Magic in the Mountains : Motorcycle Trip with the Cybertruck

[Jager]

There are old riders and there are bold riders. But there are no old, bold riders.
-- unknown motorcyclist


Rt. 219 north from Lewisburg is a tease. The road itself, and the topography it lives upon, suggests great delight. But rt. 219 is also a major north-south route through this section of eastern Appalachia and so it collects the inevitable detritus of humanity trying to get somewhere. It sucks more often than it doesn’t.

But the harshness of the West Virginia landscape colors everything, sharpens everything. Including its drivers. And so while there remain a goodly number of cars and trucks just trundling along, frustrating those of us of a more sporting bent, there are also a fair number who, having lived a lifetime in these hills and valleys, long since learned how to make time.

I’m behind one of those now.

I can only imagine what he’s thinking. The silver behemoth rising up behind him like a killer whale. “Surely,” he must be saying to himself, “whatever that thing is can’t stay with me,” as he presses harder into the throttle. One of those fellows who’s long been accustomed to dropping whatever vehicle comes up behind him.

Only, he doesn’t know. The Cybertruck responds, a willing accomplice. And so the two of us, this hardscrabble West Virginian and me, set off on an up-and-down, corkscrewing rush. Leaving everything else behind.

We – the Tesla and me – are just toying with him, of course. Because we both already know something he doesn’t. How effortless this all is. How unfair.

Coming out of the cambered esses just north of Droop he finally slows, resignation and wonder written in his hesitant, flickering brake lights.

With three months and four thousand miles none of this is new to me, of course. I live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge and count mountain miles among my routine adventures. I already had a pretty good handle on what this remarkable vehicle was about.

But like a parent to its child, Appalachia holds lessons that even my beloved Blue Ridge don’t. As I turn towards Marlinton, and thence to the lodge where we’re staying, my gaze sweeps across the pastoral landscape.

I’m on a motorcycle trip. The same fall foliage ride that we’ve done here for forty-odd years.

Only, I’m not on two wheels.

My pals, at first taken aback, are fascinated. Tonight, we’ll go out for a short ride and a few launches and they’ll be even more fascinated.

The excuse is the medium format camera sitting in the bag hanging from one of the rear seat back rests. My 35mm Leica’s are much better suited to the space constraints of a motorcycle trip. But I’ve always wanted to capture some of this lovely landscape on a larger format. So, yeah. For once, one time, four wheels.

I don’t mention the other reason.

The next morning finds me alone, wending northeastward through dappled early sunlight. Spruce Knob is the highest peak in West Virginia. The last six miles up the mountain, although paved, is very narrow, with many sections having very little shoulder on either side. All told, maybe a lane and a half to work with. It’s the only road the entire weekend that I find sketchy with the Cybertruck.

To reduce my exposure, the time during which I might encounter a downward-bound vehicle needing some of the road that my broad-of-beam Tesla wants all to itself, I ride fast, accelerating in short, sharp bursts.

The Hasselblad is the joy it always is. The light is pedestrian, though. I could have left even earlier, in full dark, to be here with the sun first breaking across the peaks.

But I didn’t. And for once I don’t care. Photography, today, is only part of the reason I’m here.

Back in Marlinton, I swing by the two Level Two chargers installed by the town some years back. Normally empty, today there’s a Model S on one; and a Model 3 on the other. Who knows how long they’ll be there.

Plan B is to ride back to Lewisburg and hit the Supercharger there. An hour down. An hour back. Plus the forty-minute charge itself.

Yeah, no. EV infrastructure is not anywhere close to where it needs to be.

‘Tis okay, though. I like to drive. And I especially like driving this Cybertruck.

One of the beauties of West Virginia is that there is always a good road to be found. The one I soon find myself on, tracing a roughly southward path, is classic motorcycle goodness. Complex, technical. With shifting patterns of character at turns both hard and soft.

And unlike the ride north yesterday, today the road in front of me is clear.

The pavement is laid down in coils, snaking southward in a spastic dance. A question written in time and space.

