August 20, 2008
By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
Summary: For the next few weeks, Blacksburg police will focus on education instead of punishment.

BLACKSBURG — Forget the romantic photos of windswept babes with coifed hair motoring around Europe on curvaceous Vespas. Beginning in October, moped riders in Blacksburg have two choices: helmet hair or a $50 fine.

Technically, the new helmet law — which requires helmets and eye protection for riders and drivers of mopeds — went into effect Aug. 12, after Blacksburg Town Council approved it on a unanimous vote. But for the next few weeks, police will focus on education instead of punishment.

“Warnings will be given through the month of September,” Blacksburg police Chief Kim Crannis wrote in an e-mail. “Actual enforcement action will begin in October.”

While town ordinances generally are not enforced on Virginia Tech property, campus police are “going to try to help them by getting the word out,” Capt. Joey Albert said.

As defined by state law, mopeds have a 49 cubic centimeter or smaller engine and no more than three wheels. Under state law, moped riders must be at least 16 years old, must carry identification and may travel no faster than 35 mph. The state allows localities to enact further restrictions on mopeds, including some noise and safety rules.

Blacksburg’s ordinance applies to mopeds with 50 cc or smaller engines and was proposed by Town Attorney Larry Spencer, who broke his leg in a motorcycle wreck last year. Gauging by the damage to his full-face helmet, Spencer said without it his injuries would probably have been more severe.

During his recovery, Spencer noticed more and more mopeds around town and decided to propose the new safety rules, he said.

In fact, demand for mopeds across the country has risen in tandem with gasoline prices. The Christian Science Monitor recently reported Motorcycle Industry Council statistics showing a 500 percent increase in moped sales since 1999. According to the report, sales figures showed 130,000 units sold in 2005, up from 83,000 in 2004.

The popularity of mopeds seems to be growing in Blacksburg and Christiansburg, too.

At Pro Sport Suzuki in Christiansburg, manager Greg Price said his sales have doubled in the past year from about 10 to 20 mopeds. Still, the $1,800 machines he sells are not as popular as traditional motorcycles, he said. While they can get about 100 miles to the gallon, speed and safety limitations make mopeds a questionable choice for longer commutes.

Price also said he has had trouble finding parts to repair some low-cost mopeds made in China.

“We call them disposable mopeds,” Price said.

In Blacksburg, businessman Damon Strickland hopes to promote the “moped as lifestyle” concept to college students at his new Campus Cruizers store on College Avenue. The store is scheduled to open Friday and will offer mopeds ranging in price from $1,600 to $2,500, as well as helmets, eye and face protection, clothing, backpacks and other specialty gear.

Because the vehicles can be parked at bike racks and run for weeks on one gallon of gas, they could help relieve downtown parking shortages and traffic congestion.

“We want to do our part to be an eco-friendly partner with the town,” Strickland said.

And that partnership already seems off to a good start. The required helmets and goggles can be big upsells for moped businesses, Strickland said.

He plans to sell helmets for $60 and up and stock goggles that retail from $15 to $150.

Graphic: The new rules
“Every person operating a moped on a public street or highway of the town shall wear a face shield, safety glasses or goggles approved by the superintendent of state police, or shall have the moped equipped with safety glass or a windshield at all times while operating it; and any operator and any passengers thereon … shall wear protective helmets of a type approved by the superintendent of the state police. Any person who knowingly violates this section shall be guilty of a traffic infraction and shall be subject to a fine of not more than fifty dollars ($50.00).”
SOURCE: Blacksburg Ordinance 1497

Graphic: Other state laws
46.2-915: Dealers must attach a permanent decal or sticker to each moped sold stating Virginia’s age limit for riders, the maximum horsepower of the moped and the maximum legal speed for the vehicle. Violation is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

46.2-906: Moped drivers must keep one hand on the handlebars while carrying any package, bundle or article.

46.2-1078: Moped drivers may not use headphones in both ears while operating the vehicle.

15.2-1720: Localities may, by ordinance, sell abandoned mopeds after 30 days and may require licenses, tags and associated fees for registration of the vehicles.

SOURCE: Code of Virginia

Copyright 2008 The Roanoke (Va.) Times

By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
August 16, 2008

“What lake?”

That is how longtime Mountain Lake Hotel General Manager Buzz Scanland responds to questions about the condition of Giles County’s popular resort attraction.

“Nobody living’s seen it this low,” Scanland said Friday.

The level of the 50-acre natural lake showcased in the 1987 hit movie “Dirty Dancing” has been dropping since 2006 and today stands at about 5 acres, Scanland said.

Where visitors have for generations swum, boated and fished, a meadow is quickly sprouting. Only a shallow pond surrounded by knee-deep mud remains. As the water drains, so does the hotel’s occupancy rate. July and August are typically the resort’s busiest months, but business is running 15 percent to 20 percent below normal, the general manager said.

This is the second time Scanland has faced this problem. In 2002, the water dropped so low that the board of the Mary Moody Northen Endowment — the Texas-based organization that owns the resort — drilled a test well that it was hoped might produce enough water to refill the lake.

The effort failed. But by 2003, conditions shifted and the lake refilled on its own.

