Safe and Sound at Home

nuff said.. Actually too tired to write anything, will have to spend some time organizing before I post.

Friday

All downhill from now. Great weather to date. Tomorrow is Saturday. We are in Woodward, OK. Likely rain on way home tomorrow.

Tuesday - Day 4

Well, Day 4 already.

Missed a couple of postings, obviously. so this is a bit of a placeholder Will fill in the blanks later.

we are in Deadwood. to get here yesterday we did go through the Rocky Mountain National Park.

Pretty cool roads today, lots of wildlife, Mount Rushmore....

BHR - Day 1

We arrived in Raton NM about 6 pm. I think we have close to 30 bikes. 500+ miles, have to verify tomorrow. Great ride but long, New Mexico is beautiful Lots and lots of antelope

Countdown has begun!

Less than 48 hours to go.... We have to be in Decatur at 7 am on Saturday. Have been getting ready, have most of my clothes packed, I need to see what other bag I have to take. I'm pretty well at my capacity, but want a little more without overstuffing everything. I hope our trip is relatively dry, we have been having a lot of rain here in North Texas. Gainesville had over 8 inches and major flooding earlier this week. We did not get that brunt only about 1.5 inches. Rain or threat every day. As long as we get on the road dry I will be relatively happy!

Here is our high level plan.

Day 1(512 miles)
Decatur to Raton, New Mexico. Basically 287 over to Amarillo, then 385/87 to Raton.

Day 2 (317 miles) the scenery begins to improve!
I-25 North to Walsenburg
Hwy 69 through Westcliffe to Hwy 50 (The Sangre de Christo mountain range will be on our left as we ride this valley)
Hwy 50 west to Hwy 285
Hwy 285 north to Leadville (Highest in elevation incorporated town in the United States)
Hwy 91 from Leadville over Fremont Pass (11,313 feet)
Pickup I-70 at Wheeler Junction and head back east through the Eisenhower Tunnel
Pickup US40 at Empire and take it over Berthoud Pass (11,307 feet)
That will bring us into Winter Park where we spend the night.

Day 3: (459 miles)
Follow US40 to Granby and pickup Hwy 34.
Hwy 34 goes through Rocky Mountain National Park. It is also called Trail Ridge Road. We will go over several passes. The highest one being a little over 12,000 feet.

At Loveland we will pick up I-25 and head North
We will stay on I-25 all the way to Ammon where we pick up Hwy 18, Hwy 18 to Hwy 85, Hwy 85 to Deadwood

Day 4: (153 miles)
Mount Rushmore, the Iron Mountain Road (famous for its pig tail curves), Needles Highway, lunch in Hill City and Crazy Horse Monument in the afternoon.
We will be in Custer State Park. It is a state park of South Dakota.
Mount Rushmore is a National Monument vs. a National Park.

Day 5 (373 miles)
Spearfish Canyon, Devil’s Tower and run up to North Dakota for those that want to say they have ridden in that state. The plan is just to cross the border and come back down to Sturgis. Visit Sturgis HD on the way back to Deadwood

Day 6 (402 miles)
Depart Deadwood, stop at Rapid City HD, stop at Wall Drug Store, ride through Badlands National Park, then start heading south through Nebraska to North Platte.

Day 7 (381 miles)
North Platte to Woodward, OK

Day 8 (485 miles)
Woodward, OK to home via Turkey, TX for those that need the LSC point. This can be shorter if you don’t need the LSC point in Turkey

BHR preparations

No riding to speak of this weekend. Took bike to the shop, had to get two new tires and oil change. Probably could have went a few more miles, although there wasn't a lot left on the rear tire and with over 3000 miles expected before the end of the month, it had to be done. Also picked up a fairing bag that everyone seems to like so much for all the small miscellaneous stuff that needs a place to go.

The BHR, or Black Hills Rendevous, will take us through 9 states including Texas. In order, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and back home. We will be gone Saturday through Saturday. It will be a long ride through incredible scenery.