It starts slowly for me, like it usually does. Feeling the road. Listening to it. Searching for what it has to say. Then there’s a rising crescendo as the synapses begin to fire and the dots get connected and the notes start to come without conscious thought.

The first curves are measured. But already there’s a symphony of things going on, all sending me a message.

The sun is no longer directly overhead, but is starting its slow bank towards the west. West Virginia roads don’t run in a single direction. They follow the landscape, like water seeking the easiest path across hard, difficult ground. Into this road, today, here, now, the sun is briefly in my eyes, flashing moments of blindness and just as quickly easing. And then it bends the other way and the sun is at my back.

Feeling it now, I steal a glance at the tablet display, the large numbers in the upper left whispering a question. I continue to hold the pace – an aggressive pace - for a few miles, surprised at how easy it all is.

Most people are going to complain about the A-pillar. Because if you sit there like a bump on a log you’re blind – completely blind – to every hard lefthander. Which means half the turns on this crazy road.

What I’m going to say is that it doesn’t matter. Because if you’re going to drive like this you have to be an active driver. There’s a physicality to it that you have to accept.

The pavement curls around – out of sight, behind that A-pillar - like a dog trying to catch its own tail. And if you don’t want to die you have to pull your head hard to the right, towards the center of the cabin, every time the road jinks left.

You have to be active on a bike on a race track. And you have to be active here.

But do that… and what you’re left with is a cleaving of all that you previously thought possible.

Motorcycles corner well because they can lean.

Sports cars corner well because they’re low to the ground. And because they’re small and they’re light.

Big, heavy trucks don’t corner well. They contain too much mass and too much weight. Their suspensions are designed for other things. And the body-on-frame design that is so helpful off-road because of the extra articulation it provides is a positive hindrance in getting down a paved, curving road at speed.

I love trucks. I’ve driven more than a million miles in them. But I have never loved them in the mountains, save for their utility in getting me to a place where I could wield a rifle or a fly rod or a camera.

But here, now, today, something else is going on. The Cybertruck tracks through these corners like it was on rails. The outward roll, the top-heavy feeling of the vehicle trying to detach itself from the pavement and pitch itself off to the side, that we’ve all come to expect from a big truck is almost entirely missing. There’s simply a glistening, effortless smoothness to it all.

​

“Double it and add ten.”

Dave, my manager, new to motorcycles, raised his eyes in disbelief. “You mean you take the caution speed printed on those yellow signs heading into a corner, you double that, and then you add ten more to that?”

I nodded.

“So, you take a 30 mph corner at… 70?”

I nodded once more.

He shook his head. “That can’t be. I don’t think that’s possible.”

I laughed and shrugged. The few sedate rides we’d been on together were of a different ilk altogether. And he was new to bikes. So it didn’t surprise me that he might think it was impossible.

It wasn’t, of course. Lots of riders have ridden that fast.

Now, decades later, here in the Cybertruck, I’m officially an old guy. Extra innings, as I recently told my sister. I don’t ride anything like that hard anymore. Haven’t in a long time.

But those yellow caution signs sprinkled so liberally along my route, and those big numerals staring back at me from the truck’s display, have the thought lingering in the back of my brain. A whispering question that won’t go away.

It gets emphasis because this has all been so easy. So composed. So devoid of drama.

And so as it turns, as has so often been the case on two wheels… in the end I cannot help myself.

Approaching that hard edge, a pace unbecoming of anything so large, the Cybertruck feels like a whirling dervish. It remains smooth and glistening and controlled. Its suspension utterly composed. But its motors now contain a hint of urgency. And despite that composure, you cannot forget how massive this vehicle is. I don’t delude myself that I have the skills or knowledge to bring it back from the brink, were it to go there.

And so, the question answered, I don’t stay there. A measure of restraint comes calling once again.

But some things are good to know.

​

One more day. Then back home. Skirting countless ridgelines across the fastness of this place that I have so loved, for so long. Then turning east, back across the two mountains that drop me down into the Shenandoah Valley.

New Market Gap awaits. And then Thornton Gap beyond that. Lovely mountain passes, both. With twin lanes as you ascend, their coiled ribbons of tarmac awaiting your touch, so there’s no need to double-yellow anyone.

