Ron & I trailered our bikes to Bub's Cycle Center (Yamaha Dealer) in Crab Orchard WV, just south of Beckley on US 77/64. Bub was kind enough to let us park our trailer in his parking lot. Not exactly a sportbike dealer ... we got plenty of gawks as we were surrounded by ATV's, evidently the more popular choice of recreational vehicle in this part of the country. We started our adventure by finding backroads to Buckhanan where Ron would leave me to attend the conference.

Getting on our bikes at Crab Orchard, we took I-64 east exiting on to Hwy 20 north. We were expecting some nice sweeping backcounty roads, but were somewhat disappointed by the more or less straight country roads interrupted every 20 miles by small (unincorporated) towns with a reduced speed limit. We encountered very little traffic and there were numerous passing zones, but nothing inspiring on the first 20 miles of this journey.

The roads did get better as we approached the Richwood area and Gauley River gorge. The next twenty miles brought a few tighter corners with some of the strangest and shortest passing zones we had every seen. The passing zone would start before you even exited a corner and were extremely short. Even with the acceleration of our FZ-1's passing was tight. Several times we thought the roads were getting better, but the surface would turn bad and local drivers would hold us up. This was pretty much the case all the way to Buckhannon.

Ron returned to pick me up four days later. This time he left the trailer in Salem, VA in order to explore different roads. Click on the links below to read more...

• 2002 Woman and Motorcycling Conference
• Twisty-Sisterz.com - home of the Canadian Sportbike Women
• RideWV.com
• WVBiker.com