But it had been months and months since I had ridden (was a brutally cold winter).  So I went out today.  For a couple hours. Nothing amazing happened. I did not meet a field of bluebonnets, or a majestic owl.  I just rode a bit.

The thing I like about riding is that I seem to somehow be able to think about things that I am not actively thinking about – much like I sometimes do when I am sleeping.

Problems seem to get solved in the back of my brain while I focus on the road, the smell, the machine and the now.

Very few people that I know like for me to ride.  Most of my friends, almost all of my bosses, and my kids.  None of them really like it.  None of them really get it either.

When I am riding my bike, slicing through the wind, and leaning into the curves – when I am not thinking about kids, or work, or friends, or anything – I come out a better something after.  I come out a better friend, employee, parent, and boss. And a better me.

Riding a bike is something that escapes a lot of people. The freedom.  The sense of release – having to focus enough of your brain on the moment… it lets you forget the stress, the deadlines, the commitments. It lets you find that freedom, for as long as it lasts.

Interestingly enough, a 2 hour recharge can last many months. The promise of the next ride gets me through the times in between.

Not suggesting we all ride motorcycles.  Am suggesting we need something that rejuvenates us this way.

We all need a recharger.  And we all have different ones.

When I woke this morning it was already 64 degrees, and not quite fully light.  But before I even brewed coffee I knew I was hitting the road.

As the coffee brewed I prepared my bike, and myself.  While 64 degrees sounds warm I would be riding north, and knew it would get colder – so I layered up on clothing, filled my thermos with fresh coffee, and took off to wherever the wind and whim took me.

Normally when I head out of San Antonio I shoot straight up US281 – the fastest way for me to get to the Texas Hill Country.  But today I headed West first – until I hit Highway 16.  I’d never taken this path before, so it was immediately my favorite path. I love what I do not know.

I was near the town of San Geronimo before I felt I had truly left the city behind.  I visited the “Blue Hole” at San Geronimo Creek, where I stopped to drink my coffee and just spend some time with myself.

I followed Highway 16 in a large slow loop until I reached Bandera.  I thought I had spent time in Bandera before – but I was wrong – I must have had it confused with Blanco or Boerne.  I liked Bandera.  Of course I like Blanco and Boerne as well.

From there I took a slow ride south down HWY 173 to Hondo, TX – a familiar place to me.  After a late breakfast taco I hit the highway for the 40 minute ride back to San Antonio – and home.

I was gone a couple of hours.  Time I needed to spend away from me, and the Internet, my kids and Twitter.

I miss these days where I wake with no plan other then, “get out there and go”.  It’s part of why I hate the winter, which keeps me shut it.

The Spring begs me and my bike to find something new, and amazing.  And sometimes all it takes is me not being here.

Sometimes the journey is all that matters.

Sometimes amazing means nothing less than different.  And today I had a different day.

Some random pictures I just wanted to stick up here.

	My New Hobby: I wasn’t really looking for another motorcycle but a co-worker pinged me about a bike he was selling.  It reminded me so much of the first bike I ever owned that I just had to buy it. This is a 1978 Honda CX500.  Unlike my 900 pound BWM R1200CLC, this is a light little bike weighing in at just under 500 pounds (dry). It needs some work to make it road-worthy, but it is mechanically pretty sound!
Geoff Livingston, author, blogger and really nice guy.  He came to a Tweetup I organized.  This is on the San Antonio Riverwalk, not far from my office.
	Rocky Barbanica is a  Senior Producer at Fast Company.  He is also the camera genius behind Robert Scoble’s work at Fast Company TV I’ve had the pleasure to meet Rocky on 4-5 occasions now, and he’s a great guy to hang out with! Also, in the background you can see John Engates, CTO of Rackspace.  The pictures were taken at the Austin City Limits during the Rackspace Cloud Event
Backstage at Austin City Limits you can find some interesting stuff – including a few cans of Bud Light!
	Bob and Esther Cole with their daughter Melissa/  Melissa had just graduated from Texas Tech University. I’ve known “Mo” almost her whole life, and she’s like another of my own children, so I was very proud of her!
A couple weeks ago we went to New Orleans.  We took a trolley out to the cemeteries.  On the way there a car crashed blocking the tracks for about 15 minutes.  As we boarded the trolley to return I joked, “I wonder what happens on the way back”. Well, this is what happens – this car cut in front of the trolley and we nailed it.  We decided to leave before the police showed up as we were sitting in the back of the trolley and didn’t really see what happened anyway.  We walked the mile or two back to our hotel

What I miss is the stories I’ve been able to share about my rides.

And now it is very cold. And I doubt I’ll have another chance to ride this year (I HATE the cold).

I’m not sure why I didn’t ride much this year.  The new job?  Maybe.  The fact we haven’t had any rain to speak of so we have either been very cold or very hot (or very windy!) – probably.

But as little as I use my bike, I can’t imagine not having one.

It only takes a little bit of the garage; for me insurance is cheap, and all I need is a few hours on her a month and I’m happy.