I’ve ridden both of them a bunch of times in the Cybertruck, so there are no surprises. And I can’t even say that this long weekend has brought any revelations, either. Not really.

I already kind of knew.

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[notanormalEV]

That is the best prose ever written on this forum and gives the reader a close sense of what you experienced. Kudos to you for your flowing description of what these trucks can do….placed in the right hands. You must have the soul and way of a poet.

 

[XCeilidhX]

I was born in Pittsburgh, PA.

My aunt has a lake house (kind of outside Beckley at Flat Top Lake) in WV. Both of my parents graduated from WVU. My father is from Clarksburg, and his father worked for Union Carbide. My mother is from outside Charleston in an area that in times long gone was known as Ruffner Hollow. Her father worked for True Temper back when they made the tools that now have no equivalent and those in the know are willing to pay hundreds of dollars these days for a hammer he helped make over 75 years ago.

i had a Great Aunt that was the first woman to ever graduate from the CMU school of architecture and my family used to gather every thanksgiving at a house she used to live in that is an historical landmark in Lewisburg.

Additionally I used to go to the WV state fair quite a bit in my youth. We always stayed in my great aunt’s house when i went.

that’s a long winded way of saying I know the roads of which you speak even though i live in California now.

country roads, take me home.

really enjoyed this post. Thank you for sharing.

Cheers

 

[Mal]

Damn, Jager. If you do not normally share your writing, professionally or otherwise, the world is missing out.

Beautiful.

 

[CyberZephyr]

that is amazingly written.

 

[J.Graham]

Beautifully written. I was right there with you through every turn.
My gang of old timers just completed our final run of the year last week in The Dalles, Oregon.
In Canada we refer to the coiled snaking pavement as “the twisties”.

 

[Woodrick]

You need to head south and do the Tail of the Dragon.

 

[Jager]

Thanks for the kind words, guys.

@J.Graham On my return home, descending the eastern flank of Thornton Gap I passed about a dozen Corvettes high-tailing it up the mountain. I thought, for just a moment, of turning around and joining them. I think I could've had 'em! And, yeah, we call 'em twisties down here, too!

@Woodrick I've done 129 many, many times. Alas, that road became so well known that it turned into a circus on the weekends, with lots of guys riding way beyond their skill level (we had similar problems on one of our best roads up here in Virginia). But, yeah, there are some great roads in Western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, and Northern Georgia.

 

[HaulingAss]

There are old riders and there are bold riders. But there are no old, bold riders.
-- unknown motorcyclist


Rt. 219 north from Lewisburg is a tease. The road itself, and the topography it lives upon, suggests great delight. But rt. 219 is also a major north-south route through this section of eastern Appalachia and so it collects the inevitable detritus of humanity trying to get somewhere. It sucks more often than it doesn’t.

But the harshness of the West Virginia landscape colors everything, sharpens everything. Including its drivers. And so while there remain a goodly number of cars and trucks just trundling along, frustrating those of us of a more sporting bent, there are also a fair number who, having lived a lifetime in these hills and valleys, long since learned how to make time.

I’m behind one of those now.

I can only imagine what he’s thinking. The silver behemoth rising up behind him like a killer whale. “Surely,” he must be saying to himself, “whatever that thing is can’t stay with me,” as he presses harder into the throttle. One of those fellows who’s long been accustomed to dropping whatever vehicle comes up behind him.

Only, he doesn’t know. The Cybertruck responds, a willing accomplice. And so the two of us, this hardscrabble West Virginian and me, set off on an up-and-down, corkscrewing rush. Leaving everything else behind.

We – the Tesla and me – are just toying with him, of course. Because we both already know something he doesn’t. How effortless this all is. How unfair.

Coming out of the cambered esses just north of Droop he finally slows, resignation and wonder written in his hesitant, flickering brake lights.

With three months and four thousand miles none of this is new to me, of course. I live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge and count mountain miles among my routine adventures. I already had a pretty good handle on what this remarkable vehicle was about.

