Ride Report - Twin Rivers Chopper Campout

Thursday 5:30am. I arrived to the jobsite half asleep, parked my van, an old ‘77 Chevy G10 shorty, tan, with a faded eagle painted on the hood. I always had to show up to work early to find a decent parking spot downtown. This was “Music City” as they call it- Nashville, TN, and it was busy with construction workers at all hours of the morning, fighting for position next to their jobs. Nashville had blown up recently and was littered with cranes and the skeletons of new towers that would soon augment the skyline.

I finished my coffee and grabbed my lunchbox. I walked through the chainlink fence feeling the urge to run the opposite direction.

A few of my close friends had talked about riding out to Twin Rivers Chopper Campout that evening. I had humored the idea and began to plan my escape from work the following day. At lunch, I mentioned to my Foreman, Kevin, that I was thinking about riding to North Carolina with a few friends for an epic “rager”. He said that he really needed me, for some reason I had become his go-to guy, even though I was only an apprentice. I replied, “Big Kev, the money i’ll make tomorrow will be gone in a week, the memories i’ll get for making this run will last a lifetime.”

For some reason it worked and he lent me his support for the trip. I think he enjoyed living vicariously though a younger guy like me, no kids, no responsibilities.

The day seemed to drag. Finally, 3 o’clock hit and I was outta there. I went straight home to my little house in South Nashville and packed up my hawg. The Campout had actually been postponed because of a massive monsoon of rain that had washed the campground away two weeks prior. From what I had heard, the campsite still wasn’t dry, and the weather didn’t look all that good in the coming days- but we were determined to get our knees in the breeze, and the backroads of East Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia would serve us some of the best riding we’ve ever experienced.

The crew would be me and my trusty ‘72 shovelhead, Wes and his ‘80 shovelhead chopper, and Colby on his bone stock ‘69 generator shovel. I just had my motor rebuilt and was itching to get in some real distance after a few months of mellow engine break-in and smaller 100 mile trips.

At that time, my shovel was setup perfectly for long trips, still in the original swingarm frame, a huge king queen seat and sissy bar, and 10” apes, with my military bag and sleeping bag strapped to the back, I could lean back like a recliner and it felt like i could go forever.

I rode over to Colby’s apartment in North Nashville to meet the boys. It was raining when i got there and the three of us looked at eachother laughing, like we were about to go through some pain. Everyone was wet, immediately. Wes is smart. He rides in real HD raingear, has a phone mount for directions, and a phone charger on his bike. Im the exact opposite, uncomfortable and minimalist. I was head to toe in denim ha. Colby wore leather chaps and looked like a fuckin badass.

The plan was to book it half the distance to the party that night. It would be about 200 miles, the goal was for us to make it past Knoxville and into the mountains where we would pitch our tents somewhere. Then we could wake up the next morning and ease our way to Crumpler, NC, turning any way we wanted, just exploring and taking it slow.

We shared a shot of tequila and left town in the rain.

The road was actually really beautiful, we were doing mostly highway, but the rain stopped and the sky blew up with colors. We stopped for gas somewhere near Smithville and took in the scenery. I popped my bag off to remove my seat so I could tighten up a ground wire. We were really fucking off and shootin the shit, drank a beer in the parking lot when Wes looked down at his phone- “Dude, we have been here an HOUR!”.

Fuck. It was getting dark and the rain looked like it was chasing us again. We hopped on our bikes and got back to it. Once the sun went down it was pitch black everywhere. To this day I have not ridden on a darker highway than 40 E though the mountains. And trucks haul ass on that road. At about Maryville, chugging our way into Knoxville, Wes’s bike began to die. we pulled off the side of 40, completely dark, trying to diagnose the problem. A trucker blew by us and it felt like he was going 90 mph! We knew we were in deep shit and we needed to figure this out. It was drizzling and cold, we were wet as hell. The bike had cooled down a bit and Wes fucked with his wiring and was able to kick it to life to get back on the road.

It was about 10pm now and we were hungry. We rode around back and forth to a few spots, but every time we just missed them and they had closed. Finally we ended up at Denny’s. We shared a joint and sat down. It felt great to be warm for a change.

At dinner we gazed outside at the wet grass, searching for some spot that might be dry, and also wouldn’t be out in the open, exposing our bikes and makeshift camp setup. We made the call to find a motel and share a room. That way we could dry out a bit and get a good night sleep for the following day of riding.

We located a cheap hotel on the outskirts of Knoxville, parked our bikes under the valet awning right in front, and crashed for the night.

When we opened our eyes the next morning we were blown away. The storm had cleared and the weather was perfect. On a long trip I go through many feelings and emotions, the previous night was tough, at one pound Wes threw his helmet across the parking lot trying to kick. He discovered that his regulator wasn’t grounding properly, causing it to trip his circuit breaker at the battery, shutting down his bike. That’s why it would cool down enough and start/run again until overloading again. Wes is the man, and solved his issue on the fly like a real biker. It was all 1 kick for him the rest of the trip and I could tell he was stoked and lives for this type of thing.

