This past weekend was the Texas State HOG Rally in Amarillo. Darlene and I rode up Friday morning on our own and wanted to get the Turkey LoneStar Challenge Point. We were a bit late leaving and ran into rain on the way. We took a fairly leisurely route, 380 to 114, to 70. I guess we hit rain about an hour and a half in, for about 90 minutes as well. Fairly steady rain but the roads were pretty empty so we didn't get all road spray that can make riding a nightmare. By the time we hit 70 the rain had stopped. It was a very nice ride up 70, Turkey was a very small town, the side roads were dirt (red West Texas dirt!) and it looks like Bob Wills doesn't draw the tourists he used to.
After we left Turkey we continued north on 70 and rode through the eastern portion of the Palo Duro Canyon. With the overcast skys and the remaining dampness over all the ground, the colors in Canyon were georgous and very saturated. The red rocks were as brilliant as I have ever seen. Now I know what people mean when they refer to the red rocks. During peak sunlight hours those colors would have been so washed out.
Empty roads made for excellent travel speeds. We had a short race and got our scoots up to almost 100 mph. That's the first time I've ever gone over, or much over 85. I think I actually backed off about 99 mph, with the fairing I had pretty much stopped accelerating and figured that was about enough. I probably had some more in it, Darlene said she definately did, but we'll save that for another time. The bike was very stable, I was impressed.
A bit further, onto 287 where we hit rain again about 20 miles out of Amarillo. Onto the 40, we exited and went to the rally site to register. I guess we got there around 5:00. Then we went to the hotel and hooked up with some of the others for food and drink. Late evening welcoming committee for the hotel ensued...
Saturday I washed the grime off the bikes and we had a slow start to the morning. Went to the rally site in time to "volunteer" for the bike games. I took a boatload of pictures and Darlene participated in some of the games. We check out the vendors, went to Tripps to get our pin then on to Cadillac Ranch for the obligatory pics.
Saturday afternoon was quite interesting.... There was the Jaguars Club of Holland doing their US cross country / Route 66 tour. I think there was 60 some odd Jags, some quite old, most were actually, and they had shipped from Holland, were taking 3 weeks to traverse the US, with a support team along with them. Good group of folks.
But the wedding in the hotel... African American, very large wedding party. The hotel staff had blocked some of the routes to the elevator while the wedding was in progress. We grabbed a beer and watched while waiting to head out for supper. There were 6 or 7 ladies for the bride, and an equal number of groomsmen, as well as ring bearer and flower girl. One by one the girls came out from a room, and finally the bride came out... and boy did she come out! She was about 9 months pregnant! We weren't expecting that, and even though we weren't surprised we still almost choked on our beers! Even the audience members were a sight. There was one man, perhaps a family member, cream colored vest, white pants, two tone alligator shoes, and a white fedora. We were a ways from him but he had distinctive teeth, unfortunately we were not close enough to determine if he had gold teeth or a grill of some sort. And the woman, I don't recall exactly what she was wearing but she was white, had a short black (or red?) skirt and red shoes that had leather straps wrapped halfway up her calves.
Oh well.
Sunday we took off around 8 am, just 4 of us, Darlene, Jerry, Jiggy and me, we made very good time and got home by 3:30. Round trip was 826 miles.