But 1400 miles a year is pathetic

Yet when I Woke up at 5:30 am, I felt awake. Unlike most mornings where I struggle to operate the coffee pot, this morning I felt clear headed. Which doesn’t make sense.

I had no coffee, I slept less than three hours, and I didn’t sleep well at all.

So going for a motorcycle ride was probably just stupid – especially since it was still dark, and the streets were still wet.

But I hadn’t ridden in a while, and I wasn’t ready to start my daily routine. So I just took off. No coffee. No idea where I was going.

I knew the storms hit hardest towards the northwest of me, so I rode southeast. I rode to China Grove, of the ZZ-Top song fame. I used to come here often with my Uncle, to fish in our illegal fishing spot not far away. We used to have so much fun doing little, and saying even less.

My Uncle has always been a quiet man. Being a Vietnam Vet who was wounded more than once, I never pressed him on what he had been through. But often, in the dark, with a nice little fire, sitting on the side of that creek bank, he would tell me things I know he shared with nobody else. Not his wife, or his own sons, or daughter.

He would tell me stories not of war, or courage.

Not of bravado or beer-brawls.

He would tell me about the people he knew. And although he never said as much, I knew that every person he talked to me about had not made it home. I could tell by the story, and the tone, and the lack of details about anything to do with them after the war. He never mentioned how they died. He never mentioned who they may have killed. He spoke about the person – the guy that wanted to open a hot-dog stand in New York, the guy who wanted to marry his High School sweetheart. The friends he made, and why he remembered them

But I never pressed him for more. I never intruded. I felt honored that he was sharing with me, and I didn’t have anything of value to add to the conversation.

And he didn’t expect me to.

He didn’t want to talk to me about these stories – he just needed to tell them.

And that’s where I sat for about 25 minutes this morning – in China Grove, Texas.

Eventually a fine mist started to fall and I decided I better head home – before the traffic started.

Every time I think I am ready to sell my motorcycle I have a moment like this – something that happens on my bike that just seems to not happen any other time.

And I know that if I sell her, I’ll just buy another. Since this one is paid for, I think I’ll keep her. She is cheaper than Prozac and a Shrink.

And infinitely more effective.

My last GPS was named Sheila. She cost me $6000 when someone sliced the top of my convertible open to steal her.

My current GPS is named Katie. She’s a sweetie!

I guess I name the GPS systems because they have a nice female voice (meaning female and generally not bitching at me – except for the occasional “Do a U-Turn when possible” – which does sound bitchy!)

I name my motorcycles because they have the same things that I find attractive in women – power, curves, excitement, not knowing what will happen next and a they both have an adjustable ride

I haven’t shared the name of my bike with anyone. There may be hints in my blog, but I don’t think so.

I won’t share it now either. It is personal

Unless someone guesses it.

On this particular cool morning in early March 2003, Judy was camped below Bee Mountain, on Fm Rd 170. When I stopped, I asked her if she remembered me from the several other stops I’d made in the past, and she replied “yes”, and we exchanged a few words about the weather before I asked her if I could photograph her. She said, “Ok, but I don’t look so good this morning”. I thought she looked better than usual, and commented back “Oh, no, you look beautiful today!”. She posed for me, moving around to various places around the burros, even beginning to place blankets on the one which was unpacked. The darker one apparently was left packed up through the night, and appeared to be not feeling well, and she kept looking at the burro, telling me that she just bought that one from The Kiva, the day before. So seeing two burros with Judy, was an unusual site.

viewing – Packin’ Up

But later in our trip – almost 3/4 into the duration of our trip (but only about 50% in total miles of our trip), we found ourselves in Eugene, Oregon.  The ride from Portland was amazing (and yes, I know I left out a substantial part of the ride between Part 6 and Part 7.  Think Star Wars - I’ll come back and write a "pre-quel"  about that part later.

It was at this point in our trip that we really all started getting nervous about how long we were going to be gone.  At least 4 days more than what we had planned. This was a HUGE deal since we were mostly active duty military and a lot of us were working in medicine – where shift coverage for surgeons and techs was done far in advance.  We knew we were getting into more and more trouble the longer we delayed.  We were not just on day to day slip – we were on a day to "30 days in jail" slip.

So we found ourselves in Eugene, OR.  A bit south of it, actually.  And we were tired, and looking to sleep.  We pulled into what was once a gas station – right next to an active farm.  While we were talking about what to do a pickup pulled up next to us.  It was the owner of the farm.

We exchanged a few pleasantries and he told us, "bad weather south of here.  Even worse north.  Watchagonnado?"

Having not stopped anywhere with a TV or even power over the last three days we had no idea that the weather was turning.

"Gottabigbarn", the man said.  "Justuptheroad".  Really – he had ZERO spacing between his words.  But we understood he was inviting us to sleep under cover – and had warned us of the storm.  We agreed, and all of the bikes followed him up the dirt rut that passed as a road.  I’m sure it was easier to get my bike down that road than it was for him to maneuver the truck.

