SE Ohio Masters Class

The Mighty Ohio River

Includes: 2 Breakfasts, 2 Dinners, 2 Night Lodging, 2 Days Instruction over 550 miles, Headset & Radio, Full Course Syllabus. You pay for gas/lunch.

Fee: $1050.00
Maximum size: 5

I have traveled the Appalachian Range many times. I am familiar with most all the great motorcycle routes from north central Pennsylvania to the Smokey Mountains, west to the Ohio River. I believe the most irresistible technical roads are found buried just across the Ohio River in southeast Ohio. Unusual land is found there. The land is very hilly and utterly undeveloped. We’ll travel for miles and see no construction, no telephone poles, no nothing other than wooded land. This was Shawnee Indian homeland. No one messed with the Shawnee, not even the Iroquois. (Tecumseh was Shawnee.) Back in the mid 1700s, this powerful tribe fought mightily to keep it. I can understand why. There is fresh spring water coursing through fertile valleys and many, many gnarled ridgelines for game to hide, and be protected from weather. I’ll show you the monument at Point Pleasant at the mouth of the New/Kanawha River that commemorates a fierce battle between the Shawnee and Virginia militia.

The Masters Class is for riders who have attended at least two Workshops and feel confident in their riding skills. Riders also need to have riding endurance. Just getting to Marietta from Thurmont is nearly a 400 mile day – all interesting roads, for sure. We’ll leave from Thurmont, MD and initially follow the National Pike. The National Pike was the first road ever constructed in America. We’ll be crossing the Oldtown Bridge too which is the last privately run toll bridge in the country. The toll isn’t too stiff at 25 cents apiece. From Oldtown it’s a straight shot across the Maryland and West Virginia’s panhandles into Ohio. We’ll stop at Melanie’s Cafe for lunch. It’s a little local joint across the road from Cathedral State Park. The park has the largest stand of “old growth” trees found in WV.

It’s the quality of the hills,  curves and smooth pavement that keeps me returning to SE Ohio. The hills aren’t particularly high. Often they are only several hundred feet or yards in height but there are a lot of them so you get a roller coaster effect. Roller coaster roads usually have blind crests. It’s this road characteristic that makes SE Ohio so challenging since it’s hard to tell what’s on the other side. Be ready for a curve!  The curves are steep and on-camber;  the pavement is sticky. It’s a great big “amusement park”  for “curve junkies!”

Over several years, I have crafted a 250 mile loop. We leave from the LaFayette Hotel and return there in late afternoon. It’s a full day of technical riding at its best. In the evening you might take a walk around scenic Marietta. In its heyday, Marietta was a prosperous river town. Did you know that Marietta was once the country’s shipbuilding capital? There are a lot of Victorian houses that serve testament to that era which have been refurbished and little Marietta College keeps the local current economy vibrant. Marietta has a couple of pretty good restaurants too. I’ll show them to you.

My job is to make The Rider’s Workshop a compelling, challenging experience for experienced motorcyclists. I believe this Masters Class accomplishes this. Book Here.

Dear Jim,

I’m writing to tell you what a great couple of days I had with you and four fellow riders over Memorial Day weekend for the Canaan Valley Rider’s Workshop.  The instruction, roads and camaraderie were superb.

Until recently I fancied myself an experienced rider.   I’ve had a motorcycle license for over 30 years and have ridden well over 100,000 miles.  For five of those years motorcycles were my only means of transportation.  I’ve ridden on-road and off, in rain, snow and red-clay mud.  I’ve done my share of asphalt riding on back roads and Interstates alike, including cross-continent trips twice in the last five years—from Maryland to British Columbia via the TransCanada Highway and from Maryland to Oregon via U.S. Interstates.  One long weekend in 2008 I rode 1,308 miles in 24 hours during a trip to Utah just to meet friends for pancakes.  After breakfast and a nap I turned around and rode home.

Others have more impressive motorcycle resumes, but the previous (immodest) paragraph was designed to establish my bona fides.  I’ve done a lot of riding over the past three decades; however, you’ll note that I qualified my bragging by starting that paragraph with the words “Until recently…”   In this case “recently” began over Memorial Day weekend when I participated in your workshop and began learning methods to evolve from a rider with good instincts to a rider with good skills.  As a result of your course, I have a much keener awareness of the terrain I’m riding across, how to take curves safely at speed and improved control through tactical use of shifting.  I also have a better sense of the ergonomics of riding and how to ride all day without beating myself up.  And that’s just a partial list of what I took away from your course.

There was another major advantage to riding with you, Jim, and that’s your mastery of blue highways.   You call them “invisible roads.”  Those twisty, bucolic byways that, while nearby, are a thousand miles from the Interstate frame of mind.  I was truly unplugged from the stress that too often finds its way into my riding bliss when I’m cruising down one of our local highway racetracks oblivious to the natural beauty around us.  I used to think I had to take the Interstate to find the “good riding,” but one of the most important lessons I learned in the Rider’s Workshop is that with some planning and a taste for adventure there’s plenty of good riding on the way to the “good riding.”

In the two-day course I only experienced one disappointment—our five participants all rode BMWs.  I realize there’s a correlation between this type of advanced rider training and Beemer people.  Many of us believe there’s a skill involved in being a safe, experienced rider, and skills can always be improved upon.  Nonetheless, it would be nice to see more brand diversity in this training regimen.  As noted above, I’ve been riding for over thirty years, and only the last three have been on a BMW.  Let’s call it a process of evolution.  Before that I rode a Suzuki, a Honda, a BSA Lightning, and two Harleys.  I’m now a born-again BMW rider, but the larger lesson I took away from the Riders Workshop is that it doesn’t matter what brand of bike you ride.  Anyone interested in taking his or her riding ability to a higher level of evolution and replacing instinct with skill is going to benefit a great deal from your workshop. Tim Love  Crownsville, Maryland