Since we had a entire week off of work we decided to do a lot of sightseeing both to and from Deals Gap on this trip.
We got started on Friday morning and followed Ohio 7 down the river. This is a pretty nice ride, at least as far as Ohio rides go, and it sure does beat being on the freeway. After riding for a while Cathy just went screaming past me. Just behind her was a station wagon. I really could not figure out what was going on and when we stopped for the next break I asked her what was up. It turns out that she was racing with the station wagon. One of those deals where the road closes down from two lanes to one lane and everyone races to be the first. Well, they both passed me but I did not even know we were racing! Cathy commented as we were talking about this that she was surprised the station wagon had let me past. Can you believe this? Like she would honestly think a station wagon would have to let the mighty Vstrom pass? I explained to her that when the Tankster and the Vstrom decide to pass they are going to pass. I don’t have to ask no stinking station wagon for permission.
I planned the route to take me back to Hillbilly Hotdogs again, and once again they disappointed me. I could not believe it when we rolled up into the parking lot and they were closed again! I mean, here we are at like 4 o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday and they are closed! I was pretty disgusted with the whole thing and we were about to leave when someone came out of the building. He told us they are opening another store and they needed all the employees at the new store for the opening, so this one was closed. This just kind of made me even more mad. Two trips to this stupid place and they are closed both times. Screw Hillbilly Hotdogs. That was the last time I will ever try to go there. Hillbilly Hotdogs is now officially dead to the Tankster.
We ended up spending the night in Richmond, Kentucky. Weather had been perfect all day with plenty of sunshine and cool temperatures. It really had been the perfect day for riding motorcycles.
Saturday morning we packed the bikes back up and headed south on 75 for a little while. We got off the freeway and took 461 to 80 and then to 27. 27 was our first really spectacular road of the trip. In Kentucky it goes right through the Daniel Boone National Forest and it is a nice ride. Once you cross into Tennessee it becomes a great ride. This road is just so smooth with such nice curves.
We had been planning on going through Oak Ridge to check out the K25 area, but I pressed a wrong button on the GPS and skipped the destination. By the time I realized the mistake we had gone long out of the way and would have had to backtrack quite a bit, so we just kept on our way to Deals Gap.
The motel was totally empty when we got to Deals Gap. It really looked like we were going to be pretty much alone in the motel for Saturday night. We went out for a little ride and when we came back the entire place was swarming with dual-sporters. I mean they were just like gnats buzzing all around the place. They all seemed like great guys and it really did look like they were having a lot of fun.
We went to get some cheeseburgers at the grill and they were excellent as always. I could not wait to get one of the little chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches they have in the freezer, but when I looked in there were no ice cream sandwiches! The horror of it all! The kid behind the counter seemed kind of surprised when I did not get my usual and said “Hey, going to try something new this time?” Hell yea I’m gonna try something new, the sandwiches are gone! When I said this he looked into my eyes, and I could see the horror of it all in his eyes. This man understood what I was going through. I realized that he was on my side and that he may have been even more shocked than I was. This made me feel much less alone in the world and I headed back to my table with some other type of ice cream confection that was quite delicious, yet not as satisfying as my usual. I asked when more might be coming in. Monday was the answer. The perfect answer would have been tomorrow, but Monday is the next best. I have dealt with hardship before, I knew I would get through this. Anything that does not kill you makes you stronger.
Sunday morning and time for pancakes!
We ordered breakfast and sat down to watch the weather. After a little while they called our number and Cathy went to the counter to get our food. I look over at the kitchen and everyone in there is looking at me and smiling. Beth is standing at the door and smiling. This is when I realized that it is on. They have been trying to shut down the Tankster for quite a while by giving me bigger and bigger pancakes. I could see by the look in their eyes that they had some type of new strategy. They looked confident. I began to worry. Cathy returns to the table and I get a chance to see what I am up against. In a complete change of strategy they had stopped making the pancakes bigger and instead made them smaller! And I mean real small! Now this would lead you to believe that if they made them smaller it would actually be easier to eat them all, but they made a lot of pancakes! I mean this plate was just piled high. There must have been 100 of them. For the first time in my life I felt fear. I thought they had finally won, but then the fight instinct kicked in and I said I would not give up without a fight. I am proud to say that I remain undefeated. I was battered and bruised by the end, but I had won!
We ran into lots of people during the trip, and today as I was putting some air in my front tire I ran into Michael and More sitting on the front porch. I ran into Kerry and Bonnie several times. They are from the Cleveland area and are some pretty good folks for flatlanders. We ran into lots of folks from the ETR board. Craig was next door to us for a while, and he is a pretty cool guy also. Zee was cracking the whip and he had to sort all kinds of pictures so we really did not get to talk to him much but I guess you have to do what you have to do. I forget Wamphyri*DFR*’s real name , but I met him up on the overlook and we had an interesting talk. He just got himself a Vstrom and was happy to hear about all the trouble free miles I have got out of mine. Really, every time I go I meet more people that I can mention and that is one of the best parts of the trip. It is really great to meet so many people who just love motorcycles.