When we reached the farm the man got out of the truck and rolled open two huge barn doors.  The barn was immense – maybe 100 feet deep by 40 feet wide. At the far end we could see and hear cattle.  The near end was empty stalls.

"Usetakeephorses", the farmer said.  He explained that they were too expensive, so he gave them up.  He directed each of us to park our bike in an empty stall.  We did.

It was odd thinking about all of the horsepower that was now in those stalls. Thousands of horsepower where less than a dozen horses could stand.

While the farmer was very kind, he didn’t invite us to dinner, or send his beautiful daughters (don’t think he had any) out to comfort us. He just gave us his barn for the night and left. 

There were plenty of lanterns in the barn.  And their was a pit for a blacksmith at the far end with a chimney.  We could have a good fire even if we were in a barn full of hay and animals.

We unloaded our bikes and chipped in all the "grub" we had. It was an odd assortment of sausage, and jerky, candy and vegetables.  We shared it all, and enjoyed the variation.  We were warm, and it was raining now.  Not a hard rain, but a cold one.  We were glad to not be on the road.

We had a few beers and a bottle of something between us and we sat and talked story, as were were most apt to do.  The hours passed as we all enjoyed the warmth of the fire, and the time off of the road.

We finally woke mid-day the next day. It was a beautiful day – no sign of the rain from the night before.  The farmer’s wife was bringing in clothes from the line and insisted she make us breakfast, even though it was well past 1 PM.  The farmer was not around.  We ate at the family table.  Eggs and gravy, biscuits, bacon. Everything you could ask for.  While the house was nice it was modest.  Nothing of glaring value, but everything looked cherished.  Nothing was dirty, or tarnished.

We finally hit the road again about 3 PM that day.  We had only ridden for an hour when we found ourselves at a crossroads our maps did not show.  The paved road to our right was on our map, but it headed southeast.  The unmarked dirt road led southwest.  We were very late already and we all wanted to head southwest.

We took the dirt road and were not on it but 15 minutes or so when we came across a very large herd of cattle.  These cattle didn’t just cover the road.  They damn near covered the horizon.  This was a VERY large herd.  As we eased our bikes into them we noticed they didn’t move far.  They were skirting our bikes but not exactly leaving.  That is unusual for cattle.  Normally they just get out of the way, and want to get far out of the way.

As we drove deeper into the herd we ran into a mass of cows that seemed to be unwilling to move much.  They were milling about in a specific area, and even when they moved, they kept a tight circle on a specific point.  We finally pushed through and saw why.  A young cow was giving birth, and things must not have been going well.  The older cows seemed to sense this, and they were forming a protective barrier.  But they didn’t complain as we approached the young cow.

When I got close enough I saw the young cow had already lost a lot of blood.  A lot more than I had ever seen.  The cow seemed unable to move, but it hadn’t given birth yet either.  As we got close to the cow the elder cows got nervous and started mooing and snorting – even kicking up some dirt here and there.  We were surrounded by thousands of cattle – and some didn’t seem to be happy we were there.

But they didn’t bother us either, as we finally got to the cow, and touched it, and found it was still alive.  But all of the motion shown in the body of this cow was coming from the unborn calf kicking and trying to get out.  The mother was spent.  The baby was fighting for life.

Having never delivered a cow, but having seen hundreds of human births I knew one thing for certain.  The calf had to come out of the cow, and there was only one exit.  Caesarian wasn’t an option, even if we had the tools.  Nobody knew where to cut a cow to get a baby out of it.

As we were reached in and tried to grab the calf the cows got very agitated.  Their mooing got the greater herd riled and some at the edges of the herd started running in circles putting up a fairly large plume of dust. 

Literally elbow-deep into a cow, pulling for all I am worth, and having people pull me while I pull a calf we hear a gunshot. It didn’t seem close, so it didn’t bother us.  Much.

As we continue to make progress delivering this calf we hear a truck getting closer and closer.  The truck gets very close and scares the elder cows a great deal.  They are often running away from us and seemingly darting in at us.  Finally the calf comes out and the truck pulls up, all at the same time.  Driving the truck is the "poor" farmer from the night before.  Over an hour after riding from his barn we are still on his property.  And the sea of cattle are his.  It seems this farmer wasn’t so poor after all.

He was also a retired Marine Corps Colonel.  I still talk to him now and then.  I always get Christmas cards.  He’s donated most of his family’s farm to conservatory.  He plans on donating the rest.

The mother cow didn’t live, but the calf did.

And we were delayed even more.  And seriously at risk of being AWOL.  The next 6 days would be brutal.  We would cover about 600 miles a day for six days straight.  On a bike, when you have no money and often have to stop for a day for a new tire, or to earn some money for gas, 600 miles a day average for 6 days was pretty amazing.

Here is the conversation I had today with a Nationwide Auto-insurer:

Me: "Hello".

Them: "Sir, if we could get two minutes of your time.."

Me, "For what?", I interrupted.

Them, "Sir we would like to show you how we can improve your motorcycle coverage and possibly lower your costs".

