Triple Nickel (Route 555 in S.E. Ohio)

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#1 Unread post by **ZooTech** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 2:49 pm

Turns out the Triple Nickel is closer to me than I thought. It's just seven miles south of I-70 in Zanesville for those of you familiar with the area. I came across the following web page with a short video of the road in question:

http://www.bmwmoa.org/rally/rally05/fea ... 5_ride.htm

I should be getting my front wheel back on Thursday, so I'm gonna try to make it out there to ride this thing this weekend. I'll post pics if it works out.

Joe Mc · #2 Unread post by **Joe Mc** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 4:13 pm

Looks like a fun road.

Was the guy filming the video riding a bicycle? He's going slow enough!

Forsaken · #3 Unread post by **Forsaken** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 10:06 pm

The guy said it has a lot of gravel.... no thx.

CentralOzzy · Mon Sep 05, 2005 10:52 pm

A perfect road for the new Buell Ulysses!

#5 Unread post by **ZooTech** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:43 am

CentralOzzy wrote:A perfect road for the new Buell Ulysses!

Well, we just did the trip yesterday and yes, Ozzy, it's pretty much a playground for bikes like the Ulysses! Horsepower is a nice thing...but this road is better suited to bikes with a lot of torque, like a V-twin sportbike. Some of the folks that wrote about it referred to it as "Ohio's Dragon", but I have a hard time making that comparison myself. While it is curvy as hell, there are several challenges that the ol' 555 presents that the Dragon does not.

For starters, you tend to carry a lot more speed through the 555 than the Dragon. All told it's about 60 miles long, and there are some pretty decent "straight"-aways between curves, so you tend to travel about twice as fast on the 555 than on the Dragon. Secondly, I've never seen so many blind turns and hilltop surprises in my life! It must be a county ordinance out there to put a hard 90-degree turn at the crest of every hill, and then forego the installation of a warning sign beforehand. Thirdly, the road grade changes frequently...from salt-and-pepper backroad to fresh black pavement, and everything in between. And last but not least, the Dragon is very well-kept by the locals and is even swept off rather regularly, whereas the 555 has quite an abundance of loose gravel and sand around the sharpest turns, causing a rather timid approach to each approaching bend. All told, I'd say the Dragon is more like a "highlight reel" of the 555, minus the loose aggragate. But we had a blast riding it, and I'll surely be back soon!

Some pics:

First stop, Arthur Treachers in Reynoldsburg:

About a mile into the 555, we came across this accident. That's an 8-day-old Harley Sportster 883 with 30-day plates on it. She and her husband were out riding together (that's his RoadGlide parked facing the scene) and she came around the first bend a little too hot, causing her to go left-of-center and hit the gravel ditch. The front end fell out from under her and she hit five fence posts and got tangled up in the barbed wire. She was wearing a half-helmet and she had a nasty gaping wound on her right elbow. She was actually quite lucky, though, because as we dug her bike out of the ditch and waited on the ambulance cars continued to whip through there like they were on the way to a fire. Hell, even the ambulance came screeching around the same turn she wrecked on and we thought we'd need one too! So, she was lucky she didn't get hit head-on or get more tangled in the barbed wire than she did. The bike did not fare so well:

Some pics of our first stop (actually, I had to stop and wait about two minutes for my dad and bro-in-law to catch up!):

#6 Unread post by **dr_bar** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:55 am

Great pics, looks like a heck of a road to ride. I'm glad the harley rider wasn't too bad off...

CentralOzzy · Sun Sep 11, 2005 11:50 am

I'll bet the Locals have that road down Pat!

Nice pictures! How about some ACTION shots next time?

Too bad about the Harley rider....I guess she reached her limitaions a little too quickly! Fancy dropping a 3 day old bike.....Ooooogh.

Glad she's OK.

#8 Unread post by **ZooTech** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 11:55 am

CentralOzzy wrote:I'll bet the Locals have that road down Pat!

Yeah, it'd be nice to have a road like that close to home.

CentralOzzy wrote: Nice pictures! How about some ACTION shots next time?

Yeah, we dropped the ball. But we got started an hour later than planned and were then held up by the wreck. All-in-all we were riding for eleven hours, and any additional stops like that would have put us home even later (we got home around midnight). I had planned to take some short vids on the better turns but just never did.

CentralOzzy wrote: Too bad about the Harley rider....I guess she reached her limitaions a little too quickly! Fancy dropping a 3 day old bike.....Ooooogh. Glad she's OK.

I know nothing of her overall experience, but I don't think anyone should tackle a road like that on an 8-day-old bike. The bike needs to be broken-in and the rider needs more seat time than that.

dag207 · #9 Unread post by **dag207** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 12:13 pm

Nice pics. That road looks like a lot of the roads in my area, (exept we seem to have a lot more frost heave cracks)

Snake · #10 Unread post by **Snake** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 4:33 pm

It's kind of pointless to sweep the roads in ohio, since most of them have that gravel on the sides, every toime the rain falls which is often (As I'm sure you know) the road is just as dirty.