Video is optimized for broadband access. Wide-angle lenses used to record video straighten the curves out. For a truer sense of twistiness watch the mirror dip .
“Good roads are more than my hobby, they are my religion” said Sam Hill,
visionary founder of the Washington Good Roads Association. The state’s patron
saint of motorcycling practiced what he preached, constructing the first 7.0
mi (11.3 km) of paved road in the Northwest in 1909 to study drainage, grade
and pavement formulas. Sam believed in building temples of curves to minimize
corruption of the landscape and to accommodate the three per cent grade limits
of the motorcycles of his day. DH44 shares the landscape with this little
piece of road (now an honorary TE) but bears little resemblance to it. Fact
is, in these Hayabusan times, a shrine to Twistiness isn’t commanded by low
horsepower output or by the Scenic topography of the dry, spectacular Columbia
River Gorge National Scenic Area. Pavement here is immaculately conceived and
Engineering is almost as unsullied. Flocks of devotees come here, as Sam
prophesied, and they negatively affect Remoteness in the process. But the DH’s
short service is its only real Character flaw. In 1926, missionary Hill
revealed gospel still true today: “Tourers want three things: a good road to
ride on, something worthwhile to see and something worthwhile to eat and
drink.” And of course sometimes they ride, well... just for the Sam Hill of
it.