My motorcycle insurance is VERY low.  I am over 45, my bike is always locked in my garage, and I have no tickets or accidents in over 25 years.  I only put a couple thousand glorious miles on it each year.  My insurance is so cheap in fact that it isn’t even worth my time discussing it.  So I decide to have some fun.

Me: "Well, my current coverage also covers my dog, in case he gets injured.  Do you cover injury to pets?"

Them: "Sir, I am pretty sure we do, and long as they are wearing a helmet and seat belts".

Seat belts?  On a motorcycle? Seat belts for my dog on my motorcycle?

I was going to continue giving them a hard time, but I found myself laughing so hard I couldn’t do anything except hang-up.

I am still chuckling.

And I am still with Progressive for my motorcycle insurance.

As is my normal practice, I headed North – to the Texas Hill Country. I wasn’t alone – there were hundreds, if not thousands, of other bikers on the roads already. I had planned to meet up with a group of about 75 riders that were doing a run of about 150 miles – instead I decided to go my own way for a while.

Eventually I met up with so many bikes that I ended up riding with a group of (primarily) Harley’s for about 45 minutes I got tired of their noise – I turned off onto a one lane paved road. I had no clue where it went, but it was quiet. It turned out to be a very long, twisty ride through some pretty good sized hills. Soon I realized I was driving right through a ranch, as I crossed over cattle-guard after cattle guard. Cattle guards are holes cut into the roadway covered with a steel barred section. The cattle won’t walk over these – so they are effective as fences for cattle, but cars (and motorcycles)can easily pass over them.

Ahead of me I saw a large number of Texas Longhorns being moved across the road, from one field to another. There were probably 50-75 of them, and they were magnificent. I crept forward – keeping the bike quiet so as not to disturb them. Soon I found myself surrounded by cattle – each of them easily weighing more than my bike and I combined. The walked slowly past, seemingly uninterested that I was there. The vaqueros working the cattle came over to talk. Two were on horse, one was in a giant Ford F350 King Ranch Edition pickup. I was joking that I was afraid one of these cattle would hit my bike with their horns – they assured me that they would not – they told me the Longhorns had an extremely finite control over their horns. I hoped they were right – some of these horns were over 6 feet long on each side of the Longhorn. That makes for a very wide load.

They offered me a bottle of cold water, which was much appreciated. I hadn’t started my bike in months, and had neglected to put it on the trickle charger – so I was afraid if I shut it off it wouldn’t start – but I put in in neutral and let it idle as I sat in the shade of a giant mesquite tree and enjoyed a cool drink of water and a smoke. The Vaqueros were very nice guys – they asked where I was going (I had no destination) and offered me some suggestions for a ride – one of them cutting right through the 18,000 acre ranch I was on. They assured me that el hefe (the boss) would not mind me riding on the property.

I left them and took what seemed the safest of their suggestions – a fully paved road that wound for miles through the ranch, just past the main house, and finally out the northwest side of the property. It took nearly an hour to get through the entire property – it was a wonderful unspoiled piece of land. I passed through several small communities of vaqueros and their families. The children all came out to look at what was probably an unusual site for them. The women pretty much stayed on the porches and waved. The men were apparently all out working. While they told me the name of the ranch, it was a Spanish name, and it escapes me now. But I appreciate the fact they let me enjoy their spread. It was a very slow and peaceful ride.

I was not even surprised when I turned a corner and saw four adult giraffes in a field – there are many ranches in this area with exotic wildlife on them. But seeing them in an open field was somewhat magical.

Finally I found myself back on a two lane road, and eventually back on IH-10, about 25 miles Northwest of Boerne, TX. From there it was a 45 minute ride back home, all on the Interstate. Traffic was light and people were amazingly polite about letting me pass when I needed to (although I was cruising right at the speed limit). I pulled back into my driveway just before 11am – the temperature was still below 80 degrees, so it had been a very comfortable ride.

I wash my A/C filters.  They are washable and reusable, I have two sets.

And I wash my blue jeans.

Sometimes my shirts, depending on what else is going on.  Usually I do shirts, underwear (which I usually wear) and socks (which I rarely wear) on Wed.

I check another little three shot derringer to make sure it is loaded, and ready. It’s almost a hundred years old and still just works.  You have to love quality engineering.

I am not paranoid – but I am prepared.  I am not afraid, but I am cautious.  I do not expect trouble, but I recognize it may find me.  Weapons do not make me feel powerful – but they don’t scare me.  It’s just something I am used to.  Guns have been a part of my life for almost my entire life.  I’ve been shot at, and shot back.  I’ve been shot, and shot people.  The first time I was shot I was only about twelve.  My brothers are reading this now for the first time – but they’ll know who Mike Gromer is, and they’ll realize he was crazy enough to shoot me.

He shot me from about ten feet away with his .22 caliber rifle he had just gotten as a gift.  We were on his grandparents farm (Backbreak Acres!).  We were sitting on the back glassed-in porch and he was just messing around, thinking it wasn’t loaded. It was. He nicked my left knee-cap.  I told my parents I fell ice-skating or something.  It really did look like just a bad gash – I doubt our family doctor would have known it was a gunshot even if I went to a doctor.

