Went out for a short twisty ride today (+/- 60 ish mi.) and noticed a pretty good sprinkling of leaves here, and thought I would bring up the subject of those suckers being about as slick as ice when you run up on them in quanity in a turn...
Don't know how many are falling where you are, but just a sprinkling here, not bad yet, but it won't be long till they'll be dangerous... So take care and don't let them slip up on you in a good twisties turn....
Have a good one...Old Dog...
This road is not exempt either http://www.moonshiner28.com/index.html

Good point OL Dog and they are especially slick when wet.

Thanks for the tip. Didn't know that one.

Yeah, don`t go blasting through a pile of leaves either.
You don`t know what they could be hiding, could be slippery like OD warned about, a big rock or a washed out hole.

My brother learned that lesson the hard (and painful) way a few years ago. Went wide on a turn ran up on some wet leaves and his bike just went out from under him. He was young and inexperienced and paid the price.

R

Yep, it was leaves that caused me to have my first broken bone, way back when I was in Jr. High school.

I was riding my bicycle...and saw some freinds of mine up on the sidewalk ahead of me. I pullled off at a driveway onto the sidewalk and as I approached them, (they were walking away from me) , I cut over to the right on to the lawn , which was covered with leaves.

My plan was to pass my freinds up, cut back onto the sidewalk just in front of them locking the rear brake , skidding to a stop...cutting them off cop style.

But as I started to pass them, I noticed that the person that owned the house whose lawn I was on, had a walkway from the sidewalk to their front door, and on each corner where walkway intersected with the sidewalk was a 18 inch cube of cement...the first of which I was headed directly for. I hit the brakes, but the bike did not slow down...it just slipped accross the layer of leaves.

The front wheel hit the block and sent me over the bars. In slow motion , I watched myself do a dive head first for the other block of cement. This thankfully gave the time to rationalize that I should try to avoid hitting my head on what seemed to be the very corner of the block...so I stuck out my right hand ...grabbing the block and using my arm to try and slow the rest of my body down. The result of course was my body veered off to the left slightly, and my left shoulder impacted the concrete walkway, cleanly braking my left collar bone...and severely spraining my right wrist.

To me there seemed to be alot of time to think all that out while I was airborne. My freinds assured me that when they heard the bikes brakes, they quickly turned to their right just in time to see me wipe out.... in fractions of a second from their point of view.

I have always hoped that if I ever face some life threatening scenerio while riding my motorcycle, that I will again get that "slow motion" time out to work out a better outcome for myself.


KM

Been there, done that.I have often wondered why I always had time to Think about how bad this is going to hurt.Knife is right it seems like forever when you see one coming.

On the other hand I was riding a Can -Am 250 qualifier (one of those dirt bikes with a head light and brake light,that barely made them legal to license for street use}on the road home about as fast as it would go on a short straight piece of road alongside of a hayfield and the next thing I knew I was flopping along the pavement.After all the wreck was over I heard a dog howling like he was dying .

After realizing I had wrecked and heard the reason why, a woman came around the curve and saw me sitting up in the road and stopped and asked if I was alright.Pumped up on pure adrenaline I jumped up said "yes"and promptly fell back down.I knew what everybody was saying but went blind as a bat for about 30 minutes.I never saw that one coming at all.A guy that lived nearby said he saw that big sheepdog run out of the hayfield and into into the front wheel of my bike and then I went skipping up the road.I got a complimentary stay overnight in the hospital,for observation, I had a pretty good thump on the head and several pieces of skin missing.The next day was the killer,I had places sore that I didn't know I had.

Either way you fall down whether you know it's happening or are surprised, both hurts, so keep the shiny side up if at all possible.

We rode a short part of Moonshiner 28 yesterday. Got off the Dragon and rode to Bryson City for lunch. A few leaves but nothing to worry about yet. Traffic was light on 28 but pretty busy on the Dragon. Now we've got to head back to flatland South Texas

I'm looking for the "I like" button but were not on facebook!

That's a problem for me each fall. I live 4.1 miles from the two lane road at the bottom of the hill. In that mostly tree lined road is 55 turns with a rise and fall in the road elevation of over 800 feet. It's even worse when it's wet.
Ron