Work pretty much ate my life in July and August, so I was really looking forward to ESTN (Sport-Touring.net Eastern rally) in Marietta, OH. As it turned out, I would be returning from a business trip to Switzerland on Thursday night and leaving for ESTN on Friday morning, jet-lagged or not.

I left early Friday morning and met my friend Scott in Bruceton Mills, WV. Scott relocated to Morgantown this summer, so this was a chance to show him some of central/western WV finest roads. We headed south on 26, ran up and down Cheat Mtn, then continued south on 72 to Parsons, then on to route 33 via 219. The section of 219 just south of Parsons is good fun if you can hit it with no traffic, yet I rarely see anyone mention it. That took us to "old 33" (aka 151) and some county roads to the little village of Helvetia.

We stopped at the Hutte restaurant for lunch, then wandered around the town a bit. The Hutte is a very cool place to check out if you like looking at antiques and whatnot. Our route continued on 20 south to Diana, 15 west to Flatwoods, a short rip on I-79, then 16 north up to Ellenboro (jct 50). That's a seriously fun bit of riding. It was getting late so we took 50 west (highway) to 31 (fun and twisty) then one exit on the interstate to Marietta.

Had a great time at the Mexican restauant for dinner, then hung out in the parking lot of the Microtel for several hours BS'ing, drinking beer, and planning the rides for the next day.

I called my route the "Ohio Super Sampler". It was about 300 miles of great roads that did a big loop with Marietta at the bottom of the loop. The highlights were 555 from the south end to 78, the always fun 556 and 536 followed by the awesome combo of 255-26,537-260. What an awesome day of  riding. I really felt in the groove.

The only downside was that one of the members of our group had a part on his shift linkage break just before lunch, so he had to ride all the way back to Marietta in 3rd gear on his Super Duke. As luck would have it, he got it welded and went back out for a ride late in the afternoon.

Had a  fine dinner at the Marietta Brewing Co. and followed that with more hours of BS'ing in the parking lot over beers and bourbon (maybe too much bourbon :-)).

Felt a bit fuzzy Sunday morning, but took it easy and watched the MotoGP race before heading on my route home. I decided to retrace the route from Saturday afternoon, then head into WV at Moundsville and take 250 and 7 back to Morgantown. I certainly wasn't riding as smoothly on Sunday (too much fun Sat night), but a bottle of Gatorade perked me up at the morning gas stop and I was good to go the rest of the day.

It's almost seems wrong to say this, but WV was a letdown after Ohio. 250 used to be my favorite road and it's just too beat up and filled with cars to be much fun. Southeast Ohio is where it's at right now. Endless twisties, little/no traffic, and almost no LEOs (behave in towns, have fun in the boonies).

Bottom Line: Had a great three days of riding and put 1000 miles on the clock. Managed to kill off yet another set of tires (only 2500 miles from the Conti-Motions, sigh). Great roads, great friends, and great weather. Couldn't ask for a better weekend!