I went out on Friday through SC, North Georgia, NC and into Tennessee at
Tellico Plains on highway 68.
Then on to the end of 129 and Wimp's house.
We ate supper at Cracker Barrel about 5:30 and headed over to the
meet-up hotel... Terry (T-Bird) was there, he looked great! Santa
was there too, and he was ready to ride...
A bunch of us left the next morning on a round about trip to Lewisburg
West Virginia. The first place Joe took us is that famous Road To Nowhere
(I think anyhow)...
He took us some other good places too, but the inside of the gopro case fogged up
and most of the pictures are of lens fog...
Tracy and Don were here with the Hot Dog stand... this is Highway 16 in Virginia,
lots of bikes, several groups two or three times bigger than our group went by
while we were here...
Ron brought us to Lewisburg on 20 from Princeton, and we all split off
to eat... I lured a crowd to The Irish Pub for some awesome Irish Stew
and live Irish music. When they get home I think Eric and Todd will be
joining ancestry.com to search for their Irish roots
...
The next day Ron took us over West Virginia's "top of the world"...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Route_150We stopped at this covered bridge... it was while we were stopped here that
I overheard that 50 people had been shot...
I had my closest encounter ever with a deer on Sunday... I'm rolling down a long hill,
she appears from the right, running at an angle towards me, downhill... I mentally
calculated the intersection point and figured maybe if I nailed it, I'd get there before her...
Right as I figured she'd jump the fence at the edge of the field into my path,
she "went down"... I couldn't tell exactly, it was all behind me then, maybe there
was a ditch, maybe she didn't see the fence?
We made Ground Zero and ate hamburgers and hot dogs at the pool, Jess, did you just
come for one day?
I rode with Roger (RDAbull) on Monday, we figured out a route from Ground Zero
back to 219. We found this place while we were on route 50... Ron has led a
group of us by here before... route 50 is twisty, uphill and bumpy...
On Monday I had the closest encounter with a deer ever... it beat Sunday, hands down...
I was in a twisty uphill section, I think 50, maybe not... forest, I think it was downhill to
the right and uphill to the left... guardrails... you can imagine the guardrails are four
or five feet beside you as you are going along. All I saw of the deer was as she
leapt over the guardrail to my right... she must have done this right beside me, if she
had done it in front of me, I would have hit her, if behind, I wouldn't have seen her.
Roger had the luxury of braking when he saw her, but he was still moving when
he got to her and she was dancing around in the road then. We got on by...
Monday morning me and Stanley Steamer went over to a near-by Mom and Pop
restaurant for breakfast. Good food and quick service. Roger and I went there
Monday night when we got back (we only got lost for a little while), there
were a few other Valkyrie riders there. There were numerous Valkyries
already there when we showed up for breakfast the next morning. We had
them slammed the rest of the week. They were happy because it was good
business, but I bet they were worn out by the time we left. The food was
always good. I got a slice (about 1/4 of a pie) of blueberry pie with ice cream
one night.
It's a good thing I got that pie, Lori's pies went out of sight! Judy and Robin's
table got a banana cream pie, and they brought a slice of it to our table,
and all of us who had not yet "jumped ship" got some of it, delish
A lot of money was raised for a good cause. And there was plenty of food
that was all good at the VRCC dinner this year
...
Wednesday a group of us headed to the breakfast joint and then on to
this giant insane asylum nearby...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Allegheny_Lunatic_AsylumIt was nine by the time we met up at the restaurant... it was
slammed. A few of us had eaten at 7:30 or so, and we were talking
about how we could just head out for the Asylum - did anyone
know how to get there? I had looked at it on the map, and my
previous explorations on Monday enabled me to know how to
get "most of the way there" so we ditched those other guys
(I called Eric) and headed out. "Most of the way there" put us
near Clarksburg and Sinkhead's GPS led us around the edge
and down 19 to the Asylum.
The picture shows the left side of the building... it was an asylum until the 1990s. For
a while they had a little guy in there performing up to 100 lobotomies a day, occasionally
two at a time.
The lady dressed like a nurse was highly knowledgeable and she led
us through the tour...
This place used to be so over crowded, it was crammed with beds, beds filled
the halls, and they still didn't have enough beds, they slept in shifts...
Don't these folks look right at home?
They had bulk storage cabinets for pills and medications. I couldn't read any of the
typed up labels on the shelves, so I took pictures of a few:
They had plenty of these things, just right for an insane asylum...
We split up after the tour, the early eaters going our own way - after we
figured out how to get our bikes to run again... to a nearby
restaurant that Stanley had seen. And then to Stonewall Jackson's boyhood
home...
After Jackson's Mill I had the bright idea of us going back on 119, which we had
seen nearby. I forget how Sinkhead got stuck leading when it was my idea, but
he led confidently. Not really the way I was thinking, but hey - he has a GPS.
After a while he decided 219 just wasn't cutting it, since we wanted to
be on 119. We decided to back track a few miles and pick up one end
of 90, and that led us most of the way back to Morgantown. 90 turned
out to be way better than the bumpy roads I'd picked out to travel between
Morgantown and 215, and so I used it again on the way home.
There were storms the last day, some folks got stuck out in them. Mean sideways
rain storms. A storm knocked out the power to the area, including the motel
complex, at 2:00 am Friday morning. There's a generator or something down
in the part of the building complex where the restaurant and bar is - I guess
there's perishable supplies there... anyhow, they were brewing coffee as
fast at they could, so we all had coffee.
Stanley and I were headed back in the same general direction, so we took
off down 90 towards 219. We kept our eyes opened for a Mom and Pop
breakfast place, we spotted one with one Valkyrie there already - a couple
who were also at InZane. We cruised on and ended up at Bluefield by turning
onto 460 at the end of 219. We rode all day and were still in West Virginia.
The Econo Lodge in Bluefield is clean and there's a breakfast place
across the street...
We lit off the next morning, still going towards Claypool Hill on 460, and then
off down a few other roads to a road, 613, that I had picked off the map. We didn't
go directly to 613, but we got there... it is a beautiful road, lots of good views and
old houses to go by. My go pro fogged up inside again, though, so here's a few
shots with the fog cropped out... I googled up a home-made gopro anti fog
solution that involves a paper towel... I hate taking fogged up pictures...
It is sad to see nice old houses in good places go unmaintained...
We came out above Kingsport Tennessee, totally avoided I-81, and ran
into Larry and Lisa, who had also been at InZane. Lisa was on the Blue
Stripe Valkyrie... after talking to them a while, we lit out for Johnson
City and Cracker Barrel. Johnson City is easy to get past, and 26 goes
over a good mountain without much traffic. We jammed on that
section
... I knew the fun would be over at Asheville, and it was
trafficky all the way to Hendersonville - we peeled off onto
25, then 11. I was surprised that there were a few log-jambs on
11 people going slow, but 11 led me home and Steamer closer to
home.
Good luck to Punisher, Joe, Wimp and Robin who are headed off to ride
through the North for a week, and thanks to the Staff and everyone
who helped pull this one off!
-Mike
