| Author | Message | ||
     Needs_o2 |
Nothing like ruining a great stretch of road. This was on Hwy 12 in Utah, south of Torrey, on the way to Escalante. There was about 15 miles or more of this crap. They were fresh, thick, and gooey! Has anyone here ever gone down due to tar snakes?   | ||
| Charlie_zulu |
That stinks, great road.. Come close to going down, just kept my head up and fixed on a target way down the road and survived. | ||
| Thejosh |
Got some of those on the concrete road near the airport where I work, I can always feel a little slip every now and then, what a great way to ruin a road. | ||
| Needs_o2 |
I had a hell of a time, they were so greasy that I had to thread the needle between them. They slowed us down, but we kept the rubber side down. They weren't the only obstacles to avoid, there were trucks wanting both lanes, a doe waiting in the shadows and a half a dozen elk racing each other across the road. Back at camp, Julie had to help me get my hands off the grips and that first drink sure hit the spot! | ||
| Ronmold |
Up here in Mini-so-tah they roll toilet paper over the tar snakes to make them less gooey. After the TP dissolves in a few week, the tar is hard but still get quite slick when wet. I really detest riding on roads that they just used a roto-mill on where they take an inch of pavement off so they can apply new which makes the road surface into deep parallel grooves. I got on one of those roads & had to get off as soon as I could or I'm sure I would have went down. I would rather drive on gravel then that stuff.  | ||
| Reepicheep |
I've had some pucker moments when I could feel the back or the front crawling as I went over some of those, but never actually had any kind of real issue. Like O2 said, there are many other hazards on the road that limit my street speeds to ones low enough to get over a tar snake with just a little wiggle. Get yourself a cheap dirt bike, and spend some time off road. You will be a lot less "panicky" when the bike "talks" to you about the road surface. You get the right muscle memories and even if the back steps out (or very quick front locks or jumps) you have generally recovered before you are even conciously aware you had a problem. | ||
| Motorbike |
Back in 1986 I bought a brand new Gold Wing Interstate in Wineberry red. Beautiful bike. The very first time out, I was about three miles from home and saw a sign warning of 'Road Construction Ahead'on a two lane blacktop. I didn't see anything going on until I rounded about the fourth curve. It was then that I realized they were sealing the cracks in the road with hot, gooey tar. I had been riding through that for the last mile or so. When I figured out what was going on, I pulled over to see if any of this crap was on my new bike. I was just sick when I saw strings of this tar that had flung off both tires and it was everywhere on the bike. It was in the radiator, all over my pant legs, on the complete underside of the bike and some of it even slung around in back and landed on top of the trunk! I was pissed! I rode home and spent the whole rest of the day washing my bike with kerosene, then soap water and then waxing it front to back. I'm not sure I ever got all of that crap off! Thanks. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Route 60 in north-east Georgia that runs through Suches (location of many March Badness and Buelltoberfest gatherings) has some really nasty ones beginning a few miles west of TWO. I rode that stretch of road a few years ago at noon in July; the strips must have been put down a week or so earlier. There were SO many tar snakes on the road that a good portion of them must have been put down just for mischief. Holy crap was that nasty. The Uly felt like it was riding on greased pavement. I've never taken that stretch of road so slow as that day, and it's a great section of twisties. | ||
| Fltwistygirl |
"Up here in Mini-so-tah they roll toilet paper over the tar snakes to make them less gooey." We actually stopped and took a picture of that a couple years ago because we'd never seen that before. Makes sense. "Route 60 in north-east Georgia that runs through Suches (location of many March Badness and Buelltoberfest gatherings) has some really nasty ones beginning a few miles west of TWO." We encountered the same crap in May 2007 or 2008 on the same stretch of road . G-D-O-T just put them down. It was horrible for the first couple days, till the newness wore off, and way worse during the heat of the day. Reepi's advice about riding a dirt bike makes a lot of sense. | ||
| Motorbike |
I forgot to mention, the strips I drove over up here in Mini-so-tah did not have TP over them. Maybe they ran out? Or used it all up for what it is really intended? | ||
| Skifastbadly |
I had just started my second riding career (I had a Honda 360B in the early 80s, but had no idea what I was doing and lucky for me it fell apart) and on my new Harley Heritage with maybe 1000 miles under my belt when I decided to go over East Canyon road in Utah. I get half way up and I run into a road construction crew, who wave me around. Instantly I'm on old asphalt upon which they're spraying oil. Oh, man,was that ever nerve wracking. Longest 10 miles of my life. In Utah, they do that tar snake thing all the time, I was up on Monte Cristo one time and they were all over. On a hot day. I could feel the rear tire lose bite on the corners. I started a thread on ADV about it and people in droves told stories about sliding and crashing. Nasty. You don't see that here in Washington state. They have a much more subtle way of getting you. All the crosswalks and turn lanes are marked not with painted signs but with big rubber stickers. And when wet, those are really bad. | ||
| Eryngium |
On my ride home from the Last Ride to the Buell factory on 10/26/09, I had a memorable over-before-I-knew-it interaction with a wet tar snake in the rain in traffic on I94. Changing lanes my rear tire did the quick shimmy. It was over before I had a chance to react, but it was long enough and obvious enough to get my attention and give me a quick adrenaline dump. | ||
| Eulysses |
In the wet it could be like a wet root running almost perpendicular to the road...and on a curve so you could slide out too much and lose it. | ||
| Sharkguy |
"Route 60 in north-east Georgia that runs through Suches (location of many March Badness and Buelltoberfest gatherings) has some really nasty ones beginning a few miles west of TWO." Hughlysses, I was up there right after they did that too. Sucked. It was my wife's first trip up there on her own bike. She was freaking out. Word on the street was they were putting down extra snakes to slow down the bikers. Ruined a good piece of road. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Word on the street was they were putting down extra snakes to slow down the bikers. Ruined a good piece of road. Yea, there was so much tar on the road it looked like that to me too. There's no way there were THAT many cracks in the road that needed to be sealed. I have to think that with a little work, you could have made a pretty good case against the GA DOT if you'd crashed because of all that. | ||
| Fltwistygirl |
"I have to think that with a little work, you could have made a pretty good case against the GA DOT if you'd crashed because of all that." If slowing bikers down was GA DOT's true goal, and I'm not saying it was, that's pretty pathetic. There's gotta be safer and more effective speed enforcing techniques. It'd be interesting to see if there is legal precedence where someone has sued a state D-O-T for such nonsense and won. |
