May 2025 Central Virginia Guzzi Lunch Report

[Michael S. Jones]

Greetings, Moto Guzzi friends. Today was a beautiful day for riding: warm but not quite hot, with a beautiful blue sky and, despite last night’s rain, mostly dry roads. Five Guzzis, one KTM, and one hod-rodded little Ford Festiva gathered at Gertie’s Restaurant in Vesuvius, Virginia, for May’s edition of the Central Virginia Moto Guzzi lunch. The Guzzi riders were Al Chappell on his V7iii Stone, Tom Bennett on a beautiful red V11 LeMans, Rick Scott on a nearly new V7-850 Special, Larry Echols (a big fan of Gertie’s) on his liquid-cooled V100 Mandello S, and me on my rusty but trusty old Convert. Dave Phillips contributed some diversity with his KTM 390 Adventure, and Nate and Bryce Jones drove the Festiva. That’s still only two wheels apiece, after all. 😉

Rick gets the long-distance award, coming all the way from Durham, NC. Bryce gets the youngest rider award, if you count coming in a striped-down Festiva with a big engine and custom suspension “riding.” He’s only 4, so he’s not quite ready for riding on a motorcycle. I guess my ’77 Convert would get the prize for the oldest bike. Al volunteered that he gets the oldest rider award, but I’m not so sure about that. There was plenty of maturity around the table (ha ha).

The food at Gertie’s was good, and so were the prices. The menu is very “American” – hamburgers, subs, salads, and the like. The portions were fairly large, and the sweet potato waffle fries were a nice change of pace. This was the second month in a row that we’ve eaten somewhere without eggplant parmigiana, though, and to be completely honest, I really missed my eggplant today. Next month we’ll definitely be eating someplace that serves it. Everyone else seemed very happy with the food, though. The waitress was very nice and very competent, but the place was very busy and the service was notably “delayed.” It was nice to see them doing so much business, though. I like to see little shops that aren’t part of a national chain that are successful.

The conversation around the table was interesting today. After a spell of general chatter, talk turned to repairing punctured tires, and Tom showed us how to use a tire repair device that Dave had brought with him. This interested me, since I currently need to plug a hole in my truck tire. Then, oddly, the conversation switched to nuclear reactors. That happens around Lynchburg.

Gertie’s is very close to the parkway, and a number of us headed up there after lunch. It was such a beautiful day that it was hard to resist taking the long way home!

Wishing you a great month and hoping to see you in June,

Mike


M. Jones, executive editor, Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies (www.jsri.ro)
"The heart has its reasons which reason does not know." -Blaise Pascal
"With man, instinct and reason avoid each other with adversity, yet, by repudiating each other they lure each other to reach mutual correction." -Lucian Blaga
"Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer." -Immanuel Kant