But like a parent to its child, Appalachia holds lessons that even my beloved Blue Ridge don’t. As I turn towards Marlinton, and thence to the lodge where we’re staying, my gaze sweeps across the pastoral landscape.

I’m on a motorcycle trip. The same fall foliage ride that we’ve done here for forty-odd years.

Only, I’m not on two wheels.

My pals, at first taken aback, are fascinated. Tonight, we’ll go out for a short ride and a few launches and they’ll be even more fascinated.

The excuse is the medium format camera sitting in the bag hanging from one of the rear seat back rests. My 35mm Leica’s are much better suited to the space constraints of a motorcycle trip. But I’ve always wanted to capture some of this lovely landscape on a larger format. So, yeah. For once, one time, four wheels.

I don’t mention the other reason.

The next morning finds me alone, wending northeastward through dappled early sunlight. Spruce Knob is the highest peak in West Virginia. The last six miles up the mountain, although paved, is very narrow, with many sections having very little shoulder on either side. All told, maybe a lane and a half to work with. It’s the only road the entire weekend that I find sketchy with the Cybertruck.

To reduce my exposure, the time during which I might encounter a downward-bound vehicle needing some of the road that my broad-of-beam Tesla wants all to itself, I ride fast, accelerating in short, sharp bursts.

The Hasselblad is the joy it always is. The light is pedestrian, though. I could have left even earlier, in full dark, to be here with the sun first breaking across the peaks.

But I didn’t. And for once I don’t care. Photography, today, is only part of the reason I’m here.

Back in Marlinton, I swing by the two Level Two chargers installed by the town some years back. Normally empty, today there’s a Model S on one; and a Model 3 on the other. Who knows how long they’ll be there.

Plan B is to ride back to Lewisburg and hit the Supercharger there. An hour down. An hour back. Plus the forty-minute charge itself.

Yeah, no. EV infrastructure is not anywhere close to where it needs to be.

‘Tis okay, though. I like to drive. And I especially like driving this Cybertruck.

One of the beauties of West Virginia is that there is always a good road to be found. The one I soon find myself on, tracing a roughly southward path, is classic motorcycle goodness. Complex, technical. With shifting patterns of character at turns both hard and soft.

And unlike the ride north yesterday, today the road in front of me is clear.

The pavement is laid down in coils, snaking southward in a spastic dance. A question written in time and space.

It starts slowly for me, like it usually does. Feeling the road. Listening to it. Searching for what it has to say. Then there’s a rising crescendo as the synapses begin to fire and the dots get connected and the notes start to come without conscious thought.

The first curves are measured. But already there’s a symphony of things going on, all sending me a message.

The sun is no longer directly overhead, but is starting its slow bank towards the west. West Virginia roads don’t run in a single direction. They follow the landscape, like water seeking the easiest path across hard, difficult ground. Into this road, today, here, now, the sun is briefly in my eyes, flashing moments of blindness and just as quickly easing. And then it bends the other way and the sun is at my back.

Feeling it now, I steal a glance at the tablet display, the large numbers in the upper left whispering a question. I continue to hold the pace – an aggressive pace - for a few miles, surprised at how easy it all is.

Most people are going to complain about the A-pillar. Because if you sit there like a bump on a log you’re blind – completely blind – to every hard lefthander. Which means half the turns on this crazy road.

What I’m going to say is that it doesn’t matter. Because if you’re going to drive like this you have to be an active driver. There’s a physicality to it that you have to accept.

The pavement curls around – out of sight, behind that A-pillar - like a dog trying to catch its own tail. And if you don’t want to die you have to pull your head hard to the right, towards the center of the cabin, every time the road jinks left.

You have to be active on a bike on a race track. And you have to be active here.

But do that… and what you’re left with is a cleaving of all that you previously thought possible.

Motorcycles corner well because they can lean.

Sports cars corner well because they’re low to the ground. And because they’re small and they’re light.

Big, heavy trucks don’t corner well. They contain too much mass and too much weight. Their suspensions are designed for other things. And the body-on-frame design that is so helpful off-road because of the extra articulation it provides is a positive hindrance in getting down a paved, curving road at speed.

