California Superbike School

Note: The initial blog was in fact written on a smart phone while watching the WWE Smackdown at the Civic Center. Call it bad time management on my part. I am now adding some pix and links. -- jc


Reader beware. This blog is being written and filed from my iPhone. While I am attending the WWE Smackdown at the Roanoke Civic Center. I'll explain later.

Meanwhile, at the track....

Seeing motorcycles buzz by in excess of 150 mph is a thrill. But when you see these guys laying the bike over in the corner, hanging off the seat with an inch of rubber holding the road, it's like watching a magic trick.

This school takes that racer's ability to handle a bike, to the realm of everyday safety. The better you can handle a motorcycle, the reasoning goes, the less likely you are to wreck.

No one knows that better than Keith Code, a cycling icon who has raced at the top levels of the sport. Code has developed all kinds of training tools to help his students "get it."

The lean bike might be the coolest. He's attached training wheels with hydraulics to one of the school's superbikes. Now to be fair, I want to be clear that students xo not take to the track on this contraption. Instead, under the watchful eye of Code's team, they circle a parking lot at about 30 mph. They lean as if they were going much faster-- with essentially no chance of wiping out. After a few loops the instructor re-positions the rider on the bike. Small adjustments here make a big difference on the track or the highway.

I asked Code why he trains people on the BMW bikes, which are billed as the world's fastest production bikes, rated at 200 mph right out the box. "People think speed and power are dangerous," he said. "They are not.
Our incident rate has dropped by 40 percent since we went to these bikes."

Code even teaches U.S. Marines how to handle bikes so they don't get hurt off the battlefield. "Those guys think they are invincible. We need to give them training to match their confidence," he said.

Most of the guys in this class are far from marines or racers. They were mostly middle aged executives who could afford the roughly $2,200 cost of the two day event. But they were all smiles, hanging out with Code, and learning hang just right in the curves.

Wayne Henderson, Guitar Maker

Update: June 19, 2012.  I am pleased to announce that our TV segment on Wayne Henderson -- the one that accompanies this blog has won an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.  It is truly an honor for my photographer/editor Curt Schruth and I to have been able to do a story on a man as deserving as Wayne Henderson and to receive recognition for it.  

It's important to recognize the commitment of Fox 21/27 to this project.  There are very few places in today's television environment where a reporter is allowed to seek out these out-of-the way stories.  So thank you to Fox and to you, the viewers for appreciating our efforts.

The story can be viewed here. http://youtu.be/uFs5WCak_SU




It's hard to figure out how Wayne Henderson can be so humble.

Really. Either it's the best delivery of false modesty I've ever seen, or Henderson is truly gifted.

We know he's gifted when it comes to making and playing guitars. He played in my story, and he plays all around the world. He says younger players are better than he, but that he could once hold his own.

"That's the way it's supposed to be. The young hot player of the day deserves his time. I had mine," he told me when I asked about awards he has won at the famous Galax Fiddler's Convention.

As we reported on TV, Henderson charges only about $4,000 for one of his guitars, even though they often bring upwards of $40,000 on the secondary market. Even though the wait for a Henderson guitar is years -- from four to twenty depending upon whom you talk to.

"I never had any money growing up, don't see much need for any now," he said during our on-camera interview


Who says that?

Yet Henderson walks the proverbial walk. He lives about a mile from where he's always lived and gone to school. He produces masterpieces in a nondescript brick building. It's purely functional. I thought it would be at least, quaint. Take a look at the pictures. Judge for yourself.

As I reported from the Floyd Country Store earlier in May, the key to the popularity and success of the Crooked Road Music Trail and the mountain music it celebrates and promotes, is the authenticity.

I loved the line from the interview in which Henderson recounts having played at Carnegie Hall. When asked where he would play the following weekend he told the fan, "... at the Rugby Rescue Squad."

Now that's a great answer. It's funny. It's Clever. It's quick. It made me laugh, and I'm sure he trying to be funny. I wish I could be that witty. To be clear, Henderson knows it's funny. I'm sure it gets a great smile from anyone lucky enough to hear him tell the story. But I wonder if he was trying to be funny when he answered the question there in New York.

Henderson say he prefers to play the small towns around here. He really doesn't want fame and fortune. He really did keep his day job as a mail carrier for decades even though he could have earned more making guitars -- which he obviously loved.

He thought a pension and health insurance were more important than taking the risk. That's just common sense.

That's just Wayne Henderson.

