WV Black Walnut Festival

In 2005, I had the opportunity to reign as Miss Black Walnut Festival. Still to this day, that was my favorite festival to reign as queen over, partially because I have roots in Roane County, but the people there never cease to amaze me.

This year I rode in the parade and Kyle was able to be in attendance too. We were fortunate enough to have a two-person BMW convertible, but it proved a small problem when wondering what we were going to do with the wheelchair. We took the wheels off and placed them in the trunk, but that still left the body, which isn’t very foldable, to place somewhere. All the room was taken up with bodies and we decided we were just going to have to have him hold it on his lap while going through the parade. A younger dad who was driving his daughter in the parade saw our struggle and offered to place the wheelchair body in his truck bed. If you know me, I was to the “What are we going to do" stage. I felt so bad, but we couldn't just leave it at the beginning of the parade route. That nice gentleman eased our problems and then we were both able to get to know my driver.

After the parade concluded and we reassembled the wheelchair, I was greeted by an interesting fellow. He was from LA and was hosting a cross-country online radio show. He asked for an interview, and we chatted it up for 10 minutes or so. I had been raving to Kyle about the potatoes that were cooked with onions, peppers, and cheese. He agreed that if I worked out every day up until Saturday, I could take a ‘splurge’ and get the potatoes. Little did I know that he not only wanted the potatoes, he wanted a funnel cake, caramel apple, iced tea, ice cream, and a large bratwurst sandwich. Yes, we ate all of that and were sick after!

An old friend, Joey Fox, was there at the festival and he found us over at the refreshment tents – go figure. He was so inspired by Kyle before meeting him that while I had to go round up all of this ‘wanted food,’ they became best buds and chatted about MMA the whole time.

It was so good to be in my ‘old stomping grounds’ as well as see Joey and EAT!