Chix at the Crossroads 2024 Women's Ride
How does a group of women motorcyclists top their 2022 ride across the entirety of Route 66? It wasn’t easy, but with two years of planning, we exclaim, “Mission accomplished!” The Riveter Chapter of the Antique Motorcycle Club of America’s (AMCA) second ride, Chix at the Crossroads, was held in June, exceeding all expectations. Combining early genres of American music with the classic motorcycles that the Riveters ride produced a synergistic connection; one that shaped each woman’s sense of history, just as the blues, soul, and rock ’n’ roll were produced by the hardships that these Southern musicians experienced.
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And just as the threads of Southern culture and demeanor seem to lazily flow through the Delta, the Chix at the Crossroads ride was set at a leisurely pace, with two or three days spent in select locations and less than 220 miles to travel each day we were on the road.
Starting at Wheels Through Time
The event kicked off at Dale’s Wheels Through Time (WTT) museum in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. Matt Walksler, WTT proprietor, offered his property for our preparatory activities and provided free access to the museum, as well as a delicious barbecue lunch during our riders’ meeting.
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Teaching, Learning, and Growing
Riders and staff departed Maggie Valley Monday morning for Chattanooga, Tennessee. After a delightful 202-mile jaunt through North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, our musical tour began.
Even prior to our departure, another important aspect of Chix at the Crossroads manifested itself in many ways. One of the tenets of the Riveter Chapter is to support women not only for riding, but for learning to handle their motorcycle’s care and maintenance. It is the chapter’s desire that members be as self-sufficient and supportive as possible during their motorcycle journeys, which brings confidence and camaraderie through each woman helping herself and others.
Even though the major goal of the AMCA is to preserve, restore, and operate old-time motorcycles (and in AMCA parlance, a motorcycle must be at least 35 years old to qualify as an antique), the Riveter Chapter offers a slightly different outlook. As Riveter Chapter President Karan Andrea says, “We meet women where they are.” In other words, one of the ways the chapter has attracted women to the world of vintage motorcycles is to allow them to ride modern bikes on some of our events.
The Chix on 66 only had about 20 percent of riders aboard antique motorcycles. For Chix at the Crossroads, antique motorcycle ridership increased to more than 50 percent. Several women acquired their own antique motorcycles after observing the fun we have with our old machines.
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Tennessee Rocks the Country Vibe
Our 210-mile route from Chattanooga to Nashville featured an array of wonderful riding roads, starting with the climb up Lookout Mountain. This was a somewhat challenging road with tight curves and not much room for error. By the time we reached the top, we’d ascended to 2,389 feet from the downtown elevation of 676 feet!
The rest of the day was a mixture of country roads, some gently curving through farms and woods. And this was our first excursion onto the Natchez Trace Parkway, a lovely, lightly traveled road maintained by the National Park Service. The Natchez Trace is one of the oldest transportation routes in the U.S., first used by regional Native American tribes and dating back 10,000 years. The entire parkway is 444 miles and passes through three states.
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More Music
The next leg of our journey brought us to Muscle Shoals where we toured two of the most famous music studios in the world: Muscle Shoals Sound Studios and FAME Studios. Some of the top musicians, such as Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, Otis Redding, Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, Duane Allman, and many more.
Right across the road from our hotel was the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, dedicated to the celebration of Alabama’s musicians and the preservation of the state’s musical heritage. Featured in the exhibits here are artists such as Tammy Wynette, Dinah Washington, Nat “King” Cole, Hank Williams, Percy Sledge, and many others.
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Weirdness, Wonder, and Winding Roads
The route planning for this ride is a story in itself. Karan Andrea came up with the concept—our musical heritage—for the ride as well as our daily destinations. However, it was Riveter Chapter board member Dana Lasher, with her wife Mary Lasher, who developed the routes. The goals were to choose a variety of roads that offered different topologies, striking scenery, interesting roadside attractions, and tree shade. Food and fuel availability, along with plenty of photo opportunities, were key factors as well. Not a single interstate was chosen; however, the Blue Ridge Parkway was selected for half- and full-day loops during our stay in Maggie Valley, and we rode different sections of the Natchez Trace Parkway on five different days.
Once Dana drove and then documented the proposed routes, she imported them into REVER, a route planning phone app. REVER was a major sponsor of Chix at the Crossroads, providing each rider and staffer access to REVER PRO at no cost. Two more trips, involving several board members, were then run in their entirety prior to the actual ride to refine the routes and make sure the turn-by-turn directions were accurate.
The route from Muscle Shoals to Tupelo, Mississippi, was one such example of Dana’s creativity in route planning. At her suggestion, we stopped for lunch at the Rattlesnake Saloon in Tuscumbia, Alabama, which involves patrons dining in a huge cave! Our next stop was a real gem—the Coon Dog Cemetery in Cherokee, Alabama, where generations of coon dogs have been buried by the people who hunted—and loved—these fine canines. Neither of these locations are anywhere near major roads, and it took some digging on Dana’s part to find them.
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A Celebration and a Remembrance
Meridian, Mississippi, was our next destination, and our friends at SpACEy’s Rock N Roll Tattoo threw a party in our honor. Proprietor Billy Lyons, along with Kristal Cabello, really pulled out all the stops, blocking the street for live music, food, and festivities. Billy also offered up his motorcycle shop for any needed repairs. And Billy’s crew provided overnight security for our bikes parked in front of the Threefoot Hotel. What a welcome to the Queen City!