Two years ago, the level again began to drop. Today, children staying at the hotel search the drying lake bed for “treasure” — old bottles and other artifacts once lost in the water, now exposed to the sun.

The cause of the drain is not as simple as drought or even climate change. In fact, it’s cyclical.

Mountain Lake may be the only known lake in the world to periodically disappear, sometimes for decades. This phenomenon has been recorded since the 18th century and may be related to earthquakes.

The first reference to what is now called Mountain Lake dates to 1751, when British surveyor Christopher Gist explored Giles County and West Virginia for the Ohio Company. In his journals, Gist describes climbing a mountain and finding a clear-water lake, a gravel shore and “fine meadow.” By 1768, however, settlers said such a lake was nowhere to be found in what is now Giles County. Instead, they used the site as a salt lick for cattle, hence the name Salt Pond Mountain.

Biologists Jon Cawley of Roanoke College and Bruce Parker, who is retired from Virginia Tech, have plumbed the lake bottom and even farther below to discover the secrets of its hydrological idiosyncrasies. In his analysis, Cawley said that water ran down a fault in the mountain and eroded the softer rock, creating a basin that filled with water more than 6,000 years ago.

That fault is also at the center of Cawley’s theory on the lake’s periodic disappearance. A large fissure in the lake bottom sits directly on the fault. After plunging to a depth of nearly 110 feet, the hole becomes a pipeline through the bedrock that Cawley and Parker believe eventually resurfaces about half a mile downstream.

Normally, water flows into the lake from five feeder streams and via rain and snowmelt at roughly the same rate at which it escapes through evaporation and its natural drainage routes. But during dry years, water continues to leak out through the bottom hole. The biologists have found historical records of rising lake levels following earthquakes on the mountain in 1899 and 1959.

There’s no way to predict how long this latest dry spell will last. Staff at the Mountain Lake Conservancy — the nonprofit group that oversees recreation and other activities — are working to create more attractions for visitors. The group puts on the annual Dirty Dawg Cycling Weekend, the BrewRidge Music Festival and the Mountain Lake Migratory Birding Festival. They also offer spelunking and rock climbing, among other programs and activities, said Emily Woodall, managing director.

But the biggest attraction these days is the legacy of “Dirty Dancing.” According to Scanland, fans of the British reality television show “Dirty Dancing: The Time of Your Life,” which has shot two seasons on location in Pembroke, have been flocking to the hotel. The U.S. tour of “Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage” also has stoked interest.

“It just seems to never stop,” Scanland said of the popularity of the movie and its spinoffs. “As long as the lake’s down, it’s going to be as big a draw as we can make it.”

On the Net: www.mtnlakeconservancy.org

Copyright 2008 The Roanoke (Va.) Times

By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
Aug. 3, 2008
Summary: Amish families from across the country have settled in Giles County, opening more than a dozen businesses and contributing to the overall economy.
Note: View a .pdf version of this story, including a detailed map of profiled businesses.

WHITE GATE — Girls in bonnets and boys in hats and suspenders walk to a one-room log schoolhouse. Men drive to town in horse-drawn buggies. Women with purple stained fingers take a break from canning blackberries to greet customers at their family-owned store.

It might resemble Pennsylvania’s Amish country, but this is Giles County. Over the past two decades, Amish families from across the country have established farms and more than a dozen businesses here, boosting the overall economy and offering new services in an isolated rural area.

Danny Kaufman and his family moved to White Gate from Illinois in 2004 in part because they wanted to “live in a smaller community, and we liked the mountains, too,” Kaufman said.

The Kaufmans opened Nature Way Country Store in 2006. Since then it has grown into a grocery store, lunch spot, ice cream parlor and unofficial visitors center for the Amish community. While nobody keeps an official count of the businesses, a variety of things such as horse harnesses, Amish-style buggies and goat cheese are made in the Walker Mountain community.

On a recent Saturday, Preston Stone sat in a bentwood rocking chair enjoying one of Nature Way’s made-to-order deli sandwiches slathered with his favorite jalapeno mustard. He later bought a jar of the mustard to take back to his vacation spot on Claytor Lake. Stone said he grew up in Radford but moved to Charleston, S.C., to work in emergency medicine. For the past four years, he has spent part of his annual vacation in the Amish communities clustered in and around White Gate.

“These are good people,” he said. “They don’t know much about politics, but they’re good.”

He means good, as in friendly. But, he’s also referring to the quality of the merchandise found here such as a hand-built log “camper” he recently bought from Sam Chupp, bishop of the local Amish church and owner of Mountain View Log Homes.

On an impromptu tour, Stone pointed out the gas-powered stove and refrigerator, the shower and a hookup for a solar-powered water heater, all meant to provide luxurious off-the-grid living.

“Just look at the workmanship,” Stone said.

Amish-made products are often associated with high quality and spark keen interest among consumers. But Kaufman is not fond of the phrases “Amish business” and “Amish merchandise.”

“That’s like advertising our religion. Making money off our religion is not what we want to do,” he said. “We emphasize quality. If it’s quality, we’ll stock it.”