The big excitement for Sunday was the Laguna Seca MotoGP race. Ben had been flapping his jaw for about a week that Miguel Duhamel was going to get a podium. He was taking dollar bets on this so my wife and I as well as Mark got in on the action. I think Ben began to see the writing on the wall during qualifying because he seemed to get pretty tense every time I mentioned the word “podium”. In fact at one point he even tore a dollar into three pieces and handed a section to each of us. I always thought Canadians were more easy going than us regular Americans, but Ben sure did seem tense.
Just a few laps into the race Miguel pulled into the pits. I think Ben saw this as an out. Ben was already figuring out his story about how Miguel would have made it to the podium if he had not had mechanical problems. Miguel gave an interview in the pits that basically pounded the nail in Bens coffin. I am not going to quote exactly what he said in the interview, but if you take what he said in French/Canadian and translate it to regular American he said “I got scared and quit.”. I really was not sure that he had said that. I mean, who would say that??? Yes, I know who would say something like that, a French/Canadian. Ben immediately jumped up and settled all bets. I almost felt bad for him.
Overall the race was kind of boring. I don’t think there was anybody in the room who was rooting for Casey Stoner and he ended up winning by a huge margin. Nikki Hayden kind of crashed right at the beginning and really was not in the running at any time for the whole race. Rossi was pretty disappointing. It sure does look like Stoner is for real. I don’t think anyone can stop him from winning the championship.
That evening we fired up the grill and had a delicious meal of bratwurst. Cathy made her famous “charcoal grill cookies” and we went to bed with full bellies again.
Monday morning and back to the grill for pancakes. We decided to take a trip to Bridal Veil Falls and it really was a great ride. We ran into Tony and Laura at the store and I invited them to come along on the ride, but they were on a schedule and could not go. We caught 28 which I have ridden many times, but I never rode the section to the south of 19. Now I feel like such a fool, because the section of 28 south of 19 is just awesome! Curve after curve with some nice scenery thrown in. From 28 we took 64 down to the falls, and 64 was even better! Some parts of it were kind of narrow, and in some places it kind of felt like the “Death Road“, but it really was a great ride. The best thing about the falls is the fact that you don’t even have to get off your motorcycle to see them. You can actually touch the water falling without ever getting off of your motorcycle! This, as everyone knows, is my idea of sightseeing! Waterfalls are always at the end of an extremely long hike, both horizontally and vertically. Here is one that you don’t even have to hike a single step! God bless the road builders.
Upon returning to Deals Gap we got several evening rides in, and enjoyed our fourth day of near perfect weather. I went down to the former location of the town of Calderwood and nearly bit it on an ancient abandoned road down there, but I managed to get out of there with no great drama.
That evening we got a bite to eat at the grill and slowly walked up to the freezer. As I slowly peered into the cooler I saw the most incredible sight of the trip: The ice cream sandwiches were back! And there was a bunch of them! I think I ate two of them that evening.
Tuesday morning was the first morning I was able to wake up at sunrise. I did a quick check outside to find everything dry, and hurried up and got dressed and made the coffee for a sunrise run and coffee at the overlook. I could not believe it, but the minute I walked out the door it started raining! What a bummer!
The rain did not last too long and the road seemed like it was mostly dried out, so I decided to make a pass. Just before I got on the bike a semi went up the hill. I caught up to him real quick and I was going to just go around him and enjoy my run, but I just could not do it. It was still real early in the morning and there was not hardly any traffic on the road, but I just felt obligated to escort the truck through. It ended up taking this guy so long to make it through that the road actually did become kind of busy by the time we got half way through. Once we got down to the lake I pulled into the pull off expecting to wave the guy past, but then he pulled into the pull off also. This guy was really geeked up. He was sucking on a cigarette like a man waiting to go to the gas chamber. The first thing he asked me is “Why do they let trucks on this road?”. He was really freaked out. He really did appreciate the escort so that made me feel good. He asked me how far it was to Knoxville and I told him probably 20 or 30 miles and he nearly crapped himself! I told him it was a piece of cake the rest of the way and he looked so relieved! After we talked a while more and his nerves calmed down he thanked me again and went on his way. I am pretty sure he will never try to take that shortcut again!
The truck escort had taken a long time, so I went back to the store and everyone else was awake so we got breakfast. For maybe the first time ever I did NOT get pancakes. Breakfast was still real good, but I did kind of regret not getting pancakes. From breakfast I went out to make a run and ended up hitting rain about 2 miles up the road. The rest of the day it was sit around and wait for the road to dry out time.
