Thursday, September 9, 2010

THERE THEY GO!

A GREAT RACE

 

It has been a bit quiet in the holler; just the usual stuff:  shopping (often at our plane-Jane farmers markets), eating, and other normal activities.  Oh, we have had a couple of First Fridays (Zanesville's monthly art walk), the Muskingum County Fair, and we had the Rib Fest which is quite nice.  R has been planting and painting.  And we have had a few visitors.  But on the last weekend of August we had a rather special event in which we lent a hand, or rather our land.  Mrs. T has a brief story about it:

 

 

 

Indianapolis has nothing on us!  Neither does Talladega (I hope I spelled that right).  We have our own private race.  It happened like this.  Our neighbor, Jamey is friends with Craig (the plumber) who is the head of a local bike club.  And so they prevailed upon us to allow them to use part of our property for a dirt bike rally.  We agreed as long as they promised not to make a mess. (And they did not.)   Most of these riders are professionals; not professional dirt bikers, but professionals in their day jobs.

 

Jamey went through with his Bobcat and cleared out several old logging roads on both his and our properties.  Then the race managers went through the weekend before the event and fastened little orange arrow signs to mark the trails and we were all set.  (They came through the weekend after and took down the signs.)

 

When the big day came we wandered down our driveway and set ourselves up to watch.  We had chairs and sunscreen.  We had cameras and Dan had his tripod.  We had drinks and ice.  Of course I did not forget to bring popcorn.

 

VROOMM!!  VROOMM!!

Here they came.  It was kind of exciting although I generally don't go in for that kind of thing.  The riders were very friendly.  Since we were on a long straight stretch just before going up the hill to the ridge behind our house, many waved at us and several did wheelies. Some of them even yelled, "Look Ma; No Hands!"  A few even stopped; they were from all over, even from out-of-state.  There were lots and lots of them (200?).  One of them took a wrong turn and tried to come down the driveway to the house.  But we soon got him back on course.  Another one had a flat tire but Dan took him to the garage and filled his tire with air from our compressor.  Off he went.  We watched for a couple of hours until almost the last one came through and it was over for our section.  We were about miles 68 through 70 of the total 90 or so.

 

VROOMM!!  VROOMM!!

 

That was fun.

 

(Some of you know that in the past we have officiated at professional automobile rallies and have participated in a few amateur events.)

 

Here are a few representative pictures - we have whittled them down - from the exciting event.  A couple of bonus pictures of Slinky the snake are here as well.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9151458@N07/sets/72157624783490519/

 

The weather here has turned to fall temperatures and we are thinking about the warm clime at the condo.  We will be there in about two months.

 

Hope all is well with you.  Come down and see the fall foliage in a few weeks as it turns to autumn hues.

 

Dan and Rebecca

www.casa-de-terrible.blogspot.com