Craig Merritt, with his Pacific Coast 800

Departing Rome I traveled about 100 miles or so to Mentone, Alabama. Situated on 117 in Alabama just after crossing the GA/AL state line you have to be on the lookout for it. The Mentone Springs Hotel serves lunch but you must have reservations for one of the 2 seatings. The Hotel and adjacent antique store are very much worth the stop. Just uphill from the Hotel is a small park looking out over a 40-mile panorama. Directly across from the Hotel I picked up the Look Out Mountain Parkway traveling southwest. After a short distance out of Mentone I took the opportunity to stop at the DeSoto Falls. This is an easy stop just a mile or so off the Parkway with a nice park, swimming, restrooms and scenic falls emptying into a circular rock depression. It would have been a great stop for a picnic lunch but there were miles to go before I was ready to eat. Traveling the entire Parkway I arrived in Gadsden AL in time for a late lunch there. I checked into a Hampton Inn on the river and took off for an afternoon of touring the outskirts of rural Gadsden.

Sunday morning I took a rather direct, easterly route to Athens, Georgia, to see the University of Georgia and the hedges of Stanford Stadium. UGA is actually one of the oldest colleges in the south. I was surprised to find that UGA and downtown Athens are just across the street from one another. After touring Athens briefly I turned due south to Madison, Georgia. Madison is the 2nd small town identified in the National Geographic book I wanted to see. It was touted as one of the best preserved pre-civil war towns that was spared in Sherman’s burning of Georgia. So the story goes, several prominent townspeople met the Yankees outside of Madison pleading for the town not to be burned. Seems it worked, due to some anti-secession sympathy towards the North. Although Madison was saved from a civil war burning, several years thereafter a fire burned the majority of the town. Even so it is still a quaint little spot in mid Georgia.

Monday morning I departed Madison traveling pretty much due south, passing through Milledgeville, which was for a short time the capital of Georgia, and through Vidalia, the onion capital of the world. South of Vidalia I stopped at a roadside stand and purchased a jar of Mayhaw Jelly, as a joke gift for my wife. The joke originated from an event several years ago when she attended at conference where some south Georgia ladies were hawking Mayhaw Jelly and she was captivated with their incredibly strong south Georgia drawl. Well, let me let you in on a secret…Mayhaw Jelly is to die for. It is that good.

Total trip covered 1,148 miles.

For Sale

1997 BMW F650. BMW's most versatile bike. Cruise at 80 or ride the trails. Handles the twisties like a sport bike. Can be enjoyed by a new rider or a veteran. Excellent condition, 11K miles, dealer serviced. Sargeant seat, new Pirelli tires. Priced right at $4495. Bill Robinson: 904-730-9719, warrior@aol.com

1989 Honda GB500 Incredible original collector bike with only 2400 miles! Purchased from Honda corporate employee. Multiple award winner, including best street stock in Riding Into History Concours. Runs and handles beautifully. New Avon tires, color matched cafe fairing. May be the best looking bike Honda ever made. $4750. Contact Bill at 904-730-9719, warrior@aol.com

Sargent Cycle Seat for an ST1100 - Black Grip-Tex cover with silver piping. $150 or best offer - Phil Ridgdill at 904 287 9654 or rfoxrdr@earthlink.net

1994 Honda Nighthawk 250 - 13K miles, Dark Blue. This is an outstanding beginner rider's bike and/or for riders with a short leg reach. In good condition with a few cosmetic flaws classic to a new riders bike. Asking $1750 or Best Reasonable Offer.
Call Bill or Eve anytime between 8:00 AM and 9:30 PM - (813)633-8155 or email wgr@sprynet.com

STAR has come and gone, it was great. We all owe Tom & Dottie Powers & the Arkansas HSTA a huge Thank You for this event. It’s not easy arranging an HSTA STAR, the amount of coordination, the time & effort is staggering. I for one and I’m sure the rest of the Florida HSTA members at Star 02 say Thank you, we enjoyed it.

While we are giving out Thank you’s, we will mention another one. This one is to congratulate Bill Royal on what a super job he’s doing with the FL Newsletter. Every year at STAR the EC & others selected to judge the HSTA monthly newsletters, give out an award for the top 3 HSTA newsletters. The Florida HSTA newsletter was ranked number 2 this year. Remember there is a newsletter for about every State so it’s quite an accomplishment. Bill has done a fantastic job with our State newsletter and we certainly appreciate that.

Did you know that we have an Author of Books among the FL members. It’s none other than Henry Custer. I didn’t know it either, I was informed by Ann Carter. Now Henry being the shy guy that he is would never tell you this but I will. The Title is Concept of Justice, soon to be published. I’ll let you know when it’s on the market, I’m sure it will make for interesting reading.

