Riding Weather

The weather lately has been great! Temps getting down into low 70's, even 60's at night, hovering around 90 during day. Easing up on A/C and is great to ride in.

These past 2 weekends we have gone on a couple of rides. Well at least I did. We had one of our annual summer rides, the Bug Run, the evening of Sat 22. Darlene didn't ride for safety reasons - group riding at night and she has some difficult with night vision, so I did this one on my own with the chapter. IT was a great night, not too hot, but typically the bugs were few and far between, in fact this was probably the cleanest my bike has been after one of these runs. Aside from not qualifying for any prizes, not having completely bug splattered bike is not a bad thing.... In fact our ride from Jefferson the other weekend was much worse, and with very large bugs....

Now this weekend past, our "adversaries" from down the road, the North Texas HOG chapter, had their rain-rescheduled chapter fundraiser, the Stacked Deck poker run.
We decided to show en force, for a bunch of reasons, but to primarly encourage like attendance at our fund raising run, Pass The Pigs, in September. Just a friendly competition between friends, so to speak, to see who has the best turnout at each others event.

The Stacked Deck run was a good ride of about 100 miles. Personally it was a little too much interstate for my liking, I prefer the less stressful and less traveled FM roads, but a good time was had by all, and based on the attendance I think NT has a successful event.

We ended up at the Cottage Lounge in Dallas off Northwest Highway, definitely a biker bar and apparently a place that is friendly to the Scorpions MC. Saw one other patch member from the Warlocks from Florida.

Anyway a couple of shots from these rides.

New Trick

Double click on the image to get the full effect!




No animals were harmed during the creation of this image, and yes, we are cat owners.

Ghost busting

Well I guess we scared the ghosts, or else slept through them. We weren't in one of the haunted rooms however, so who knows. Previously we had stayed in the Excelsior hotel, where there are also rumored to be ghosts, this past weekend was at the Jefferson Hotel. Actually I had more vibe from this one than the Excelsior, so maybe there were ghosts?

We rode separate from the group as we wanted to take advantage of the trip east to collect some ABC points. We did get several and the route I planned had some unexpected happenings. Well not so much happenings but a few of the roads... When I planned the route I usually avoid Country Roads (CR designation) as they are often dirt roads. So in my planning I went on a couple of named roads, thinking they were either FM or SH roads. Well these roads; Dahlia, Hollyhock and Periwinkle, were none of these, however they were paved. Technically. They were about 1 and a half lanes at the widest, no markings, and were through the East Texas forests. Rolling and curvy, and while not in the best shape, there were not significant issues. Just had to take care and exercise caution. In total we rode between 15 and 20 miles on these roads. I have to look back at the map and see the alternate routes on FM roads to see what options we would have had.

The one disappointment on the trip was that it appears that someone has made off with the Uncertain road sign so we were unable to collect "U" this weekend as Uncertain, TX does not have a post office or other government building.

Jefferson is a fun old town that really caters to both tourists and bikers. We had a great time with our friends and lots of laughs at Auntie Skinners Riverboat Club.

Weekend miles were about 360 miles. I think I'm just about due for my next oil change and need to start thinking about brake fluid and fork oil...

East Texas Ghosts

Jefferson, TX is an old "port" (riverport) city in Texas. It has a fairly colorful history and is reputed to be one fo the more haunted towns in Texas.

It is also a very popular destination for motorcyclists. In East Texas, you have to travel through the Piney Woods to get to it, and is located just west of the only natural lake in Texas, Caddo Lake.

WE have been to Jefferson in the past, its a nice little town. Since we also do our ABC's of Touring, how can you avoid getting Uncertain, TX as the U city, just a few miles east.

Fishing Trip

Its been a busy couple of weeks, last weekend we took an extended 5 day weekend and took a family vacation down to the Schlitterbahn Resort in New Braunfels. In addition to the waterpark we were on the river so we tubed down the Comal river multiple times. We took one of the boys friends with us as well.

This past weekend we had a little party on Saturday and invited a bunch of our friends. It was a great success and a lot of fun. Of course we managed to finish up some more projects just in time, most notably the downstairs powder room, well almost finished, the baseboard still needs to be caulked...

Sunday was a day of rest, literally. I did a couple of pre-rides, wanted to do the bug run but it looks very similiar to past years and would have taken another couple of hours in the heat. As it was I was on the bike about 2 hours or so and ready to hit the pool when I got back. Around supper I asked the boys if they wanted to go fishing and they were all game so we took off to drown some worms and hopefully catch some mighty panfish. Well we had some fun and some luck. Everybody caught some, and they were plentiful, which was good as they weren't very big!




Of course some were a bit bigger than others....