In any case, I also check on our birds – two canaries – and make sure they are happy.  They aren’t my responsibility, but I do like having them chirping around.  So I make sure they are not forgotten, and sometimes I let them fly around for a while.  They seem terrified to be out of their cage though, so I think I enjoy their “freedom” more than they do.

I start all my stuff.  Lawnmowers and motorcycle in the winter (and the summer, for that matter).  I let them run a bit -just like I let the birds run. 

Everything wants to feel useful, even machines.  Ignore them for too long and they’ll give up on you. 

Just like people.

Anyway – I think I’m ready to start writing the rest of this story now.  I’m just not sure if anyone still cares.

And yes, I know some of the characters are screwed up in the earlier posts (the fonts I mean, although yes – many of the people were as well).  I think that happened when I moved from Windows to Linux, and I am fixing old posts as time allows (which means, not very quickly!).

Let me know what you think in the comments.

The rain is stressing the ability of the city to manage weeds, insects, etc. 

And it’s made me miss one of the best times of year to ride a motorcycle here.  Once the rain stops, it’ll be too hot for anything but a short ride.

So it’ll be a long hot summer.

But we won’t run out of water.

I’ve struggled with this installment.

I have written it, re-written it, and deleted it.  And started anew.

So here’s what I have decided – <rant> If Danny, or anyone else wants to dispute it, then let them.  I am not concerned about writing it for Danny anymore.  And if he doesn’t like it, he can comment here, or shut the hell up.  I am going to write my story – the way I remember it.  If anyone wants to challenge it, or write their own version, then good for them.  Start a blog and link to me.  But I won’t let your nit-picking, fact-checking, minute detail correcting stop me from finishing this story. </rant>

It is, after all, just a story.  I never claimed it was 100% accurate.  I know it isn’t. I was young then, and we were drinking a bit.  A lot of bits, in fact.  So I’ll finish MY story.  Write your version if you want.

So we left off with Mr. Ryder.  He was harassing and bullying us on the highway.  He was in a huge truck, and we were on bikes.  Yeah – easy to bully us. 

As I recall, me and another bike were behind this idiot – a guy that was doing everything he could to keep us behind him – to hurt us even, I thought.

We were at an advantage though – our friends were in front of us (and him), and we were not in a hurry.  Trucker’s usually are.  We fell back – way back.  We had fuel for another hour, (yes, motorcycles get AMAZING mileage – but they also have VERY small gas tanks… so we had to stop about every 2.5-3 hours for gas).  We had an hour left.  Maybe.

Maybe less, it turned out.  We were heading uphill now – fairly steeply.  We didn’t burn a lot of gas, but the truck did.  He needed to stop before we did - just about ten minutes up the road.  As he pulled off the highway into a truck stop we pulled over on the shoulder.  We needed to chat.  As we started discussing where the next gas station might be (Google Maps didn’t exist then.  Hell, Google didn’t exist then.  Commercial GPS didn’t exist.  We were guessing.)

We guessed we needed gas now.  So we watched, and waited for Mr. Ryder to fill his truck, then enter the truck stop.

We then approached the pumps and filled up.  We rode around the back of the place and parked our bikes.  And did something we had not done the whole trip – we de-bike-ified.  We took off everything biker we could – so we would look “normal”.   In the end, we didn’t.  But it didn’t matter.

We went into the restaurant half of the truck stop – not the store/motel/whorehouse part (it WAS one of those places).  We sat down to eat about the time Mr. Ryder walked from the “store” side to the food side.  And we were not well-hidden.  You can’t wash biker off people that wanted to be bikers – he saw us – and came walking over to us.

And, giving Danny his due on this one - Danny and two of the other guys step out of nowhere.  Right into (physically into) Mr. Ryder.  Now Mr. Ryder may have been an ass – but he was NOT a dumb-ass.  He saw us two at the table, and the three of them.  He could cipher, I reckon.

As it turned out, he was a very nice guy.  Really – he did turn out to be very nice.  He bought our “damn near everything” bag of food/snacks at the truck stop.  He didn’t have a choice.  Danny wasn’t happy with him.  In fact, Danny stayed back and chatted with him for over 30 minutes – while the rest of us hit the road.  Once Danny caught up with us late that evening he said he had not seen Mr. Ryder since he left from the truck stop.  Mr. Ryder was a bit afraid when he wasn’t in his big ass truck, it appears. 

We spent the night is an out-of-business gas station – like the ones you often find in the middle of no where and wonder why they ever existed in the first place.  It was an old Sinclair station – I haven’t seen one in years.  But they had this huge dinosaur statue in the front, much, much lager than this one.  They also still had the roof over the pumps, and since it was drizzling, we set up camp right by the long unused pumps.  On the concrete, which wasn’t a big deal, since we had sleeping bags (idea – why not invent a sleeping bag that has an air mattress built into it?  It probably exists now, but didn’t then!).

