTO THE PLACE.

Was sorry to hear about the Guy going off the bluff, a fellow who has been there several times told me "They haul someone out of there evey weekend."  Its no place to be taken lightly.

Those Whoppers ToyMakers patted out were some of the biggest and best chunks of BEEF I can remember ,  Just like the rest of the weekend "Bigger than Life".   What a GREAT Place and Time.

Darell  I finished the trip home Sunday and Thought about you all the last half of the trip....them Ten Hours in the SADDLE trips are some to remember aren't they.

There sure was plenty of room the get out of my personal COMFORT ZONE this weekend , WHAT A GREAT RIDE !

OK, I guess this starts the RIDE REPORT portion of the 2009 Dragon Trip.  First, here are the arrival pics of the folks who got in to Toymakers after I did.



This is Al from New Hampshire arriving in his most excellent truck.  Al drove for 2+ days just to get down here, so you gotta give the man credit for Longest Distance Driven to get to the Dragon run.  

Al is small & trim in body but he has a big heart, I wish I could have gotten a pic of him feeding our buddy dogs their breakfast on the day we left -- I never saw dogs act so possessive over a piece of toast before (Al had poured the excess bacon drippings over the toast and served each dog their own separate plate of doggie style french toast).  One dog laid right down on the spot and put her paws over her toast to protect it and the other dog grabbed his toast up and ran across the street to his own yard before he flopped down to eat his special doggie treat.  We fed those dogs hamburger and other stuff all weekend and we NEVER saw them act possessive over anything before they got their doggie toast ....

Al was kind to the rest of us too, he provided the follow truck that hauled all our stuff back & forth and provided coverage against mechanical failure of all sorts.   This was not as easy as it sounds as his truck got a workout trying to keep up with the bikes.

Al, I still owe you some more tire allocation (we took up a collection from the entire group up at the Dragon overlook but, I've got some discount coupons on Goodyear tires that give you a $10-20 rebate per tire on Goodyear tires that are employee discount things that work for relatives, etc. ) 

Al, you are my brother, so if you will send me a snail mail address it would be my pleasure to give you $80 worth of employee pricing rebate coupons on a set of replacement tires.  And I am afraid that after lending me your truck to be our follow truck on the Dragon Run you are going to need them there tires before this year is out ....

This is the other side of the SRX showing the custom megaphone exhaust system.  Man, that bike really snarls at you when you kick that kickstart lever and that bantam weight super magum motor revs up to speed ....  For a 500cc engine it sure takes a lot of kick to get it to roll over -- must be the high compression ratio making all the extra effort to get her to roll over and fire up.   Rex is even worst than the SRX500, it really makes the starter motor strain to roll that special built oversize jug motor over.   Boy I am glad Lancer put that special nickle hydride battery in REX so he can reliable on-demand starting out of it.

Lancer sure is lucky to have a great running great sounding pair of bikes like these two.

This is the group getting ready to pull out on Saturday morning.  Everyone is trying to locate their gear and attempting to get ready to hit the road.  The young guys you see here looking on all amazed while the old guys putter around trying to figure out where they put their keys and stuff are Jason and Stephanie (ja01 and Possum Momma to the rest of you folks).

    "Dude, your keys are hanging off your belt loop and your helmet is sitting on your headllight ....."


I thought I'd do the trip in chronological order and the group pics at the Dragon Scenic Overlook don't take place until tomorrow (Sunday).  This is still early Saturday morning.

Well, we arrived safely at the Gap after doing a long stretch of the Parkway as a warm up, then we did the really NASTY section of 276 where I lost my skin (just so we could say that we did it) and then we ripped on up Fontana Dam road as we were all situated and mountain acclimated by then.

Here is the group waiting for Toymaker to bring back the keys to the room, calmly studying the Tree of Shame and reading all the notes people wrote on their busted up parts. (L to R, Stephanie, Jason and Al)

By the time we got there Saturday at 3:00 pm SEVEN (7) cruisers had already crashed on the Dragon that very same day and there had been one (1) fatality that they just found about the time we got there.

It made reading the tree a lot more somber and real to us ...  riding the Dragon is serious stuff, trust us on this one.

Here is the two groups joining together for the first time.  L to R, Bigzuk, Verslagen1, Stephanie, MMRanch, and Jason.  Check out the big white 5 gallon custom tank that Jason welded up for his bike.  Neat, huh?

Verslagen gets longest distance traveled award since he flew in from California to ride on one of Lancer's two fire breathing rip roaring cafe racers.   Hats off to Verslagen as he gets both longest distance award AND the jigsaw puzzle award all in the same trip.

(you gotta ask him about the jigsaw puzzle award, he can explain it better than I can)