Every year Henderson hosts the Wayne C. Henderson Music Festival and Guitar Competition on the third Saturday in June at the Grayson Highlands State Park.

The winner receives a Wayne Henderson guitar.

Since the festival began in 1995, more than $57,000 has been awarded to aid young, local, traditional musicians in continuing their music exploration and education.

The Floyd Country Store - Stop #1 on the Crooked Road

When you visit just about anywhere as a tourist, you feel like you’re looking at someone’s idea of what life is supposed to be.

Take a Crackerbarrel Restaurant. The food is great. The country theme is well done – the rocking chairs are a nice touch—but at the end of the day, it’s a new building made to look old.

Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Restaurants. The one in Key West – though yes, it is a tourist trap, feels so much more legit than the one at Myrtle Beach, which feels like it could be in a mall just about anywhere. Nice experience, but it's like it's once or twice removed.

But that’s the way most things work. Someone comes up with a theme, a show, an attraction of some kind, and then people will come to sit and watch it.

Here’s where I think the Crooked Road, and in particular the Floyd Country Store are different. The people who come are only partly tourists. A huge percentage of the people I saw last Friday night were there to participate. Local people enjoying a Friday night like some people only dream about.

The musicians are the core. They come to play. On stage. On the sidewalk. At the barbershop next door, and at multiple other venues. They didn’t come because someone paid them or because they wanted to look cool. This is what they do. The musicians make up a big part of the crowd.

Ditto for the dancers. They wear their overalls and come to dance. It’s not like a bunch of us in suburbia said, “Let’s do something different and go to Floyd and wear overalls like the country people.” These ARE the country people. They are as real as the twisty road from Ferrum called Shootin’ Creek that I drove to get there.

Yes. There are people in the audience who come to sit and enjoy the music. But are they tourists or just folks out for a Friday night in a small town? For the most part, as far as I cold tell they were either locals or people who really enjoy bluegrass music and were willing to drive to hear it.

Now to be sure there ARE tourists. There were people there from Israel, China, Alaska, England. This list of far flug locales is typical. But even then they often came with people who said something to the effect of, "You've got to experience this." Even at that, the tourists don’t dominate. It’s not the bird show at Busch Gardens.

These music venues along the Crooked Road are authentic. That’s hard to describe. These days it's even hard to find. Most things that are authentic just don’t draw people from all over the world. For some reason, this does.

My job as a journalist is to distill this somehow to rise up to 20,000 feet and look down upon the scene, the musicians, the dancers, the people watching them and even the people watching the watchers. What I saw was just plain cool.

No wonder it’s so popular.

By the way the woman in my story playing the Ocarina could have been a story herself. The Ocarina isn't bluegrass -- but it sure is an interesting instrument that Deborah Harris promised me "anyone could play." Click here to find out more about these handmade clay flutes.

Of Bees, Houses and Other Stuff

You don’t often meet people like Jeff and Sandy Jenner. They do things big and they do them well. And as far as I could tell in the small amount of time I spent on their spread in Franklin County, they enjoy every minute of it.

We went there to do a story on bee keeping. I’ve seen the newsroom do dozens of bee stories over the years, but I’ve never done one myself. I figured if I dug around a little, a unique angle would present itself.

I’d say I had half a dozen in the first five minutes.

For a while, I considered not even talking about bees. Jeff and Sandy showed us the mirror garden – it looks the same from both sides of the road. Then came the fabulous Victorian home with an R-50 insulation rating thanks to the concrete walls and two Rapunzel worthy turrets. Of course Jeff designed and built it all himself. Sandy is a master gardener; so all the greenery is hers. And the “gingerbread” trim on this home? Sandy cuts it by hand in her wood shop. Oops, almost forgot. Slate roof – Jeff installed it himself.

See where this is going?

Of course, there would be no bees if Sandy hadn’t planted an entire orchard. It flowered beautifully, but if you watched the story, you know that it produced no fruit. Why – because there was no pollination.

Enter the bees.

Jeff starts raising bees. Gets really good at it. Knows what every bee is thinking every minute of its life from before it is born to the time it dies. He knows how to make hives make queens and queens make new hives.

That’s what we did the story on.

Let’s just say that if ever there is a slow news day, I’ve got a few stories in reserve.

Did I mention Jeff is a master scuba diver?

I neglected to ask Jeff if it was ok to publish his phone number. If you would like to contact him, please e-mail me at carlinagency@gmail.com and I'll put you in touch with Jeff.

