I rode the best miles of my life today. The AMA routing service put me on US-50 from outside of D.C. to here, in Ohio. I was on the road probably 220 miles, total. The road is as curvy as an epileptic snake. It pulls through the Smokey Mountains, and through Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland before ending in Ohio. Maryland and West Virginia were the best. There were fiteen-mile-per-hour hairpins followed by 250 yars of third-gear downhill straightaways just to bang into another twenty-five-mile-per-hour chicane.
One spot, coming downhill, did this about twenty times in six or seven miles. I dropped my knee once, but it was over some gravel and scared the daylights out of me because I didn't notice it when I entered the turn. The new tyres are still really sticky.
The crest of US-50 is near its junction with VA-42 at Mount Storm. There was a "Scienic Lookout" parking lot there, so I pulled over and wound up my camera. I stood on the guardrail to get a better angle. The parking lot was even higher than US-50, so I had a beautiful view of the tree-lined valley below me. I was about 3100 feet above sea level.
When I looked down, I noticed I could see just over a tiny mobile home on the other side of US-50. People were eating at a picnic table behind the home. The one man I could see yelled out to me, so I made a muscle-man pose and almost lost my balance on the rail. I must have looked quite imposing, with my shiny motorcycle jacket and my half-mile-high lookout.
The fellow down at the picnic table yelled "Hey, ya wanna beer?" with a deep southern accent. I didn't hear him at first, so I cupped my hand to my ear. He repeated himself from 150 feet away and I yelled "That would go down great". My acceptance echoed all over the valley. He waved his hand to invite me down.
I looked around some more and returned to my bike. I put the ignition on, but didn't turn over the engine. Instead, I got it into neutral and coasted to the little house. While I stood my bike at the top of their drive, I second-guessed my desire to accept the invitation--but I decided to go ahead. I was travelling to see the world, and the world is full of people, after all.
When I came around back, the fellow who invited me down laughed and tossed me a can of beer so fast I almost couldn't catch it. The cooler he pulled the beer from looked a little older than me. I introduced myself: "I'm Mike. Who the hell are you?"
The fellow wit hthe beer was tommy, and his kid brother was Jack. His fater was Harry, and his sister was there too. Her name was Maggie May. She was around twenty, and she didn't say much. And she wasn't really wearing much, either: she had on a pair of shorts that weren't very long at all, and had a halter top on.
Harry later told me that she was, indeed, named after the Rod Stewart song. I spent lots of time wondering about the math, and couldn't really come to a conclusion. I must've seemed pretty distracted, though.
Tommy was very funny. I Think he might've been drunk. He slurred his words and was rather loud. I only stayed for 30 minutes and had two beers. We talked quickly and easily about lots of things. Jack was full of motorcycle questions, and Tommy was very interested in my trip. Everyone I meet is flabbergasted about my riding 400 miles a day on a sportbike. His dad was a bit miffed, it seemed, that I knew nothing about Elvis but was still going down to Graceland.
I felt like my only redeeming qualites to him were that I was taking advantage of free beer and was interested enough in Elvis to ride a sportbike 2500 miles to see him.
Maggie May didn't say much, but she sure looked great. She had nice legs and long hair, and her shorts just kept getting shorter. Tommy caught me looking at her at least twice. I just don't know.
They apparently wanted me to stay, but I told them I wanted the Kentucky State Line before dark.
It was fun talking to them. People in Pittsburgh make fun of folks from West Virginia all of the time, but I really liked these folks. They were shamelessly friendly, which was pretty amazing.
This hotel, and this whole town, is just a real downer. There's no bar, and there's no clock and no ice machine. I trapsed all over town to try to find a bar, but I came up empty. There was a little convenience store, so I got a sick pack of Michelob Dry. Beer in Ohio is cheap; the six bagger was only four dollars. I called out for pizza, too, and sat around writing all this and watching the Bulls play the Suns in the playoffs.
The only good thing, besides the cheap beer, is that there's a laundromat next door. I'm gonna take my clothes in tomorrow and do a quick run of wash. I do'nt know what I'll do for the hour while the clothes run, though. It'll bother me a bit to sit and not ride while I'm waiting for jeans that'll be dirty and smelly in two hours, anyway.
Maybe this is a college town. There are kids filling cars full of crap to go home. Maybe they're going back to school, though.
Last updated on July 5, 1997.