Karan and I stumbled upon a small, yet significant, museum—the Rhythm Night Club Memorial Museum in Natchez, Mississippi. In 1940, the Rhythm Club, a haven for musicians and music lovers, was consumed by fire, killing more than 200 people, including the members of the popular Walter Barnes Band who was performing that night. The horrific tragedy, forever memorialized in songs such as Howlin’ Wolf’s “The Natchez Burnin’,” did bring the community together and, also brought about the fire protection standards in place today. Monroe and Betty Sago, who had bought the property without knowing its past, brought the memorial museum to life in 2010 to ensure that the Rhythm Club’s tragic history wouldn’t be forgotten.
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Strength Through Adversity
Due to the extreme heat, we shortened our route from Natchez to Clarksdale, Mississippi. The advantage of our abbreviated path was less time under the relentless 100-degree sun (with a heat index of near 130), but the disadvantage was that we spent hours on the open road, with no shade in sight. However, due to the care and attention by both riders and staff, every one of the bikes made it, without incident, to our destination.
Modern motorcycles can generally handle all sorts of road, weather, and traffic conditions, however, more than half of the bikes ridden on this journey were antiques. Old parts can—and did—rattle off. Heat can—and did—cause vapor lock. Ignition systems can—and did—get overheated. Our support staff proved indispensable with quick fixes and jerry-rigged solutions for parts that took flight along the road.
We owe our support staff a huge debt of gratitude for keeping our bikes running; by the time we completed our trip, not a single bike rode in on a trailer! Kudos to Dana, Mary, Ryan, Joe, Gary, and Kellie for keeping the antique bikes on the road, much of which involved no small amount of MacGyverism. Ryan, Joe, and Dana came by their experience in a baptism-by-fire kind of way—during the competition of past Motorcycle Cannonball and Cross Country Chase events. We’d seen most of the staff in action before, and we couldn’t have picked a better support crew.
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Home of the Delta Blues
We spent three nights in Clarksdale; hardly enough time to scratch the surface of its complicated history—plantations and their sharecroppers, the post-Civil War reconstruction and violently-enforced segregation, masterful blues musicians born of day-to-day strife, and the myths and legends such as that of Robert Johnson and the Crossroads.
Clarksdale is another city that epitomizes the concept of Southern Hospitality. We ate at Hopson Hospitality, the former commissary on a cotton plantation which is now the Shack Up Inn, where we stayed. Chelsea and Tate, the current owners of Hopson Hospitality, opened their doors to our group, providing a place for us to come together, dine, and revel in our ride’s accomplishments. The food, prepared by Chef Mikey B, was fantastic, and live entertainment provided a nice backdrop to the lively bar scene.
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We’d been invited to stop at Visit Clarksdale, the town/county welcome center/visitors’ bureau. The rest of our time there was spent catching up with tasks like doing laundry and getting fresh oil for old bikes, as well as visiting museums using a loop route we’d created for this purpose.
Did you know there’s a Grammy Museum in nearby Cleveland, Mississippi? It’s the sister museum to the one in Los Angeles, but the Cleveland version focuses on the music of the Mississippi Delta. Other attractions on the tour included the most excellent B.B. King Museum in Indianola, the Dockery Plantation, and the infamous and reviled Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm. It’s worth looking into the history of this foul place, which was crucial in the advancement of civil rights as well as the impetus for some beautiful music.
Downtown Clarksdale offers plenty of music-related attractions as well, such as the Delta Blues Museum, Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club, Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art, Deak’s Mississippi Saxophones and Blues Emporium, Red’s Lounge which is one of the few remaining original juke joints in the area, and many small venues offering live blues performances.
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Chix at the Crossroads in Memphis
The final destination for Chix at the Crossroads was Memphis, known as the City of Soul. This Tennessee city also claims its place as the birthplace of modern blues as well as rock ’n’ roll. Our first stop was the birthplace of Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. Next was the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, and finally, a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum and the adjoining Lorraine Motel. Spending time at these places really connected the dots for us, revealing the key factors of the genesis and geographical movement of U.S.-based musical genres.
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Thanks for Your Support
And just like that, this group of women from across the U.S. who converged upon Maggie Valley, North Carolina, two weeks prior, successfully concluded their riding adventure. Most of the women knew only one or two others on the ride, but by the time we arrived in Memphis, we’d bonded in a way that happens only on the open road. Some of us came home more confident riders and wrenchers, ready to tackle our next adventure.
Chix at the Crossroads had plenty of help with ride logistics, events, and products, and we’d like to thank those who supported our efforts. In turn, we’d like to request that you patronize these businesses that support women riders: Dale’s Wheels Through Time Museum, our premier media partner WomenRidersNow.com, Kickstart Cycle Supply, Lowbrow Customs, REVER, Black Hills Custom Parts, Spacey’s Rock N Roll Tattoo, Hopson Hospitality, Iron Trader News, Throttle Gals Magazine, Visit Clarksdale, Gun For Hire, Indian Motorcycles, My Medic, Shadow-Light Media, and Tattooing by Whitney.
If you would like to participate in the next Riveter Chapter event, follow us on Facebook and Instagram @chixvintageriders.