The next day was rather interesting. I’ve been through Arkansas a few times on my ST but as usual I was more or less in a hurry and didn’t get to see some of the good roads. After we crossed the Mississippi River we stopped at Lake Village for a snack and Terry suggested that we take some back roads up to Hot Springs, mainly Arkansas 35/278/8/7 to Hot Springs. My eyes were opened to some beautiful country side and great roads. Little Towns or Villages or whatever you want to call them, Dermott, Warren, Fordyce, Griffintown, neat places. When we stopped for fuel people were friendly, you know how it goes, “ Where Y’all from, Where you going?, Like your bike, etc, etc “. It seemed like every little Town we went through had a sign as you entered the town with the name and population. Like Dermott, Population 1176, I can’t remember if that’s the correct number or not but the thought passed through my mind, do they change the sign every time a baby is born or when somebody dies. I saw one that had the population as 672 and another at 57, I really thought it was great. The back roads of America cannot be beat.

Hot Springs is a neat place, old place but with a lot of character. The first night in Hot Springs we met up with Bill & Eve, Bob & Stacie Chappuis & some other folks from Louisiana. We all decided to take a walk in search of a local restaurant. We ate at the Faded Rose, good meal & a lot of Fun.

The next day Steve Smith, Terry Balara, Bob Chappuis and I went for a little ride. This was a good introduction to Arkansas 7, great road. The next day we decided we would have lunch at the Queen Wilhelmina Lodge, of course we wouldn’t take the direct route. Off we go on some very interesting roads, check this out for little villages/towns, Pencil Bluff, Pine Ridge, Cherry Hill, Ink, the list is long. Somewhere between Pine Ridge, Cherry Hill and Ink, as we went flying by, I noticed this little store and the name didn’t register at first but the more I thought about it, it came back to me , after we stopped about 20 miles past the place. I guess I’m admitting my age now, do you remember the Lum & Abner comedy team. This was the Lum & Abner Store, complete with a General Delivery Post Office. I mentioned to Steve that we should have stopped for a photograph, he agreed so back we went for our Photograph. Neat place. Talk about going back in time, this place is really cool. We did manage to get to the lodge for lunch and then we continued over into Okie country for little bit and returned to Hot Springs on more back roads.

The next day Bill & Valerie Robinson, Ken & Eve Bertran (Utah) joined us for the Lunch Ride to Ft. Smith, back roads all the way out to Ft. Smith and of course all the way back to Hot Springs. STAR was over on Wed nite and on Thursday everybody packed up, departed for home.

You would naturally think that this club was all about motorcycles, it really isn’t, its about People. People you only see once or twice a year, STAR, Daytona or a Regional Rally somewhere in the US. The HSTA is a small group of excellent people who share a common interest in Motorcycling and I like it that way.

I don’t know which is the better benefit to attending a STAR - the riding or the camaraderie and friendships. It’s a tough call, but there is certainly plenty of both. This year, there were 19 attendees from Florida (that I know of). That’s an excellent number since there are only about 70 members state-wide! As for the riding, all I can say is was I ever so impressed with the roads in Arkansas. Not only were there plenty of twists and turns, and scenic vistas - but I swear it seemed like they had all been freshly paved just for us! The sign in the picture to the left says it all

All too soon it was time to head home. We were concerned about the weather as the forecasts all week had been ominous for the south, and in particular northeast Florida. But we really were lucky. We just reversed the route we came in by. We passed a rider on a silver ST late in the morning who had stopped to put on his raingear. He joined us at the back of the pack for a short while and then passed us by. Unfortunately, none of us recognized that rider as non other than Phil Ridgdill! Shortly after that we caught a 20 minute rain as we crossed into Mississippi on day 1 of the return. Since this was the shortest mileage day of the plan, we got into our planned destination quite early and briefly debated about pushing on to take advantage of the still stable weather. But, we eventually elected to just relax and hit the hay early to get ready for the next day’s mileage. Day 2, we did catch about 3 bouts of 30 to 45 minutes of pretty heavy downpours, all in the afternoon. But after that, it was clear riding all the way to our stopover just over the Georgia border. Our adventure for this afternoon was playing chicken with the fuel economy on my ST and Henry’s Reflex. We both made it across the border and to the really cheap gas ($1.13 a gallon!). My ST showed 351 miles on the trip meter and I took on 7.022 gallons (in a 7.4 gallon tank) Henry’s Reflex had run 191 miles on his little 3 gallon tank!

Day 3 of our return trip home was the day we really expected to get heavy rain. But the force was with us as we rode down into Florida as the sun shone and we never did get any rain at all! In the afternoon, after we dropped Scott off in Inglis, the clouds were building, but we managed to get home before they opened up - which they did not 30 minutes after we pulled into the garage! From talks with other folks who rode to and from STAR, I think we really made out the best as far as least rain—and that was a good thing!

SO don't be bashful, if you have some TIP send it in to Bill Royal and we'll put it in our newsletter.