Mid Ohio Vintage Days/West Virginia 2008

Some photo’s from Olivia and mine’s 2008 Mid Ohio/West Virginia Ride. We mounted the mighty KLR Thursday morning and rode straight through to Mid Ohio on the Interstate (750 miles). Livie was about done. I don’t blame her, I was, too. The highway portion of our trip is always the most difficult and we usually stop at Indianapolis to break it up, but didn’t this year. Arriving at the Mid Ohio Sports Complex is always a neat thing for me. There are motorcycles everywhere, new and old. Since this is an old bike event, of course there are more old bikes.

We stayed at the race track Friday and watched Mark Williams ride the Vintage Harescrambles and Springfieldian John Gott ride the Post Vintage Harescrambles. John suffered as a victim of a course marker that had been torn down by someone over shooting a turn in the woods and ended up on the wrong part of the course. By the time he realized what had happened, he was so far behind that there was no chance of catching up. Mark was able to get a holeshot in his class and win, even though he experienced difficulty with the bike dying and hard to restart. We decided that it must be electrical. Of course, with Can-Am horsepower, it is easy to catch back up!

We left late morning Saturday morning headed for Cleveland and the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame Museum (instead of watching the motocross/road racing) where Livie had been quite excited to go and seemed to have a lot of fun. On the way up the Interstate I had spotted an old abandoned Through Truss Bridge and noted it’s general location on the GPS so that we could look for it on the way back. After the museum, we side tracked to find the old bridge and obtained a couple of photo’s. Arriving back at the track we went looking for John Gott in hopes that some of the old motocross Legends from yesteryear might be hanging around over at his pit as they had in years past, but unfortunately, it appears that with the financial strife that AHRMA is under, there were no legends in sight. Saturday night a few beers were drank. Ex National trials champ Ryan Young stopped by with his wife and a friend to visit and shared some stories with us. When a round of “rev the hell out of your noisey old race/swap meet/street bike” began, we watched as the “concert” went along. It began with one guy starting some old 2 stroke dirt bike that he had probably bought that day at the swap meet. With no regard for how hard it might be to locate parts, or how expensive they might be, he started and held the bike wide open for a long period of time. He finally shut it off too much laughter and applause in the campground. Then some one fired up something that resembled a 500 twin Triumph and did the same, but for a longer time. Once more, much laughter and applause. Then the 2 stroke again, then the twin, so on and so forth. We thought that this had come to and end and Livie and I headed for the tent only to have Mark start his Can-Am (fueled by a few beers) and do the same for an even longer period of time. Funny how alcohol makes the price of parts seem not important for a few hours. Of course, the Can-Am took it.

We awoke in the morning to the rude and loud noises of people using our excess camp spot area to set up canopies and tables at 7:00am. It seems that this would be the area for sign up for the vintage trials and the entry point for the sections, so it further seemed that we were in the way, despite the fact that we had paid for that particular spot. Oh well! We broke down the tent and loaded and left, headed out to ride most of South/Eastern Ohio in search of old Iron and covered bridges on backroads. We put on approx 250 miles and ended the evening at Mark Williams 94 year old mom’s house just south of Athens, OH. She had prepared dinner and is a very, very good woman. We had stayed at her house in the past while riding enduro’s, ISDE qualifiers, and general trail riding in the Wayne National Forest. It was good to see her. In the morning, we woke and had breakfast, then headed to finish the remaining roads we planned in S/E Ohio, then into West Virginia for more of the same.

The riding in West Virginia was pretty much uneventful, but as always, very much fun. We retraced some of a prior trip, then some new. We revisited the Little Coal/Big Coal river pedestrian suspension bridges located S/W of Charleston that Olivia had missed last year, since she had stayed home. Built in 1920, they spanned both forks of the river to allow three pieces of land to be accessed by foot. Locals state that this used to be a coal mining community. Today, where the bridges meet, it is so overgrown that one can only access the beginning of the other bridge. It is hard to imagine the size of the community that once existed here. Olivia thought they were pretty cool as we were able to park on a dead end road on the north side and walk across both of them.

We eventually worked our way down to the Cabwaylingo State Forest for the night to camp, but found the Dingess Tunnel first. It is located near the town of Dingess, WV, on a roadway that once served as a railway bed (built around 1894). This tunnel is nearly 1 mile long and one lane wide with no lights inside. Protocol for passing through is to pull to the entrance. The other end is Waaayyy down there. If you see lights, this means that the other vehicle has already entered the tunnel and that you should wait. If not, turn yours on and head on in. Once entered, it quite quickly gets dark as crap. Your eyes are still adjusted for outside light and you can’t see anything. We ended up weaving from side to side because the only reference that we could use was the sides of the tunnel. It is near impossible to look at the side and not steer towards it. So weave, weave, weave was what we did. It isn’t pretty, but it worked. Locals state that it had been paved a few years prior and that before it had been paved, it was filled with potholes. Great. As it was, I could not help wondering what might happen if we hit a muffler that had fallen from a car. Fortunately, there wasn’t one. We reached the forest and camped set up our tent. As we had planned poorly, we didn’t eat well on this night. The Cabwaylingo Forest is about 40-90 miles from any place that might have food. We had stopped at a local grocery store and bought some peanut bars and bottled water. Olivia and I were both suffering from dehydration a bit and had headaches.

At the campground, we met a local man named Troy and his wife Lana who were camped out on the mountaintop, even though they lived only just down the road near the local grocery where we had bought our water, they occasionally would come up to the mountaintop and camp just for the serenity. Troy is the fellow that informed us about the pavement in the tunnel and he also explained when this campground had been built. As I write this, I cannot recall the year, but it is around 1964. He showed us where he had carved his name into on of the rails on the pavilion back then. He had left the area and moved to Detroit to work for General Motors until he was able to retire, then moved back to the home place that he and his brother had divided between them after his father’s death. These folks seemed to be very good people.

Livie and I awoke in the morning with headaches gone, and proceeded to pack and ride back to the Dingess tunnel. Both of us got a kick out of the experience of riding through it.

We worked our way back through Eastern Kentucky on backroads looking for bridges that are on a list to soon be replaced. What may have been the prettiest one in Prestonburg, KY had already been replaced and was gone, though we were able to get a couple of pretty neat through truss bridges.

We arrived in Bowling Green Kentucky in a massive downpour of rain at the motel. When leaving in the morning, the skies looked ready to let loose, and it was drizzling a bit. While we were loading, a fellow pulled out on his Harley headed for Florida. He had arrived last night in the rain as well, and was headed into more, based on the forecast. He had a good attitude and we wished him well. We rode out of the rain pretty quick and the remainder of the ride home was nice and uneventful.

I find West Virginia to be such a neat playground. It is straight up and straight down or curvy everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you ride strictly dirt bikes, dual sport, or street, it has something for every motorcycle rider. Plus there are a lot of monuments, history, mountain views, not to mention that it isn’t far from the Blue Ridge Parkway, or most other places where some of the very best motorcycle things go on. Can’t wait until next year.