As we were sitting around chatting, and drinking a few beers, one of the guys came from the empty nearly destroyed gas station carrying a propane tank.  He cranked it open, and some gas escaped.  So of course, he lit it, to see if it would burn.  It did, of course.  He shut the valve off quickly, and the flame died out.  Then we started joking around about what we should do with the propane – and someone had the bright idea of making the dinosaur breath fire.

We took the tank and duct-taped it to the dinosaurs neck.  We also cut a section of gas pump hose off and taped it to the tank nozzle.  We ran the tube up the side of the dinosaur, and to the mouth.  All on the back side from the road.  We tested it – and by opening the valve all the way, we could get about a three foot flame coming out of this dinosaur’s mouth.  Very cool!  But it wasn’t dark yet, so we didn’t set it off for long.  Instead, we had a few more beers, and wondered generally screwed around with a lot of things that could have killed us – for instance – was there any gas left in the underground tanks?  Only real way to know is to drop a match in there, right?  Yeah – not a bright move!  But these tanks had evidently been filled with water, even as a safety precaution, or because rainwater eventually leaked in.  We didn’t even get a spark (thankfully!)

Finally it was almost dark, and we went about the process of lighting up our “dragon”.  It was amazing in the twilight, but it was just us – that was hardly fun!  We were on a smaller two-lane highway – it didn’t have a ton of traffic, but it had some.  The gas station was also on a curve, so as west-bound traffic approached their car lights lit the dinosaur up very well – they couldn’t miss it.  And with a three foot fireball shooting out of it’s mouth, they absolutely couldn’t miss it! 

For the next hour or so, we played with traffic – the dragon would come to life with short bursts of flame, then die back out – only to shoot an even longer burst of flame.  A couple of times people accelerated very quickly and raced away.  Other times they stopped – and took pictures!  Somewhere, in an old photo album, is a picture of a Sinclair dinosaur shooting flames out of it’s mouth.  We kept this up until we ran out of gas, and beer, and eventually drifted off to sleep.  Surprisingly we didn’t get a visit from the cops that night.

On the next day, we will be in Oregon.  Heading North, to Portland before heading south, down the entire West Coast of the United States. We aren’t even halfway done with our trip – we’ve been going a lot more slowly that we expected.  Partially because for some reason, being out on the road, none of us felt a sense of urgency to get back to our lives, jobs, kids, wives, etc.  Even though most of us were in the Military we just didn’t feel a lot of pressure to get going.  Somehow I think we all knew this was the trip of a lifetime – and we were in no hurry to see it end.

I had already used all of my leave (vacation) to take this trip – and there was no way I could be back on time – not even if I turned around that day and headed back.  Tomorrow I would have to call in some big favors.  But on this night, I fell asleep under the aluminum roof of an old gas station – smiling about the fire-breathing dragon, and wondering what the people thought about it as they drove by.  And today I wonder if they still occasionally remember it.  And if they do, I hope they smile.

Anyway, here is a teaser from it…

We were at an advantage though – our friends were in front of us (and him), and we were not in a hurry.  Trucker’s usually are.  We fell back – way back.  We had fuel for another hour, (yes, motorcycles get AMAZING mileage – but they also have VERY small gas tanks… so we had to stop about every 2.5-3 hours for gas).  We had an hour left. 

Maybe less, it turned out.  We were heading uphill now – fairly steeply.  We didn’t burn a lot of gas, but the truck did.  He needed to stop before we did - just about ten minutes up the road.  As he pulled off the highway into a truck stop we pulled over on the shoulder.  We needed to chat.  And we started discussing where the next gas station might be (Google Maps didn’t exist then.  Hell, Google didn’t exist then.  Commercial GPS didn’t exist.  We were guessing.

La Gesse – Inbox

The first thing Danny did was call me an idiot (but politely).  This story DID NOT happen in the spring of 1982.  It was actually the spring of 1983.  Duh – BIG mistake on my part.  After he told me that, I thought about it – and he was right – it was the last year I was in the Navy that I made this trip.  1983.  I got out of the Navy in DEC 1983, and got married in FEB 1984.

So shit – now what do I do?  Try and rename the whole damned thing?  No – that’s too much work for me.  It was over twenty years ago, and who really cares it it was 23 or 22 years ago?  And if I don’t care, why should anyone?

So that was BIG ERROR NUMBER ONE.

BIG ERROR NUMBER TWO was forgetting a two bike, one truck motorcycle accident.  That will be the lead-in to the next segment, kind of a brief flash-back (hey, every sitcom can do it, why can’t I?).  The accident didn’t directly involve me (but it did, says Danny, affect Danny)… so I forgot about it.  Selfish me.

Anyway, I offered Danny an editorial position over these posts.  He said no.  He says he enjoys reading them, and reliving them, but better some of his past stay in his past.  I understand.  Not everyone can walk naked on a nudist beach without feeling uncomfortable.  Different strokes…

The way I look at it, all of my life experiences – from mistakes I have made, people I have hurt, chemicals I have abused – all of those experiences combined make me who I am right now – this day.  And I’m not totally unhappy with who I am.  For a while I was, but I just decided to be happier.  Really – I made a decision that I was going to die one way or the other, so I might as well die happy. And since I don’t know WHEN I will die, I try to just always stay happy.