I love trucks. I’ve driven more than a million miles in them. But I have never loved them in the mountains, save for their utility in getting me to a place where I could wield a rifle or a fly rod or a camera.

But here, now, today, something else is going on. The Cybertruck tracks through these corners like it was on rails. The outward roll, the top-heavy feeling of the vehicle trying to detach itself from the pavement and pitch itself off to the side, that we’ve all come to expect from a big truck is almost entirely missing. There’s simply a glistening, effortless smoothness to it all.

​

“Double it and add ten.”

Dave, my manager, new to motorcycles, raised his eyes in disbelief. “You mean you take the caution speed printed on those yellow signs heading into a corner, you double that, and then you add ten more to that?”

I nodded.

“So, you take a 30 mph corner at… 70?”

I nodded once more.

He shook his head. “That can’t be. I don’t think that’s possible.”

I laughed and shrugged. The few sedate rides we’d been on together were of a different ilk altogether. And he was new to bikes. So it didn’t surprise me that he might think it was impossible.

It wasn’t, of course. Lots of riders have ridden that fast.

Now, decades later, here in the Cybertruck, I’m officially an old guy. Extra innings, as I recently told my sister. I don’t ride anything like that hard anymore. Haven’t in a long time.

But those yellow caution signs sprinkled so liberally along my route, and those big numerals staring back at me from the truck’s display, have the thought lingering in the back of my brain. A whispering question that won’t go away.

It gets emphasis because this has all been so easy. So composed. So devoid of drama.

And so as it turns, as has so often been the case on two wheels… in the end I cannot help myself.

Approaching that hard edge, a pace unbecoming of anything so large, the Cybertruck feels like a whirling dervish. It remains smooth and glistening and controlled. Its suspension utterly composed. But its motors now contain a hint of urgency. And despite that composure, you cannot forget how massive this vehicle is. I don’t delude myself that I have the skills or knowledge to bring it back from the brink, were it to go there.

And so, the question answered, I don’t stay there. A measure of restraint comes calling once again.

But some things are good to know.

​

One more day. Then back home. Skirting countless ridgelines across the fastness of this place that I have so loved, for so long. Then turning east, back across the two mountains that drop me down into the Shenandoah Valley.

New Market Gap awaits. And then Thornton Gap beyond that. Lovely mountain passes, both. With twin lanes as you ascend, their coiled ribbons of tarmac awaiting your touch, so there’s no need to double-yellow anyone.

I’ve ridden both of them a bunch of times in the Cybertruck, so there are no surprises. And I can’t even say that this long weekend has brought any revelations, either. Not really.

I already kind of knew.

Nice! I can relate as someone who bought his first street legal motorcycle at age 15 and was drawn to the illegal tarmac before I had my learner's permit. Most of my motorcycle buddies had an unhealthy obsession with the difference between a corner speed that worked, and one that didn't. The goal? To find that limit, while always staying on the "safe" side of it. Once we learned the lean angle limits of our machines, we learned ways to finess them over bumps by holding our butts lightly on the seats and moving our bodies around in ways that allowed us to get through corners more quickly, while simultaneously learning how to pick lines that allowed us to push that speed further. But none of us had a death wish, we were just willing to push that line, and it still amazes me we got away with it. Sure, we had numerous close calls and saves, and we heard about people who didn't make it, and we would shake our heads at the sadness of it all, but they weren't us, and we didn't want to be them, even as we knew we were risking exactly that.

A motorcycle was my only transportation. But when I wasn't using it to get from A to B in a brisk manner, I would go on a ride. I wasn't happy if there was more than an occasional car, or if the road didn't have any corners, or if I knew I could have taken a corner faster than I did. Riding motorcycles in a normal, responsible manner bored me, I couldn't do it for long unless I wasn't feeling quite right, if I wasn't feeling in the moment. I didn't enter corners fast out of habit, I entered corners fast because it was fun, it made me feel alive.

