Quests play a pivotal role in travel. Whether traveling to find something or discovering a search that develops as I travel, I always seem to end up looking for something when on the road.
In the case of a recent ride in and around Man, West Virginia, Darrick, my riding buddy, and I found ourselves with three primary quests: finding a decent steak, riding some great motorcycle roads, and locating just one West Virginian who could give us good directions.
The search for great motorcycling turned out to be the easiest goal to fulfill. West Virginia has a reputation with truckers as one of the toughest states to drive. The roads we traveled on the route from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Man earned that moniker, with tight turns, narrow lanes and steep shoulders.
The very features that make these roads a challenge for truck drivers make them alluring to motorcyclists. On our bikes, the twisty pieces of tarmac were a delight, and we took special pleasure in the tight turns on U.S. Highway 10 from Huntington south to Logan. This mountainous stretch is surprisingly populated, with houses packed along the narrow, winding, two-lane road. Traffic is steady but hardly heavy, and the tiny towns you pass through-Stepptown, Crum, Marrowbone Creek, Kermit-are a blend of shockingly tumbledown and painstakingly maintained houses.
We spotted a fairly new sheriff's car sitting in a junkyard/repair shop and resting on its hubs, the hood open to the weather and one of the wheels missing. A hillside road lined with hundreds of junk cars ran above a little town full of immaculate brick homes, clean apartment buildings and abandoned trailer homes stripped of their tin, the bare wall studs rotting away in the weather.
Southern West Virginia is rugged country, with low rocky mountains rising above narrow valleys. Mountain streams rush through these valleys, and the roads wind along the bottom. We found the occasional back road snaking up into the hills, and we took a terrific loop near Logan, West Virginia. These little roads were not marked with signs, though they were numbered and lettered on the map. When we came to a town-which was often not much more than a half-dozen houses-and a turn, we could look at the map and orient ourselves.
We achieved the third goal of our trip while searching for the second. We needed to find a good place for our traditional Saturday night motorcycle trip meal of meat, meat and more meat, and we did our usual drill of asking around to find the best steakhouse in the area.
After getting directions to a few promising places, we came to the conclusion that finding anything in West Virginia requires careful listening skills. In fact, interpreting local directions was much like finding the killer in the board-game Clue. You have to ask a lot of different people questions, listen carefully, take notes and then assemble what you learn into a coherent thesis.
We talked to one young lady in a local establishment who assured us that a nearby restaurant offered the best prime rib in town. It sounded enticing, so we asked her the way. Her response went something like this:"Oh, it's easy to get there." West Virginians said this to us a lot. If you live there, it's probably even true.
"First, go down the main road."
"Yeah, the main road. Go until you come to a left, but don't turn there. Then go some more until you see a right turn."
"You know where the Taco Bell is?"
"Just past there, there's a right turn."
"No, no. Don't turn right. Just go past that until you come to a bridge."
"No, turn back under the bridge. And then go straight until you can go right. The place is right there. You can't miss it."