Sorry – rambling.

So the problem with Danny now is that he won’t tell me if I am screwing up until after I post it.  By then, it’s a public screw-up.  Danny – I really wish you would at least look at a post in advance, via email or something -if you agree to do it, I won’t even mention that you’ve agreed to do it.

But I know he’s looking over my shoulder…  and that is kind of weird.  For some reason, I’m finding it hard to just sit and think the story.

So I am working through my own style of writer’s block.

Technically, I am curious to see if the next post has a different “feel to it” compared to the last ones. 

Rob

So now almost broke, tired, annoyed, and seriously wondering if I would be better off just turning around and heading straight home, we meet Mr Ryder again.

We are on a long stretch of highway, just entering the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. There is traffic, but not too much. It seems to come in spurts (normally stacked around RV’s going too damn slow). While we are almost constantly climbing uphill at this point, the road is still fairly straight.

As Mr. Ryder flew past us we all looked at each other with a “WTF?” expression on our faces. Then, we noticed the trucker had hit his brakes – hard. He wasn’t exactly stopping, but he was most certainly slowing down – quickly. I wasn’t feeling good about this, so I slowed way down – almost coming to a halt on the shoulder. One of the guys on a rice-burner flew past us and screamed around the truck – probably doing 70-80 MPH. The truck eased off his brakes and started to accelerate after our friend – we sped up and followed. I stayed about a block back. I wasn’t too concerned – I knew there was no way the truck could catch the bike – but I was concerned enough that I didn’t want to be near it.

The truck was charging up a 10-15 degree incline, and it was accelerating hard. Black smoke billowed from the truck and we could hear the engine was working hard, but the trucker didn’t back down. He was pushing his truck as hard as he could.

Suddenly, another pair of our bikes screamed out to the other lane, and flew past the trucker. Now we were split – three in front of the truck, and eight of us behind it.

Since we knew we could out-run the truck, the others of us in the back motioned to each other that we too would pass. We accelerated as a group, staggered about 50 feet down the road. This was a mistake. Mr. Ryder had enough time to react to us, and he started swerving his truck across two lanes – trying to prevent us from passing. Several bikes made it past him – I didn’t. The six of us left behind the truck backed up a little and regrouped. We decided that we would try passing him again – but two at a time.

At this point we were all doing well over 80 MPH. So to pass the truck quickly we would have to accelerate to about 100 MPH or so. On the bike I own today, 100 MPH doesn’t scare me much – the bike still handles very well at that speed (132 is the fastest I have done on it). But on my 1972 Harley, 100 MPH with that big front fork was just suicidal. The bike was barely controllable at 80. It wouldn’t be stable at 100.

I elected not to be in the first new group to attempt to pass. I decided I liked where I was – the idiot was in front of me, and as long as he was far enough in front of me, I didn’t think he could hurt me.

As we started a long curve to the right, two bikes suddenly dashed off to the left lane, trying to pass the truck before he could react and block him off. And this is when I learned a life-lesson – people will generally take advantage of a situation to benefit themselves – without a lot of regard for their “friends”. It’s a survival thing, I think.

But what happened here surprised me – as two of the bikes screamed into the left lane at close to 100 MPH, two of the other bikes headed directly towards the read of the truck, moving to the right only when they were close enough the trucker couldn’t see them.

The two of us still left behind the truck just looked at each other… neither of us had understood that there was a “plan”. Turns out there wasn’t – the other bikes just reacted. But I felt abandoned. The only two bikes left behind the truck were the largest bike (a big ass Harley that carried as much crap as four other bikes combined), and the only true chopper. The other bike was big, and it was slow. My bike wasn’t big, or slow, but it was also the bike with the most un-roadworthy configuration. We were the stragglers.

(I wrote this a few days ago, and planned to add more to this post – but since I don’t think I’ll get a chance to add more until next week, we’ll call this part five).

This is part 4 of a multi-part post. Download the PDF above and catch up if this story is new to you.

So I screwed up the timeline a bit – I left out meeting our trucker friend before we met the musical family from hell.

The first meeting wasn’t a big thing – we were at a truck stop. We filled up with fuel, ate a good meal, and showered. This wasn’t unusual – we often took advantage of truck stop showers. We were spending money, so we ignored the “trucker’s only” signs. It was never an issue.

Until we met “Mr. Ryder”. I call him that because his truck said “Ryder” on it and we were never formally introduced.

Unlike many of the truck stops, this one had individual shower stalls – some of the others were like a High School locker room – huge room, many shower heads, no privacy. Here there were walls. But they were only half walls – you could still see the person next to you, from mid-waist up.

In any case, we were showering when this redneck from hell comes in and starts talking crap from the time he entered the showers. He was just randomly talking bad about bikers, motorcycles, us, and even our momma’s. None of us wanted trouble. Especially not at a truck stop – those guys outnumbered us 20:1. We wanted to get clean, and get going.