Even as I got older and started using a car, especially during the cold wet months, I didn't go for cars with powerful engines, I went for cars that had balanced handling. I picked cars with small engines that didn't have to slow down much to take a corner. But I still preferred my motorcycle for fun. Cars leaned awkwardly to the outside of the turn; trucks were worse. And they both took too long, and took too much gasoline, to build speed quickly. Still, I would wring those small engines for all they were worth, when on a good road where traffic was scarce.

In 2018 I bought my first Tesla, a Model 3 Performance. I was blown away during my first drive in a Tesla coming home from the delivery center. Not only was the handling very sporty, but the acceleration could beat my 1000 cc Italian Superbikes. And the cost of operation was lower, the safety incomparably higher. I was smitten. For the first time ever, the bikes just sat there. Sure, Italian V-twins are famous for their satisfying intake growl and exhaust notes, but the M3P proved the sound was not the only indicator of potency. The EV had better torque than even my fuel injected Italian twins, and it did it without making the sounds I associated with powerful acceleration. Now those sounds started to sound quaint to me, archaic even. Like an undesirable side effect of outdated equipment.

In April of this year, I picked up my Dual Motor Cybertruck. Now, the M3P just sits there. I didn't intend that, it just happened. The plan was to use the Cybertuck as a truck and the Model 3 when I didn't need the capabilities of a truck, but the Cybertruck is just so satisfying to drive. Make no mistake, it is not as sporty as my M3P, but it has that same immediacy of throttle response, even if ultimately, it's not as quick, or as fast. And the steering is even more responsive in the Cybertruck, even if it couldn't hang with the M3P on any paved road, straight or twisty. But it just feels so solid, so smooth, so quiet and the stereo sounds so good, even in comparison to the Premium Sound in the Model 3, that my car just sits there.

The Cybertruck, unlike every other truck I've owned, is good for driving briskly through the tight corners, or around urban corners. But, unlike my Model 3, it doesn't egg me on to drive it ever faster, it's in it's element just driving at a less brisk pace. And since putting on the tires I will be running through the winter, AT tires with more pronounced tread blocks and softer rubber compound, that is even more true. Sure, the softer rubber with taller tread blocks still grips pavement almost as well, but I can feel those tall tread blocks bending under load, and I know the tread blocks will wear unevenly if I always push them hard through the twisties. Unlike the OEM AT tires, they don't beg to be pushed harder on pavement. The verdict on snow and ice performance will have to wait a couple of months but I'm not expecting anything better than competent in most winter conditions, which is more than I can say about the OEM AT tires.

On twisty forest roads the new tires are a mixed bag. On slick wet clay, wet leaves, mud, etc. they are amazing. On crushed rock that is packed into a firm surface (but not bonded into cohesive surface) driving briskly is worse, the new tires are more likely than the OEM tires to displace the surface rocks and break traction. The OEM tires could corner relatively hard on such corners without displacing individual pieces of gravel as readily. I think the same will be true of dry sand, but we don't have a lot of that around here to test on. I doubt the extra tread width of the new tires will make up for all the tread voids, in terms of floatation in dry sand.

My point here is not that I don't like the winter setup, it's that the OEM AT tires are pretty amazing at wearing different hats, especially if pavement or gravel roads are most of your driving (and you don't have to deal with snow and ice). Still, I would like to see what the Cybertruck could do with real sport tires on it. I bet it would be crazy good.

 

[ewon]

Those west virginia roads sound incredible. Adding it to my bucket list.

 

[Jager]

@HaulingAss your experience on two wheels sounds very similar to mine. And, yeah, my Model 3 was the first 4-wheel vehicle that gave me the same kind of speed, responsiveness, and cornering cred that my bikes did.

Last summer I was coming out of the local Lowe's. A bright, yellow Lamborghini was easing his way past the entrance. I nodded and gave him a thumbs up. I've always loved fast, exotic cars.

But as I walked out to the nether region of the parking lot where my Model 3 was parked, thinking about that gorgeous Lambo, I realized that, given the choice, I wouldn't trade that fellow. My sporty, little Tesla smoked everything I had ever driven.

Until the Cybertruck.


@ewon I can't recommend West Virginia roads highly enough. Very, very special.

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