Ohio State Route 555 - The Triple Nickel
Ohio State Route 555, otherwise known as The Triple Nickel, is one of those fable rides that surprises just about every rider on the first trip. Truth be told, the catchy name of the road lends more to the hype than the actual ride, but it's a great starting point for any ride in Southern Ohio. There are so many great roads, like Ohio State Route 78 connected to it, that you can make The Triple Nickel part of any ride in the area.
I started my ride today from Newark, Ohio and headed down Ohio S.R. 668 to Ohio S.R. 22. From 22 I caught 555 in South Zanesville. Bad drivers are everywhere in South Zanesville! For the first few miles of the 555 I had a V-10 Dodge Truck tailing me. It doesn't take long on the 555 to lose any pickup truck though. After a few miles south of the city, the biggest danger turns into the 555 itself. It's a little confusing just south of town too, so you have to take it easy to get through what little bit of traffic you're going to see on this road.
Being October, there's a chill in the air and the leaves are turning. For the few straightaways when you can look, the Southern Ohio countryside view is incredible. Hard to believe you just left Zanesville at that point!
Today I took the Honda 750 Shadow. After my footpegs hit the pavement a few times, I started wishing I would have taken the wife's Suzuki V-Strom, but on a day like today, I just wanted to lean back on a cruiser and enjoy the ride. I seen a few V-Strom's with huge smiles on their face though!
The 555 is notorious for being in bad repair. A few times I dived into curves, seen the gravel and had grit my teeth and try to navigate through it. It kind of reminds you of the first ride on a roller coaster and decide that maybe it wasn't such a good idea. You just have to ride through it the best you can. If you can get through the first bad decision, you won't let it happen the rest of the ride. You can go throught curves of the 555, or any road, to slow as many times as you like, take one to fast and you're done.
The challenging part of a road like the 555 is that you don't get a rythym going like normal twisting roads. You keep running into so many various types of curves like increasing/decreasing radius, blind, loose gravel, banked and unbanked, banked but the banking fades out, to just barely a curve at all. You even have parts where the road looks like it goes straight, only to find out that's another road and you have to follow a sharp turn to stay on the Triple Nickel.
Keep an eye out for other bikes in trouble. There are a few spots where a motorcycle could dive off the road and over a cliff, with nobody ever noticing there was a downed biker. Be ready to hug the right edge of the road. A few times cages swung curves wide.
Just north of Marietta, Ohio, I started getting lost just following any road heading north and/or east. I didn't even pay any attention to the names of all of them. I stopped a few times to check the cell phone GPS and take a break. Eventually, I made it back home just as it was getting to cold to ride. As the sun set on a cold October evening, it's a little sad to think of a great summer with plenty of great riding weather fading away. Kind of like heading into a gravel covered curve you really wish you could slow down a little more for.