West Virgina, Fall 2010

October 24 – 25, 2010, West Virginia

Beemer Stats:

10/24/2010

441.4mi

49 mph

47 mpg

10/25/2010

412.2 mi

54 mph

47 mpg

Total 853.6 Mi

Beemer Gas Record:

45.6 mpg

6.9 cents per mile for gas

$3.17 per gal ave. gas price for Premium

18.6 gal of gas

Baby's officially a teenager!

GPS 832.03 mi Whoops, lost the GPS Track for Sunday 10/24, so the map only shows the route home and I do not have the extended Gypsy stats. Oh well, next time.

Triumph Stats:

35.5 hrs

844 MI

17.5 Gal of Fuel..

48MPG.. What a Gas Guzzler..

Total Cost $133 or.16 cents per Mile

Rich: ’00 Triumph Trophy 900 Triple

Tim: ’00 Triumph Sprint ST 955 Triple

Dave: ’04 Triumph Sprint ST 955 Triple

Lindsey: ’07 BWM R1200R (grin)

I know I’ll pay for taking Monday off work, but we managed to find time for two days to WVA before the snow flies. Tim almost did not make it. He was lined up for a seat at Game 7 of the NLCS in Philly on Sunday, but the Phillies managed to go down in Game 6, so no interference with the important things in life. Chilly temps starting out Sunday am at 7:00; electric jacket liner to the rescue! Rich showed up for the normal Sunday morning breakfast run, so he rode with us out to Lancaster where we had a diner breakfast, then headed back while the rest of us continued on to West Virginia. From the trouble we had finding a diner in Lancaster and the line of post-church-Sunday-morning breakfast eaters waiting to get in as we were leaving, it must have been the only diner in town. Maybe that explains the food which was unfortunately pretty mediocre. With thought of setting out to the South, I made the mistake of ordering chicken fried steak with gravy. This turned out to be breaded, pre-masticated, microwaved monstrosity featuring a preponderance of cereal products with atrocious gelatinous gravy which had been applied in the factory and managed to hold its “hand poured” shape throughout the subsequent processing steps prior to landing on my plate. I ate the whole thing, of course, and suffered the aftertaste all morning. Well that’s the thing about the diner experience: you never know what to expect and the distribution of what you wind up getting is pretty broad. On the other hand, if it weren’t for the occasional bad ones, how would you recognize the good ones? It’s all part of the charm.

Well, dang. As noted above, I managed to misplace the GPS track log from day 1 of the trip, so I can’t give you the blow-by-blow. We rode across quite a bit of south-central PA, mostly on the blue highways or smaller, then drifted down into the Maryland panhandle and west on US 40 following the old National Road. US 40 has been superceded by I 68 for part of its length. In some places both routes follow the same new pavement, so we were diverted up onto the concrete slab. This led us to pouring through the Sideling Hill cut at a fair rate of speed without a stop for pics and only a moment to marvel. I have to say, if you are ever within striking distance of this landmark, and you have even a passing interest in geology, it is worth a look. Stop at the visitor’s center and have an ogle. In building I 68, the DOT sliced right through Sideling Hill exposing a perfect end on view of a Valley-and-Ridge Province anticline (boy, I hope I remember this correctly and it’s not really a syncline – the curve is on the bottom and the legs stick up in the air). Next time, I will stop and take a picture.

What can we say about West Virginia? Everything is named for Robert C. Byrd. I have heard that this is because he made a life-long career of bringing Washington money to the state to keep his constituents employed. Not a bad feature in a politician, I guess. In any event, one of the things the West Virginians appear to have done to keep busy was build roads up and down the mountains of the Mountain State. I don’t think there are enough of them (the West Virginians) to use the roads very hard, so they (the roads) tend to be in really great shape. And they (the roads, again) come in every form - twisties, sweepers, swoopers, 180’s that go on forever, straight stretches with passing lanes – everything you need to have a great day riding a Beemer going nowhere. (Well, I hear it’s pretty nice on a Triumph, too. Seem to remember from past experience that it was at least half as much fun on a Suzuki, but that memory is fading fast.) (As another aside, they [the West Virginians this time] seem to come in every form, too. They got some scary looking women at some of the convenience store stops.) In any event, Rt 50, Rt 219 – awesome. And the end of day run down the sweepers on Rt 19 into Sutton as the light faded and night came on was cosmic.

OK, I am sorry to report that the food did not get any better on this trip. The Waffle Hut had the advantage of being right in front of the motel and so within walking distance, but the only thing special about the $4.95 hot roast beef and mashed potato special was the word “special” on the menu. If I hadn’t been so hungry, I probably wouldn’t have eaten the whole thing.

I was thinking that based on my limited sample size of two, I could conclude that it always rains on Monday morning in Sutton WVA in the Fall. But I was reminded that this was my third visit to Sutton, so I have to conclude that based on my limited sample size of three, the probability of rain is 67% on Monday mornings in Sutton WVA in the Fall. At least it was not a hard rain, and the temperature was around 50, not 39 like the last time (a miserable story for another telling).

Rain may sound like misery on a motorcycle, but as we had remembered our gear and put it on before we set out, and the rain was not too hard, it was really a pretty pleasant ride. Nice thing about overcast skies is there is no sun in your eyes and no glare. We had had some stretches the day before where the contrast between shadow and bright sun made it impossible to see the lines through the curves. Monday morning, visibility was pretty even, barring the rain drops on the face shield. We headed East based on the TV weather radar which showed the rain traveling up the back bone of the Appalachians and were soon traveling in Portland sunshine, i.e. overcast skies, constantly sweeping moisture out of the air into droplets on the face shield, but road surface ranging from dry to damp with no standing water, riding through a tunnel of southern hardwood forest in the brilliance of its autumn peak.. Traction was good and we made good time getting to breakfast. As I sit here, I forget exactly what I ordered, but I remember that it did not change my overall impression that this trip was just a loser food-wise.

By heading East, we managed to pretty much stay out of any heavy rain. There was off and on moisture all day, but nothing serious, and our gear was up to the challenge. The scenery was autumn peak. Colors were amazingly vibrant and deep this year. The landscape showed signs of greening up after recent rains though the streams were extremely low. Heading home we crossed the North Branch of the Potomac between Green Spring, WVA and Oldtown, MD. As the sign says, low water only. The bridge is two planks about 5 ft above the surface of the river with no guard rails. At the troll booth on the north bank a cup is extended out the window taped to a stick and the gruff voice says “Give me a quarter”. We heard it’s a buck for cars, but can’t verify through personal experience.

We roamed around northeastern WVA and the Maryland panhandle until time started running out, then onto the concrete slab for a fast run home up I 81 to the PA Pike at Carlisle. We stopped for a quick bite of hot food at a diner along the short strip of Rt 11 connecting the highways in Carlisle and found that the homemade meatloaf lived up to the expectation established by the trip up to that point. The day ended with the sky clearing as we made the run across the state on the turnpike, one my favorite roads for getting from point A to point B when time is of the essence. All in all, a great two day jaunt.