Gear Head Inn - SOLD

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Nothing so romantic .. bought by someone who is turning it into efficiency apartments.

It's the perfect example of anything that happens is caused by somebody with some initiative. Jim and Mary told themselves going in, we're going to do this for ten years. It was planned, a timed event. And it's been ten years. Their time is up. On their own terms. I can't plan ten minutes, let alone ten years, but they did it.

Imagine the difference, a hot rod party place destination turns into efficiency apartments. Well good luck with that. I'll bet the apartments are far less successful than the motel was because hardly anybody lives in that area. That's my internal mental path to recovery, a blown deal, but Jim and Mary got out and that's a great thing for them. I wish them the best.

Jim and Mary told us personally, PLEASE come see us in Dakota. And they meant it.

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It's the perfect example of anything that happens is caused by somebody with some initiative. Jim and Mary told themselves going in, we're going to do this for ten years. It was planned, a timed event. And it's been ten years. Their time is up. On their own terms. I can't plan ten minutes, let alone ten years, but they did it.

Imagine the difference, a hot rod party place destination turns into efficiency apartments. Well good luck with that. I'll bet the apartments are far less successful than the motel was because hardly anybody lives in that area. That's my internal mental path to recovery, a blown deal, but Jim and Mary got out and that's a great thing for them. I wish them the best.

Jim and Mary told us personally, PLEASE come see us in Dakota. And they meant it.

You know what's between you and the Dakotas? Several Bangshifters!

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You know what's between you and the Dakotas? Several Bangshifters!

Right now I have to save up enough oomph to get to the grocery store and back. It's old age and a mystery affliction. One time I got "to" the grocery store but realized I couldn't possibly get "through" the grocery store so I went back home. But that's neither here nor there, YAY for Jim and Mary! I'm proud of them. They sure did well for as long as they wanted to. Extremely well.

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In memory of GHI: This whole thing has me thinking, GHI was the funnest place on earth. The attached video, that's Terri and then Perry and his son Robert in the cutting contest and then Big Dave. Sue Unit is on the far right of the video screen. The first time I went there I was really nervous. I wanted to provide some noise to go with the party. What I realized later was that I was only missing the party out there by the fire pit. I was totally missing it, the actual party.

But one of those nights it rained, and it moved the whole scene indoors, and the....ohh boy the party is every bit inside here. Gosh, I'll miss that place and the times we all had together.

[corvettedad]

Oh wow, the frog off.
Great memories, and to have Robert in there with me, priceless! Gearhead Inn, it was the right moment in the right time.

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Oh wow, the frog off.
Great memories, and to have Robert in there with me, priceless! Gearhead Inn, it was the right moment in the right time.

This video was on the same night, I think. I always bought up a whole sack full of kazoos for us to do the National Anthem, to kick it off on Friday. I've got so many of these videos, and I'm so glad I do. Gosh what memories. This time, we had declared that we were going to celebrate everybody's birthday, all at the same time. Why not? So cake magically appeared.

There's a lot of lag time in this one, while everybody got some cake. FYI, at about 1:15 when everybody sat down after the National Anthem, that's Mary and Jim on the right. For those of you who never had the opportunity to meet them. They let us do all of this stuff and they in fact encouraged it. Whatta hoot.

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The thing that gets me, Mary always considered me to be the point of contact for the BangShift Bunch. As soon as we got there she'd ask me,"What's everybody gonna do tonight?" What the heck do I know....like Terri always said, that's like herding cats or nailing Jello to a tree. You're asking ME? That's a mistake. But somehow rain seemed to make it better. Somehow.

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I don't necessarily want to bump this thread for my own purposes.....but I only want to say, those party nights at GHI were the very best times ever in my life. I've got to be brutally honest and say I didn't care about the "tour," wherever we want, I was there for the party. That was over the top fun.

Take all of the racing,and all of the challenges, the GHI party nights were by far the most fun in my whole life, as I see it. Daytona, being on that track was a mortal blast but Sue was miserable on that whole trip. I literally dragged her along and she couldn't ride with me on that track.

Those nights at GHI were really something. And all of those nights weren't all perfect. I could feel it at times, like not everybody was in a good mood. But when it came together, boy did it ever. I just want to thank everybody who was there, and you know who you are.