Finally at about 4 the sun came out and it was not long after that that the road dried out. We ended up making quite a few passes. That evening we were sitting on the overlook and a BMW GS pulled up that had way more stickers than me. His name was Fredrik Persson and he was in the last two weeks of a trip around the world on his motorcycle. He is from Sweden and had ridden through Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, and Japan. What a letdown it must have been for him to have all that adventure and here in the final legs of his journey he meets Mark and I. Mostly I. I told him that since I am an American I really don’t know anything about geography so the only thing I know about Sweden is that the have hot chicks there. He said they do. He asked me to take some pictures for him and I really did try my best, but it was getting pretty dark and I had a really hard time getting a nice clear shot of him with the slow shutter speeds. He remained very patient with my stupidity and eventually just gave up when he realized that I just did not have the skills to get a good shot. We told him about the tree of shame and said you should not go though without a picture of it. He got a few more shots from some other locations on the Gap and eventually did turn up at the tree. I introduced him to my fine American woman, he took some pictures, and off he went. Later we made more cookies on the grill and wished we were him. He did end up using one of the pictures that I took on his blog site that you can see by clicking here. The bummer is that he is speaking all Swedish on his blog and I have no idea at all what he is saying.
We also talked to a guy for a while who was a reporter for the Knoxville newspaper who was there to write a story about Deals Gap.
All night Tuesday and Wednesday morning I kept waking up and checking the weather. All night it remained bone dry. Then I woke up for good and it started raining again! The rain did not last long and it did not appear to have rained at all on the north end, so I just stayed where the road was dry.
On one northbound pass I caught up to a woman on a 250 ninja with a guy ahead of her on a Harley. She was obviously a beginning rider but she was doing a great job even though she was riding really, really slow. I kept a decent distance behind her waiting for a good chance to pass so I would not spook her or pressure her into riding faster. After a while another Harley guy who I had passed earlier caught up to us. This guy was one of those that did not seem to like being passed. Not only did he not make it easier for me to pass, but I really felt like he was trying to prevent me from passing. There are several places, especially north bound, where a left hander leads to a long straight. You can see all the way up the straight as you enter the turn, so one of my favorite moves is to dive to the inside as soon as you see clear road ahead. Before the guy even knows what it happening you are 50 feet ahead of him. Well, now here we are behind this woman and he sees this as his big chance to pass me. Here he comes around me, going way too fast for his limited skill and the fast approaching right hander, and he does not know what to do. He thinks about pulling in behind the 250 Ninja but I think he decides he cannot slow down in time to avoid hitting her. Instead he passes her in a blind right hand turn. She did real good and did not appear to be spooked or upset by this display of incredible stupidity, but it really pissed me off. Once I finally got around her in a safe manner I ran that road harder than I had ever run it. I caught the Harley about a mile before the overlook and came up on him flying. I rode his back tire the whole way to the overlook and I could not wait to give him a piece of my mind. He rode past the overlook and I decided to let it go, but I watched for that fool the rest of the week. The good news is this is the only example of absolute stupidity I saw all week.
On the day we arrived I saw who I thought was Darryl from Killboy.com taking pictures. As we passed him I screamed “Get off the road bitches! The Tankster is back in town!” After I screamed this I realized that it was not Darryl. I figured this guy is thinking, “Oh God, more flatlanders”. Wednesday evening I stopped where I thought the Bas Shaw grave is to ask the Killboy guy if he knew where it was. It turned out to the the same guy from our arrival, but I forget his name now. We talked a while and he was a real nice guy. As I was about to leave he said “Oh, yea, I gave Darryl your message.”. This kind of confused me so I asked him what message and he repeated the whole “get off the road bitches” scream. I laughed and told him that he must have thought I was a nut job and he basically said he already knew I was a nut job before I screamed!
Thursday came around promising to be another great weather day. We never got a drop of rain all day and I put over 230 miles on the bike without ever getting more than 9 miles from room 3. I had never scraped any pegs yet for the week, but for some reason on Thursday I just could not keep the pegs from scraping. Maybe it was all the pancakes and ice cream sandwiches. I got my new Deals Gap shirt and they made me an excellent deal on a new helmet. The weather was great all day, but it looked like it could rain, so I never ate anything all day for fear I would miss out on riding time. Mark had a little bit of a mishap that resulted in some scratches to his bike but no real damage or injuries to himself. I got bid by a bee on my nipple. Boy did that hurt. Don’t ever get bit by a bee on your nipple. It swelled up and I had a puffy, tender nipple. Later in the trip it got kind of itchy and I just could not stop scratching my nipple, but I am sure nobody wants to hear about my nipple.