Big Tanks and Small Battlefields

Although I’ve reported news in Virginia since 1984, and have literally been to every corner of the Commonwealth, I had to do a double take when a friend told me there was a Tank Museum in Danville. Not just a tank museum, but the “largest privately owned artillery and tank museum in the world,” according to the owner, William Gasser. Somehow I had missed this one.

So imagine my amazement when we pulled up to do a story on a small section of the museum, which according to Gasser, and I have no reason to doubt him on this – is “the largest indoor radio controlled tank battlefield in the world.”

Not only is there a miniature European village in which toy tanks battle, but it takes several minutes to walk there from the entrance of this massive museum (330,000 Square feet or 3 times as big as the average Sam's Club). As you walk by, you pass an amazing array of actual battle tanks, uniforms of every kind, and items of artillery I don’t dare name, because I would almost certainly over-generalize and call a Gatling gun a machine gun or vice versa. And besides, I was there to do a story on the radio controlled battlefield, which has it’s own detailed peculiarities.

The mini-tank battles, which take place on said battlefield, pull players in from all over the country. Owners start out with kits, but by the time they are firing infrared bullets at one another in what amounts to a very large and sophisticated sand box filled with clay, a flowing river and model houses, they’ve dumped about $1,000 into each vehicle.

The model tanks take a bit of practice to drive. Learning to turn, raise and lower the turret is another skill and then there are all the military tactics. "Flanking is a big one,” William’s son, Daniel and museum employee told me. He also pointed out that breakdowns happen in RC battles just as they did in Europe in 1944. “These are tanks that are just like a real bulldozer. They destroy themselves while running. They throw tracks, wheels fall off, and transmissions go out. It’s pretty cool when it happens cause you can still battle, but you’re a pillbox,” he told me during our interview.

Bottom line is that the entire facility is an accomplishment in itself. William, and his wife and two sons run the place, having moved here from Long Island to take advantage of the available space. Now, they’ve amassed an arsenal’s worth of militaria, and they need visitors to survive. Not exactly easy in a struggling Southside economy, and a place that isn’t on the way to anywhere most tourists are headed. (Tour buses won't come because there's not second attraction," William told me.)

I wish them all the luck in the world. If you have any interest in things military, they expect thousands of visitors for their Extravaganza on April 30 and May 1. More information is on their website.

Chainsaw Artist

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I stopped along route 220 in Boones Mill to see if the guy who makes the wooden statues I’ve been driving by for years, would be willing to allow me to tell his story.

Dwayne Hodges said he'd be more than happy to show us how he makes woodland creatures and hillbilly figures using a chainsaw. That's akin to cooking a gourmet dinner on a bunch of hot rocks. Yet Dwayne does this day after day for tourists and gift buyers who are lovers of wooden bears, amazed at the chainsaw craftsmanship or both.

What’s amazing is that ANYONE can do this. Start with a log and end up with a bear.


Clearly there is a system in play here. Cut here, then there, then this way. Notch here, notch there, and pretty soon you’ve roughed out a critter.

I asked Dwayne if he saw himself as an artist. He gave me a qualified, “maybe,” admitting that he’s done so many bears that he doesn’t even think about it anymore.

But then he talks about custom work people ask him to do at their homes. They’ll ask him to turn a stump into something or other. Then there’s the log in front of his shop that will become a totem pole for the Boy Scouts. The Scouts will choose the critters.

Think you could do that with a chainsaw?

Me neither.

Sustainable Furniture

You don't often feel your breath taken away by a piece of furniture. But when you catch a glance of the unique pieces at Swede McBroom's shop, The Natural Woodworking Company, in the town of Floyd, you begin to wonder why. What is it about that piece of wood, or the way it's put together than elicits that response.

The answer is both complicated and simple. Complicated because people go to great lengths to choose and harvest the trees that wind up in Swede's wood shop. Simple, because the methods used to bring the trees out of the woods are about as old school as you can get. The trees are pulled out by horses.

As I explained in an earlier story from last summer, the horses are a means to an end. They provide a low impact way to get trees out of the woods without clear cutting, and they leave almost no trace after they've completed their task. Add to that their "worst first" theory about which trees to take, and you begin to understand the character that makes its way into Swede's work.

Those "worst" trees are not the perfect ones that grow straight up. They are a little more scarred. Some woodworkers would shun those so-called imperfections. McBroom and his craftsmen make them the focal points of their custom designs.

The result is that each piece is not only unique -- but produced with sustainability in mind.

If you're into green living, it's the furniture version of a Prius -- only better looking.