Surprisingly, everyone ignored him. We finished showering, dressed, and left. He was still in the shower. We would see him again in less than an hour.

We hit the road, and it started to rain. Nothing too bad, except I didn’t have a windshield on my bike, and it was hard to keep my goggles from fogging up. We all slowed down as the rain increased. We normally would have pulled off the road, but traffic was light, and we weren’t making good time on this trip. We pushed on.

Suddenly this 18-wheeler comes screaming up into our group. Really – we were riding in two lanes since traffic was light, and the rain was not. This guy flew right down the center of the lanes, pulling his air horn the whole time. We all swerved to the side of the road as his tires kicked up enough water to blind us. I saw only the word “Ryder” on the back of the truck. It was a stencil, and the R was faded much more that the rest of the letters. I would remember the truck.

We didn’t see the truck again for a couple days – and we mostly forgot about it. We had no idea the guy in the truck was the guy in the showers.

OK – so now we are back where part three starts – we rode that day in the rain, and the next day was dry, but we were all tired – so we looked for a place to stay.

I’ll assume you’ve read part three by now.

So our two night stop turned out to be a one night stop – a night we thought we could afford to party a bit, since we didn’t plan on being on the road the next day. A night we didn’t get a lot of sleep. A day with the police, not knowing what was going to happen to us. It was anything but relaxing. None of us was in a very good mood.

When we were finally escorted out of the county we just wanted to put miles between us, and Idaho. We rode faster than we had the entire trip – pushing the then 55 MPH speed limit by at least 25 MPH.

The longer we rode that day, the more windy it got. The wind was so strong that I moved behind one of the larger bikes (a Gold Wing). I was looking for a wind break.

The large bike didn’t provide a lot of relief, and as I looked at the group of bikes in front of me I realized why. The wind was causing all of the riders to lean fairly hard to the left – into the wind. The cross-wind was so strong that everyone had to lean into the wind to keep their bike’s on the road.

I moved to the right of the Gold Wing, hoping to get some wind relief that way, but the road was a bit more congested, and the Gold Wing was moving all over the lane. I couldn’t stay next to him because I couldn’t trust him not to veer into me.

I dropped to the back of the pack, leaned my bike about 25 degrees to the left, and rode that way. For hours. I didn’t think that seat could be more uncomfortable – but at a 25 degree slant, it rode up the crack of my ass. For hours.

Finally we stopped for the night, and it must have been uneventful. I imagine I fell asleep before the engine on my bike had even cooled.

The next day the wind was still from the left, and even stronger. We literally rode hundreds and hundreds of miles leaning to the left. When we finally rode out of the wind my bike was not “feeling right”. There was a very rough feeling to the road, where it had felt pretty smooth. The road surface hadn’t changed.

We finally got to a town with a Harley Dealership and all pulled in for a rest (Harley Dealer’s are VERY friendly and almost all have free coffee, a lounge, etc). We ordered a pizza for delivery (the pizza guy had delivered to the Harley dealership before!). And we got our bikes serviced. Even the non-Harley’s were getting looked at.

Most of us needed new tires – we had literally worn the left side of the tires off by riding so long while leaning so far. We were somewhere in Montana.

We had all planned on a tire change during this trip – somewhere around Los Angeles, we figured. We were a LONG way from LA. We were riding a long way and most of us were carrying far to much for our bikes. Not unusual to need new tires on a long ride.

But when the mechanic walked into the lounge, everyone held their breath – someone was getting bad news. It’s really not unlike waiting in an Emergency Room and having a blood-splattered doctor walk in to give someone bad news.

“Who has the tricked out Sportster?”, he asked.

Shit. That would be me.

“The bearings are gone front and back, but we gottem instock, yawannem?”

I had ridden far enough and long enough leaning into the wind that I trashed my tires AND my bearings. No, I did NOT want to buy bearings – but I had no choice. I needed bearings. They kinda help the wheels go around. New tires and bad bearings would make old tires out of the new ones very quickly.

It cost me over $500 for that stop. Keep in mind that I was making only about $620/month as an E-4 Navy Corpsman at the time. This was a huge hit – almost as much as I had budgeted for the entire trip. I was NOT happy.

A few minutes later, another guy was less happy – he lost a cylinder. His trip was done. We lost our second rider. We did stick around long enough to make sure he had some kind of arrangements to get “home”, but we left him there. Alone. At the time I don’t think it bothered me at all. Today I don’t think I could do it – I’ve grown. Now I recognize the value of a team. We left him alone, a thousand miles from home. That’s shitty.

But we rode on – having now decided to go to Seattle before we go to Oregon. One of the guys had a sister there. On a farm. With a lot of space. We were looking forward to really spending a couple of days in one place. So we rode hard.

About halfway through that day we passed a Ryder truck. I didn’t think anything of it. We passed thousands of trucks.

But a few minutes later, when the truck comes flying back on us, with the air-horn blowing, I realize, as it passes doing at least 80, that the “R” in “Ryder” is faded.

I had seen that truck before.

This is part 4 of ? Part 5 in the next few days.