The weather forecast was wet all weekend. Quite a few people decided to skip the event, supposedly to avoid the rain. Some who travelled to Lewisburg thought better of it after one day and left early. Others stayed but found off-bike excursions to fill their Saturday.
I had ridden down Friday with no rain until I was south of Fayetteville. Outside the small town of Rupert, less than 20 miles from my destination, U.S. 60 was closed due to an accident. I was given directions by a highway worker, who sent me back to Rainelle. There I should have stopped and checked a map, but it was raining, so I followed the local’s directions and went down some Twilight Zone road that I cannot now find on the map. It was a paved lane-and-a-half with wide dirt berms that allowed the large volume of oncoming traffic to safely pass by me in the dark, in the rain. I came out the other side onto a paved road with no road signs and wandered around until I found I-64.
On Saturday morning I looked at the weather radar and saw that the swirling rain clouds did not reach far from Lewisburg. There was a large clear area to the west and extensive clearing in northern WV. I decided to head for one of those areas and ride. This plan sounded so good that three others chose to change their plan, which was to head home early, and come along.
I hastily put together a route and we were on the road within an hour. John Boyd, Jim Goody, Tom Rannebarger and I went south then east. Early on the way was unfamiliar, but soon we were in Talcott. There we found some new developments. There is now a John Henry museum, and a new memorial park is under construction. The John Henry statue was gone. The plinth remains with a plaque that reads, “Here stood a statue of John Henry…”
As we were preparing to leave, a local man drove up and handed brochures out the window of his truck. He gave us directions to the new location of the statue. We found the statue at the mouth of the Big Bend tunnels directly below the old location. The statue appears to have been polished and painted, but the park is not yet finished.
We went on to Hinton and paused to view the New River at what I refer to as the best Dairy Queen I’ve ever seen. We partook only of the view and headed on to a new road we had never ridden. State route 10 looks curvy on the map, and it is. We rolled through a long series of zigzag bends with no traffic to slow us. Soon after that, a dog tried to slow us and John rolled him down the road.
This dog, a stout terrier mix, started by chasing me. He soon he took a misstep and did a face plant in the ditch. He wasn’t a quitter. The dog recovered as Jim passed then went after John’s bike and caught it. According to Tom, the dog lay in the road briefly then got up. It seemed to have survived a collision with a crash bar and a pannier. Perhaps he will react a bit differently the next time a motorcycle passes.
After enjoying a late lunch at the friendly Justonian Restaurant in Justice, we back tracked to West Virginia routes 97, 54 and then 121 at “Road Ends, WV.” We rode through the only persistent rain of the day from Beckley back to Lewisburg.
Sunday morning Jim left before the rain. John, Tom and I departed later and were on dry roads in less than an hour. We had a good ride home. Each of us said we were glad we did not give up on the weekend.
Thanks to Syd Mayes for another great event!
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