I stopped and helped this guy out repairing his home made chopper. He was having some problems with the throttle cables, but he got it fixed up and back on the road.
In between riding we hung out at a lot of the pull offs and took lots of pictures and video of the bikes. It really was a great day and I was really, really tired by night time.
Friday came way too soon for me. Today was the day we were leaving Deals Gap, and as usual I always hate to leave. I really do enjoy wandering all over on my motorcycle, but it is always hard to leave Deals Gap. I woke up early and got a sunrise run in and we were packed and on the road by 9:00. I did run into Michael and More before we left and they asked me if I had moved out of Ohio! I told them we would be on our way back in just a few minutes, but we would be back in two weeks! We did not have far to go, our destination was Bristol. The plan was to check into our room and then go see what the whole Shady Valley thing was all about. I wanted to avoid a freeway ride to Bristol, but pickings were pretty slim without turning it into a very long ride. We crossed the Foothills Parkway and made our way up 321 to 441. All was well until we hit Seiverville. This was pure misery. It took us over one hour to cover 8 miles. Traffic was so thick it was just stupid. Nobody was going anywhere. The heat was oppressive. The scenery was awful. Once we left Seiverville going east the traffic thinned right out, but the scenery really was not all that great. Kind of like southern Ohio, only hotter.
We checked into our room at 3 and headed for Shady Valley. The ride south on 421 was pretty good! Not the equal of Deals Gap, but a very entertaining road all the same. We found Mark in Shady Valley getting a bite to eat and joined him. We went across the road to The Country Store and hung out for a while and talked to some of the locals. One of our best sources of information came from a guy named Jim who seems to hang out there quite a bit. He gave us quite a few tips and made our visit much better. There was a guy there on a motard, but I forgot his name, and he told us the south end of 421 was the better side, so we hit the road to check it out. Cathy stayed at the store and hung our while Mark and I did the ride. He was right, this is where the action is. The road itself is just a fun as Deals Gap, but it does have a few driveways and is not nearly as long. Back at the store we asked about the worlds shortest tunnel and Jim sent us east on 133 for 9 miles. We were not really expecting anything special out of this but I just wanted another picture for my collection of worlds largest, worlds smallest, worlds highest, etc. We were shocked when we arrived to find one of the coolest places we had ever been to. It was an incredible place. The pictures just do not do it justice. The locals told us that the pavement was really bad on 91, and it was getting late, so we decided against riding it. I bought a few stickers for my bike at the store and we just hung out for a little while. The guy at the store saw my Deals Gap shirt and said “This place is nicer than Deals Gap, isn’t it?”. Now, I just have to be honest. I told the guy that he has a really, really nice place, but Deals Gap is really my favorite place in the world. He seemed a little upset about this and said, “Well, I won’t badmouth anyone”. I thought you better not buddy! In conclusion Shady Valley is a really nice place and I sure do recommend that people pay it a visit. It is a great destination to spend half a day. This is not they type of place I think I could spend a week at, but if you stop by and spend half a day like we did you will not regret it.
Saturday morning we left Bristol and headed up 81 until we reached the exit for route 16. This was the biggest surprise of the trip. I had seen this road on the map and I thought it had potential to be a great road, but I never expected it to be as good as it is. The action starts heading north out of Marion, VA. This is one of the best roads I have ever ridden. I really have no pictures of it, it has to be seen to be believed. This road is an absolute must. If you are ever within 250 miles of this road you must ride it. I mean it. It’s that good. We got cheesburgers and the north end at a little place just before you get to Tazewell. This section of road is 24 miles of pure paradise. I mean it, do not miss this road!
We got to Lewisburg, WV pretty early and checked in around 4:00. Mark decided it was too early to stop for the night and headed on north. We went into Lewisburg and walked around a little, then ate dinner at a Mexican place. This allowed us to get a good nights sleep, because Sunday was going to be a big day of riding.
Sunday morning we headed out for our last day of adventure. I had a hard time convincing Cathy that Virginia was between West Virginia and Ohio, but I think she bought it when we crossed back into West Virginia. A few hours later we crossed back into Virginia again and this is when she got much harder to convince. We took a really strange route home, but we got a lot of great riding in because of it. 220 north of 64 in Virginia was awesome. In fact, most of the roads we were on until we hit the freeway were just great. We stopped in Green Bank, WV to check out the Radio Telescopes and spent a couple of interesting hours there. We also stopped at Seneca Rocks, but there were no rock climbers out because the weather was turning to crap really fast. The rain began shortly after we left Seneca Rocks and continued until we reached 79. From there it was just a freeway blast all the way home. We arrived back home at about 11:00PM. I was a little sad that the trip was over, but it is always good to be back home.