A few weekends ago the Wife and I took a motorcycle ride to Shenandoah Speedway racetrack. A friend of mine was participating in a “drift” event. For the few of you out there that might not know about drifting it is the sport of sliding your car sideways through a turn as fast as you can. Quite exciting to watch a lot harder to do, unless you have plenty of practice and a car set up to do it properly. My buddy has both the skills and the car.
The ride to the racetrack was great. Bright blue skies with a few big puffy white clouds. The temp was not too hot or too cool making the ride with “ATGATT” comfortable. We left Front Royal going south on SR 340 in the spring green Shenandoah Valley. With little traffic it was no time at all before we passed Luray Caverns. The Caverns are a very popular tourist destination and today their parking lot was full of hundreds of cars and lots of buses.
Just a short distance past Luray Caverns is “Cooter’s”! For those of us of a certain age that remember the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, Cooter’s is a museum of sorts celebrating the show. The man who played Cooter, Ben Jones, is from the area and had collected a lot of memorabilia from the show which is on display including some of the cars with a General Lee replica out front. By the way Cooter is also multi-term US Congressman.
My wife had never been to Cooter’s, so we pulled into its packed parking lot. This day they had a Blue Grass and Folk music band playing, something they do on a regular basis. We wondered around the facility for a bit with Rocky Top and Country Roads dancing in our ears. The stop was a nice diversion back to our teen years.
Back on our steady stead we continued south on SR 340 until we reached the racetrack. I knew we were close when I could see the plumes of white smoke and the smell of burning rubber in the air, drifting is very hard on tires.
It was not long before my wife was buckled in the race car and out on the track. She was only able to get two laps in before they blew up the right rear tire. Yet, those few laps were enough to give her an ear-to-ear smile. She talked about it for many days later.
As the day got longer it was time to head to the house. A 100+ mile motorcycle ride and a new experience for my wife made this a great day.
Ride on, Ride safe