That morning we were all smiles, stoked to hit the road, riding into the unknown with perfect backroads all the way to Virginia. We turned north and got off the major highways, we went all the way to Bristol and checked out the motor speedway, then at a random gas stop an old timer told us there was a rad little biker bar if we turned right on this other road. We decided to take his directions and split off. It was an incredible road, rolling up and down through the mountains, not a car in sight.

The bar turned out to be awesome, an incredible secret spot in the middle of nowhere with cheap beer and a nice outdoor patio. I hopped on the bar and wrote “NEON KNIGHTS” on the ceiling, which is something Colby came up with for a fictitious band name.

The rest of the day was all 3rd gear riding through the hills. Wes was navigating with intuition and somehow we crossed over the state line too far north, we ended up on a county maintained dirt road for 15 miles. It was a mix of gravel and mud from the recent storm. Some of the road got narrow, at one point we were facing a steep as hell section that looked like a hill climb race.

Wes and I made it up but Colby’s bike was much heavier and also lower to the ground, he bottomed out midway up and washed the front end out, rolling the bike into it’s side. Wes and I killed our hawgs at the top and ran down to help. We were able to pick up Colby’s bike and it started right up. The second try he made it up! It felt like we had reached the “summit” of our dirt road adventure and the road got pretty narrow as we started our decent. An hour later we popped out onto a paved rd right at the borders of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. We were close. The gas station was poppin and it gave us a little burst energy to see civilization again. We gassed up and rode the remaining miles into the campground. It was still pretty wet but everyone who was there was so psyched. The campsite sits directly on a river, the water is clear, and there is very minimal cell reception. Our group found a sweet little spot on the river and pitched our tents. At one point Wes Haymore rides in on his ‘68 generator shovel chop and I give him a big hug, I hadn’t seen him in months and when you run into an old friend in the middle of nowhere you remember why we go through the trouble to ride these old bikes to all these events.

The beer flowed, my 35mm Olympus stylus was broken and ended up blurring every photo I took. At one point we stood in front of a massive speaker while Metallica’s Ride the Lightning played full blast. Someone broke out a bag of weed brownies and we all just went for it. Colby and I stripped down and sat in the river for what must have been hours, just talking to new people.

During the raffle and bike awards on Saturday night, Wes started violently yelling “SHOW ME YOUR DICK” at everyone when they took the podium. This was a bunch of men, alone in the woods, just having a ridiculous time, I can’t explain how funny it was in the moment.

The award for “longest ride” was up and we were pretty positive it was us just based on everyone we had met and talked to that weekend, everyone was shouting out their routes and miles and Wes declared our journey, “458 miles!” There was a pause and Zak asked Wes to come up and accept his award, at the last second before Wes grabbed the trophy, a girl ran up and yelled “500!” intercepting Wes and accepting her reward. Wes was so bummed and we still joke about it to this day. The night raged on and I got pretty lit, ended up crashing earlier than most as I usually do.

The plan for Sunday was all business. We set our alarm for 430am. When we woke up it was raining again, our tents were soaked but we packed up in the dark as fast as we could. We were the first to leave the camp, kicking our bikes among passed our heads. Colby, Wes, and I fired em up with ease and headed out on the muddy road in the dark.

The road out to the highway is treacherous. Tight hairpin turns in fog, slick pavement, low visibility. Someone crashes every year. It’s about a solid hour of riding before you get out to a main road. The bikes were all running great and the morning had a good buzz, we were ready to jam this shit home!

The first 200 miles we fucking ripped. We stayed sitting on our bikes at the pump. Getting back on the road asap. Burning 80 mph on choppers and 50 year old motorcycles. Colby was skeptical about running his ‘69 so hard for so long but it made it like a champ and kept up the whole time. About 100 miles outside of nashville my pipe bracket snapped leaving my rear exhaust hanging from my intake manifold. We pulled into a truck stop off 40 and borrowed a mig welder at the big rig repair station. Wes welded it up and it held the rest of the trip.

We booked it so hard we completed the whole 450ish miles before 1pm! We felt so solid we rode straight to Bikini Beach for victory beers.

I tend to favor chopper events that are geared toward riding. This was a backyard style event that was all about getting weird with friends and riding your bike out into the middle of nowhere. A destination like Twin Rivers kinda weeds out a lot of people who might not be into this stuff for the right reasons. We had such an amazing time together and those memories don’t fade easy.

Sometimes i think back about that day of work that I missed, the same thing as everyday, just an old routine. It showed me how important it is to take that spontaneous day off and go do something wild with your friends, because in the end those are the things that you look back on and value later in life.

-tay -

Written as I remember.