I spent the next three days in Buckhannon, attending workshops, riding demos, and meeting fellow women riders. I wasn't expecting to see many sportbike riding women but was pleasantly surprised to find quite a few non-cruiser type of riders. As I was walking around admiring the different bikes, I stopped in front of a group of Canadian sportbike women from twisty-sisterz.com. We started a conversation only to find out that we had previously exchanged emails. I found my riding buddies!!

Demo rides were the highlight (for me) of the conference. I rode everything that I could. The BMW folks were all first class. They had their full fleet of bikes, had the best demo route, and the cutest demo leaders!! So, I test rode lots of Beemers including (my favorite) R1150GS, K1200LT, R1100S. The GS was awesome - while riding the bike I could imagine packing my bags and heading across Alaska. This was a great bike. It was tall with a 35 inch seat, but easy to handle and fun to ride. The K12 was like a cruise ship without the food. The BMW sportbike, well - lets just say, I'll pass. If I'm going to ride a BMW it's going to be one of those high priced tourers or the GS.

The Kawi Good Time Guys were living up to their name. I had a blast test riding the 6R, 9R, and the new 1200. Bribing the demo leaders with Tail of the Dragon T-shirts helped too, especially when I wanted to test the acceleration capability of the 9R.

The Honda folks were a total dud bringing the terribly uncomfortable Superhawk as their only demo sportbike. Bah Humbug to them. The Superhawk is a dead bird. Uncomfortable as hell and vibrates like a cheap thrill. Not exactly sending a good message to potential women sportbike riders.

Yamaha was there too, but didn't bring any sportbikes other than the FZ1, and I had one of those parked in the lot with my name on it. I actually stood in line at the Harley Davidson demo line. But, the only opening they had was at the same time I was scheduled to ride another BMW. Sorry HD, but those BMW guys were WAY too cute and I felt like a million bucks riding their bikes.

Monday night was the bike parade thru downtown Buckhannon followed by a street party. Being amongst 600 women riding thru downtown was the highlight of the conference. We were all surprised at the number of town folks that turned out to watch the parade. That evening we struck up a fun conversation about sportbikes, wheelies, track days with some nice looking guy with an AMA shirt on. I finally asked "well.... just who are you?" To our surprise the guy turned out to be the AMA president Robert Rasor. Come to find out the AMA is very interested in us women sportbike riders. They would like to add a sportbike element to the next women's conference and perhaps offer a seperate event and workshop at a track. Robert invited Angela from twisty-sisterz.com and myself to a meeting the next day to continue our discussion which included the AMA Membership Development Director Tom Barlow. It was a great meeting and we were impressed that the AMA is actually interested in sportbike women. Hopefully we'll see an "all womens" track day and workshop sponsored by the AMA in the near future.

After our meeting with the AMA guys it was time to get down to serious business. We had an all day ride planned. Our route would take us from the conference to Elkins, Senneca Rocks, head south to the observatory in Green Bank, west towards Snowshoe, and then head back north home. The route was a little over 200 miles. Off we went, about ten of us sportbike chicks and my roommate on her Vulcan cruiser. Roommate did great and we were thrilled to have her join us.

The route began by heading on the four lane 33 towards Elkins. From Elkins we kept going east on 33 towards Senneca Rocks. From Senneca Rocks we headed south on 28. Here we found some nice country road twisties with little traffic. We stopped at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank where we terrorized the young man who was giving tours. I don't think he every had a dozen women sportbikers in a tour before. We left our leathers in a heap in the corner of the gift shop and off we went to cool off in the air conditioning.

After the tour we headed towards Snowshoe Mountain Ski Area on 66. This would have been a fun twisty road, but road construction spoiled it. After gassing up in Snowshoe, we headed north on 55 thru some of the best twisties of the day ... so good that we went back for seconds. At Mill Creek we took a left on a country road to sneak back in to Buckhannon. Here we found some fun backwoods roads and even managed to find our way home. It was a great day of riding with some newfound friends.

• CLICK HERE for roads in southwestern Virginia: 250, 42, 39, 220, 311. Covering the areas of Montery, Staunton, Warm/Hot Springs, White Sulfur Springs, and Salem.