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I'm dragging through all of the old video files for my own entertainment and realizing that we partied inside GHI more often than I remembered, as opposed to outdoors. It rains a lot in the mountains, it sure does. And that always made the party better somehow. This one is from the Fall of 2014.

At some point in this one, that's Jim close friend Randy playing air saw. I had seen many episodes of air guitar in my life but I'd never before seen air hand saw. Dang we had a lot of fun. Lots of familiar characters in this one.

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I'm feeling mighty mortal....I don't feel a need to bump this thread, other than we had so much fun at GHI and I'd like to share it. What a hoot! Thank goodness for a video camera. I'm enjoying those old videos SO much.

I'm not real sure Big Dave ever heard the song we made up about him. We made it up because he wasn't there. We did that, and another song....the significant thing in this one was the drivers' meeting at the end of it. That's John (papa smurf) at the tail end of it, third from the left on the video with the harmonica, detailing what our plans were for the next day. No, that didn't happen. Yes, we all went out driving, sometime or another, but we never even got close to the fancy Lake Lure restaurant reservation. We messed that up, but it was all fun. It ALL was fun. Mice on the loose.

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I'm going to keep posting these videos until somebody tells me to stop. I've got so many of them.... This is just too much fun. I fully realize I'm not a very capable guitar player and I'm an even worse singer. The singing thing started about 30 years ago. I was wanting to make some more racket, but nobody was willing to sing. Hell, I'll do it, somebody has to if nobody else will. And it was pretty bad.

But this is at GHI. Tim from Texas stumbled upon us on that weekend, totally his accident of timing. He was on an east coast bucket list tour on his motorcycle, carrying a fiddle (violin) and also a ukulele. On that motorcycle. He had only been messing with the fiddle for about two years, but he was absolutely the master of the uke. He could play that uke like Jimi Hendrix could play a guitar. But here we go, this is special to me, a new friend I'll likely never see again, but a very unique night.

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Terri and I were swapping emails back and forth until we ended up with two pages full of verses. Nobody on earth could remember that many words. It was a joint effort. This is called fun. Bruce (cobra) was in charge of the camera, but he didn't sound all that comfortable with it. He's an expert experienced still shot photographer but somehow a bit intimidated by a rolling video camera. HAhAhahAhah!!!

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I hate to keep harping on it, but I've got an external hard drive that is just loaded with a shit-ton of fun videos from Gear Head Inn. But by golly did we ever have fun. I don't have much more to do than to look at them and re-live. Gosh-golly that was fun. I just want to thank Bruce and Perry and Mary and whoever for running the camera for us. I would have by now forgotten half or two thirds of all of that without the videos.

It never failed to be a whole lot better when it was raining and we were confined to partying in the lobby, which made things more compressed, which was not anyone's first choice. But that brought everyone together.

Outside in good weather, everyone was all scattered out and working on cars or whatever. Terri always referred to us BangShifters in a group as herding cats or nailing Jello to a tree. And that is so right.

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There was an episode, out of all the episodes, and there were many episodes. It was a Saturday evening, after the mountain highway tour. Setting up outside, fine weather.

I dragged all of the stuff out and hooked up all the wires and set up nearly every microphone I have. Somebody, I honestly can't remember who, came walking by and said, "Who do you think is going to use all of those microphones?"

Well, that was the litmus test in the first degree. That set the tone for the evening and I got all of the equipment ready before it was dark enough and late enough to start making racket. I sat out there by the fire pit with everybody, enjoying the party I always missed before. And folks were not at all interested in making racket that night, nobody wanted to. A funky mood or something. At quitting time I unhooked everything and loaded it back onto the truck for the trip back home the next morning. We never made a sound that night. Not a peep. That was weird, not expected at all.

[RockJustRock]

One time at a party I did the band had to stop, but the party kept going. We weren't about to light the place up to tear down so we were stuck. Drunk people couldn't resist the main mic. I knew shutting it down would just get them asking me to turn it back on. Instead I shut off the direct feed and turned the digital delay (echo box) up all the way to three seconds. People would say stupid stuff into the mic, give up and walk away, then hear the stupid stuff three seconds later. Everyone got really scared of the mic that let them hear how stupid they had gotten.