It took several months to coordinate a time for a much needed visit with my brother,…….but it eventually did get planned and the dates of arrival and departure were set. I would roll out from home on Monday June 20 for the 540 mile ride to my brothers place.
We would have 3 days to work on some of his projects before heading over to North Bend State Park on Friday for a family reunion. I would be camping at the park Friday and Saturday nights rather than spending the money on a room in the lodge. Then on Sunday after church we would return to my brother’s place for a few more days of working on projects and more importantly, brother time.
So Saturday June 18 my brother called to say he had been scheduled for some medical testing on Tuesday the twenty first. They had called him on Friday to set it up! The testing would take most of his day and he figured it would be best if I waited till Wednesday to arrive. Well there went the first few days of the plan!
I was checking the weather and found prediction of rain and thunderstorms in West Virginia for Wednesday afternoon. Well, that is the excuse I am using anyway. So I decided to ride in to Webster Springs (Addison), WV on Tuesday. That way, I would have a short ride from there to my brother’s on Wednesday morning before the rains. I can roll with changing plans! Of course, changing plans are a lot more fun when time constraints are not in the mix.
The ride to Addison was easy and pleasant. Although it did get hot, my system of keeping cool on long hot rides did it’s job well. The night at the Mineral Springs Motel was quiet and peaceful as was expected.
I had given considerable thought to a longer meandering “scouting” ride across roads that I do not remember well. However, that road does have a steep and twisty area that would have an uphill stop at an intersection. The fact that I had quite a bit more gear loaded on my bike than usual and a lot of that weight was loaded high did play into my decision to not take that route. So I took the direct ride path to my brother’s.
Now, to be sure, I never enjoy riding my bike on that last mile or so to my brother’s house. I have ridden my Valkyrie in and out of there at least a couple of dozen times but it is never easy. It always invokes a tight pucker factor and runs a stress test that my cardiologist would be nervous about. But I had done so successfully at least two dozen times………….maybe I was feeling a bit overconfident. This time it would be with more gear and a much more top heavy weight distribution but I was not deterred.
Now my brother does live almost in the middle of about 2 & 1/2 miles of ……………. ,well, they do have it named as a road. When I was running around in my modified Jeep back in the day, I would have said it was a road. But the Valkyrie, no matter how versatile it is in so many situations, is not a good choice for motocross scrambles. It doesn’t even perform all that well as an adventure bike. With a Valkyrie, this pathway should probably never be considered, as a road, … or at all!
So it is a narrow one lane dirt and gravel path with no control of rainwater runoff. It is always rough and rutted out on the inclined sections making it a real challenge to negotiate on 2 wheels……….even on it’s best days. The worst part is steep and twisty enough to be almost blind to any vehicle that might be coming from the opposite direction but, with only 3 people living on that road, there is not much traffic.
As I rounded the S turns starting into that steep area, I found a surprise! Recent rains had rutted the “road” more than normal and the county had tailgated about 2 inches of bug dust limestone on that hillside. I don’t know what the industry term is for that grade of stone, but I call it bug dust because there isn’t a piece of it larger than 1/4 inch and about half of it is just dust. Now I know that it works well and packs down in parking lots but I don’t think it has a chance on steep inclines with major water runoff. Anyway, by the time I seen what it was, I was already committed to making it or going down.
The ruts were somewhat filled in with the bug dust and difficult to discern so I tried to stay close to the right side of the road which had always been my path before. However the front wheel began plowing in the soft gravel and found it’s way into a ditch. Not the big 20 inch deep drainage ditch off the right side of the “road”, but one of the hidden ruts down the main path. But it didn’t stay there long! It found some reason to pop out of that rut………. with some gusto! It went airborne………and it did not do that straight ahead. Oh no, it popped out of that rut with a quick dash for the left side of that “road” (I am using that term loosely here).
Now that front wheel headed for the steep bank to the left had my attention and I countered just as that fat 205/55 found whatever had sent the front wheel into the air. The rear grabbed a bit of air just as the front wheel decided to imitate a pogo stick and grab some more air time. While the rear wheel headed to the left side of the road, the front jumped to the right. I don’t know what it is like to ride a wild bull but I think it might be a similar experience. It was made none the less exciting as I somehow managed to increase the throttle position that I had very carefully set to about 10 mph. I am not sure how many jumps and twists we made before going down, but a few more. There is no need for applause here as I am reasonably certain that I did not last 8 seconds.
So I landed again with the front wheel attempting to go left from it’s close brush with the extreme right edge and the rear wheel making a dash from left to right. But this time the front slipped in the soft bug dust again and the engine guard came to play. My helmet took a hit and I found a reason to be happy that the bug dust was soft as my left knee began to plow in it.
It was all stopped then and I was in the saddle with hands on the bars. No, my butt had not been in contact with the saddle much in those last few seconds, but it was now. I did not think to take a photo with the luggage on the bike. I just got up, brushed the bug dust off the knee of my pants and was happy to find that the denim and Kevlar was intact with no visible damage. My knee did have a couple of small cuts in it.
I removed all of the gear off my bike while I waited on my brother to show up. But I did not dare to try to set the bike up. The photo doesn’t show it very well but standing the bike up where it was would have the rear wheel on the sloped edge of that 20 inch deep ditch. I sure did not want to deal with having the back of the bike slip into that ditch. We used my brother’s tractor with a pig pole to get the bike up and pull it up to my brother’s shop. There I pulled the plugs for a quick purge of hydro lock material before trying to start the bike and ride it on up to the house.
It rained hard that night and flushed the soft bug dust back out of the ruts, maybe even deepened the ruts. Now those ruts were 8 to 10 inches deep. My brother and his wife were more concerned about the road and my having wrecked than I was. My brother has a blade for his tractor but we agreed that it would be a mistake to use it on that road when the road crew had promised to be there with a grader in a couple of days. We figured that if they seen it had been scraped, they would just ride on through with their grader and do nothing.
Some photos of the “road?”.
A friend has been mowing my brothers grass since my brother’s health issues has kept him off his feet most of the last several months. That friend decided to just bring his tractor and blade down and fix the road. He had good intentions, he meant well! But sometimes friendly help has a negative result. A lesson that I have seen play out many times over. When the road crew came with their grader, they just drove on through and graded on the other end of the road. So then, on the end of the road that I would ride my bike out, the ruts were still there but full of bug dust! I don’t even like to take my truck out the other end of the road and I refuse to ride a bike up that way! Not even a motocross bike!
Well the road was not Valkyrie passable when the time came to go to North Bend so camping got scuttled and I stayed in the lodge at 120/night in addition to the 30/night that was no longer refundable for camping.
The weather forecast was encouraging an earlier departure than July first so that part of the original plan also got changed. I left the last day of June instead. That in itself was interesting! The road crew had not graded what had already been scraped, but they did tailgate a couple more loads of bug dust on it! I put my gear in my brother’s truck and he followed me out to a restaurant on 250 where we had breakfast and I transferred my gear to my bike. From there I rode back to Tennessee.
For the ride out from my brothers, I shut the engine off and used the clutch as a brake. That allowed me to go real slow and use my feet as outriggers for stability. Even in low gear that hill was enough to turn the engine over some but a gentle use of the front brake was enough additional to bring me to stop when I wanted. The bug dust would pile up in front of the rear tire as I used the clutch for brake and when I went to move on down the hill, I had to push the bike forward over the hump of bug dust. I’m done with it! I will be riding my Valkyrie on that road again………….just as soon as they pave it!
Bigwolf
Often times, not the smartest guy around.
My brother and I