Nancy and Lee Payne of Athens, W.Va., came to White Gate looking for chicken feed and adventure. But they said they were also happy to find a nice tablecloth at the Mountain View Country Store owned by Katie Wengerd.

Wengerd and her family came to White Gate from Pennsylvania in 2006 because they liked the theology of the Walker Mountain church, Wengerd said. They also transplanted their business, which specializes in housewares and Amish-style clothing. It opened this spring on Songbird Lane.

At Heritage House Handcrafted Furniture on Mountain View Lane, owner Noah Swarey is still figuring out what pieces he should display in his 2,400-square-foot showroom.

“You wouldn’t believe the variety in Amish-made furniture coming out of Ohio,” Swarey said.

Swarey, a cabinetmaker from Ohio, said he plans eventually to add his own handmade furniture to the mix. In the meantime, he stocks some of neighbor Daniel Chupp’s rustic furniture made from local woods. Chupp’s Brushy Mountain Enterprises is one of the older businesses on the mountain, having opened nine years ago. And it’s growing.

“This has been our busiest year so far,” Daniel Chupp said.

He employs seven people in three workshops and ships cabinets, interior doors and other wood products across Virginia.

There’s a particularly vigorous demand in North Carolina, he said.

Several other woodworking and carpentry businesses operate on Walker Mountain, including Walker Mountain Barns and Gazebos run by Ferman Yutzy, who came to Giles from Wisconsin 13 years ago.

According to the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom, the Amish — sometimes called “The Plain People” or “Old Order Amish” — originated in Switzerland in the 16th century. Theologically and historically, they are linked to the Anabaptists and the Mennonites. Subjected to widespread oppression in Europe, the Amish were saved from extinction by Quaker leader William Penn, who granted them asylum in what is today Pennsylvania.

Today, the largest populations are concentrated in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. It’s estimated that between 30 and 50 Amish families live and work in White Gate and neighboring Bland County, and there are plans to build a third Amish schoolhouse in Giles.

Relations with non-Amish locals have generally been good. But as has often happened in Amish history, their separation from the wider community and their distinct way of life has created some suspicion. One persistent rumor has it that the Amish don’t pay taxes, Giles County Zoning Administrator Craig Whittaker said.

It’s true that self-employed Amish are exempt from Social Security taxes, but neither do they collect Social Security benefits or other government entitlements. They do pay income taxes, sales taxes, real estate and other local taxes and abide by zoning and other regulations, Whittaker said.

And they’ve been good for the local economy by providing jobs for non-Amish locals who have made a cottage industry of providing taxi services.

Patty Proffitt is one of several “haulers.” Some of her neighbors asked whether she could provide them with rides to doctor visits and other errands too far afield for horse and buggy travel. Word got around, and Proffitt said she has several clients, some of whom have paid for rides to Kentucky and Ohio.

“You help somebody and rewards are going to come back to you,” Proffitt said. “I’m a Christian, and I believe that.”

Copyright 2008 The Roanoke (Va.) Times

Sidebar: Even for those ‘off the grid,’ fuel prices still affect profits

By Tonia Moxley

WHITE GATE — A customer stopping at Nature Way Country Store for a drink or a scoop of ice cream probably wouldn’t notice that the coolers and freezers are powered not by Appalachian Power Co. but by a diesel engine.

Nature Way, like most Amish-owned businesses and households, exists “off the grid” using alternative fuel sources such as propane lights. But even the Amish tradition of self-sufficiency hasn’t insulated this small business community from rising fuel prices.

At Ferman Yutzy’s diesel-powered woodworking shop on Songbird Lane, rising fuel prices are biting into profits. Fuel surcharges on the lumber and tin Yutzy uses to build his sheds, small barns and gazebos have added to the problem.

“You hate to go up on your prices,” Yutzy says. But he doesn’t see any way around it.

In 2007, Nature Way owner Danny Kaufman said he was paying about $2 a gallon for off-road diesel to power his coolers and freezers. This month, he’s paying more than $4 a gallon. One recent bill for three weeks worth of diesel totaled about $700.

“That diesel fuel,” Kaufman said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Then he clarified, as residents of Walker Mountain are likely to do when voicing anything that might sound critical.

“I’m not complaining,” he said. “We’re looking at alternatives.”

On the back of a notepad, he sketches a design for a geothermal electrical system he’s heard about. Kaufman said he’s also considering solar, wind and even hydrogen power.

Those outside the Amish community might wonder why the “Plain People” — as they are sometimes known — won’t just hook up to the electrical grid. What’s the difference, after all, between depending on diesel fuel delivered by a truck and depending on the electrical grid to deliver power to your business?

“Amish people interpret linking with electrical wires as a connection with the world,” according to the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom Web site.

That direct connection is prohibited by a literal interpretation of the Bible, in which Romans 12:2 commands followers to “be not conformed to this world.”

And, in 1919, “the Amish leaders agreed that connecting to power lines would not be in the best interest of the Amish community,” the Web site states.

For Kaufman, it’s more about spiritual discipline.

The convenience of electricity-on-demand “might be a temptation to get things we don’t really need,” he said.

Copyright 2008 The Roanoke (Va.) Times