Anniversary ride Part 1

 Anniversary ride Part 1

20 years ago the small town of Davis Wva hosted what was to be its last motorcycle race, the race had been run every Father's Day for almost 20 years. It had become known  as the toughest race in America .

 

 

 

 

The race was the legendary Blackwater 100 , over the years this race had became the most awaited and popular event on the east coast if not the entire country, the promoter was a tall man ( Dave Combs )with a soft voice, but with a twisted mindset that would route the racers thru some of the nastiest biggest ,deepest, rocks, mud and water and whatever he could think up.

And he thought allot about it.

I was a local boy and I had heard about the race on the Friday night news, being 16 and full if spit and vinegar I had to do it. So I set off to convert my Yamaha DT125 enduro Dual Sport into a race bike

1978 Yamaha DT125E

(My Dual Sport Adventures started young).The conversion consisted of scouring the neighbors, for knobby tires, HD chains and whatever  I could beg or borrow. After working all night and most of Saturday, I had finally removed all of the lights, blinkers, metal sub fenders tack and Speedo lubed and adjusted the chain cable's, changed over to my borrowed used knobby tires checked the air pressure's and all was set ,The last piece I didn't have was a number plate?

It's not a true race bike without a number plate right?,

Well I wasn't going to let that stop me oh no, So I went into my dad's garage and found some vinyl siding after 10 minutes with a utility knife I had a almost round almost yellow number plate, I was set

 

That race was epic for me and ended better than it should have finished 15th out of 31, back then we didn't have a A,B,C class, you entered what you brought  125 250 Open. needless to say I was hooked on Dirt bike riding and I haven't stopped.

Which leads us to Davis, Wv today

That race had moved on and is now down the road around 100miles away to a small ski village in  West Virginia.
In honor of the race I had a idea to ride a motorcycle from the Main street in Davis to the Main street in Snowshoe. But like the promoter I thought about it too long, So Not only now would we ride from town to town, but why not race the same bike as we rode in with? This sounded like fun so I gathered some of my closest friends and we met the day before and set off to what was one of the most enjoyable epic rides I could of ever envisioned

Check out Part 2 for the adventure of the misfit boys