Day Two, Monday July 14, 2008

Monday took us out of Ripley relatively early (at least for me, but late for Duc Dude) around 7:00 AM. We gassed up and headed for points west and beyond. Route 62 in West Virginia took us to Route 2 and over the Ohio River into Ohio (my homestate) near Gallopolis. We grabbed another great road, Route 141 for a good bit of time. I am trying to remember all the roads we took, but by now the numbers were just that.
Somewhere in Ohio or Kentucky, we came upon a white non descript soccer mom minivan traveling through the twisties and sweeping turns at a pretty good clip. Just as soon as we were visible in his rear view mirrors, he took that as a challenge. He turned it up a notch to 8 (on a scale from 1-10) and begins to throw this mini van into the turns like he was Mario Andretti. I remember saying to myself, "How the hell can this guy throw this van around and not once lose it?" About 15 or 20 miles down the road, we all had to stop due to road construction. Duc Dude pulled up next to the driver to get the 411 on this guy. In what I would call the deepest Kentucky twang, he told him that he traveled the road twice a day and knows it like the back of his hand. He also had said that he comes from a family of racing people and that's just how they drive.
Highway 233 and 141 were some other incredible roads in Ohio as well as 279, 139 that took us into Route 52 at New Boston, 4 miles east of Portsmouth at the Ohio River. After admiring the Ohio River for a few miles, it got real fun on Route 125 at Friendship, through Shawnee State Park in to West Union where we took Route 41 down to Aberdeen where we picked up Route 52 to croos the Ohio River into West Virginia. We followed a somewhat boring Route 10 throughout West Virginia until Powersville where I thought I had died and went to motorcycle road heaven all the way to Falmouth. The bike held to the curves like a train on rails. It continued over to to Williamtown where Route 25 took us to Dry Ridge.