We also did some work on the house this weekend, working in the game room to install a fridge/microwave built in.

States ridden map

Well I found this link to create a map of states I have ridden. Not many so far but after this month it will change quite a bit.



create your own personalized map of the USA

ROT Rally

Went to ROT on the weekend. Originally Darlene and I were supposed to go but we've been doing so much we changed our minds. Darlene wanted to stay home, spend some time with the boys, unpack and also save for the BHR trip. She's been there before, I truly have not, so I did go down, but just for one night.

Jiggy and I headed down bright and early Friday morning. We left Lewisville just after 7 am and headed straight down 35. That was one of the best trips I've ever taken down through Austin. We have virtually no traffic tie ups, and it was a workday morning! We arrived at the rally site, registered and parked by about 11:30 am.

We hung out for a while, checked out the vendors, the bikes, the grounds and all the people for a while then went to the hotel to get our room and get cleaned up. Afterwards we hung out on 6th street for supper and to check out the bikes and people.

We ventured over to congress to watch the parade, which took forever to start, and took even longer to end! In fact we left before it was over. We then hooked up with Stitch and a buddy of his for more debauchery. However it didn't get too crazy overall.

Saturday we got up when we got up, had breakfast and headed out for a ride at around 10:30. We went to Luckenbach, via some Ranch to Market roads, then on to the Willow City Loop. I left Jiggy at the road to Enchanted Rock then headed home. I got in around 8:30. It was a long day, stayed off interstate for the most part.

Total weekend miles 675. Time for new tires and oil change before our big trip.

Memphis - Home of Elvis and the Ancient Greeks

Cities - Talking Heads

Well we didn't see Elvis, however there was a Pyramid in Memphis, although that's Egypt, not Greece.

Great trip, 1160 miles for the weekend. We left 7 am on Saturday, leaving the rain behind in DFW which it apparently did all weekend. Pretty much a straight trip to Memphis, about 450 miles. Mostly interstate but it got us there. A little rest and we are on the trolley to Beale Street. What a great town and street. It was closed off to traffic and was like one giant bar. Big A$$ beers everywhere. We went to the Pig to eat and watched and listened to a couple of musicians. Then after that went to Pat O'Brians to listen to the piano guys and have three hurricanes come over us. It was a lot of fun, we headed back to the hotel around 10:30 as it had been a long day.

Oh, Celebrity sightings, the Bird Lady from American Idol...

Up and at'em early on Sunday, some of us more worse for wear than others. Our Fearless leader Paul was probably the worst. Off to Russellville, AR for the next night. It was a good ride. We all took it a little easier this night. Run road of the day was Hwy 7 from Harrison to Russellville, through small towns of Dogpatch as well as Booger Hollow and Chigger Hollow. They sure like the confederate flag in parts of Western Arkansas...

Monday morning everyone was refreshed and we continued on our way down Highway 7 through Hot Springs to IH 30 where we boogied our way back to Dallas. We hit rain just East of Greenville, but for the most part stayed dry as it was a brief shower. Home by 4:30. A long but very fun weekend.

TX State Rally

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.

Happy Mother's Day

Another busy weekend. Friday was the new owners ride. We went to Betty's Cafe in Aubrey. It was a great evening to ride. Small group, and pod 2 (our pod) arrived before pod 1.... Funny thing about wrong turns they can add a lot of time to your trip!

Saturday was the dealership's 5th anniversary and it was our chapter meeting. Very good turnout. The dealership had lots of activities including a bike competition. Lots of bikes were entered and some very cool ones! We hung out till early afternoon then headed home.





I loaded up the Garage attic in the afternoon. Man that's not easy work. I need to get one of those step/ladder thingys though. Its a bear just using a step ladder and we access so often that little piece of gyproc won't last.

Sunday was Mother's day. The boys (and I) made supper. It was pretty good, Ryan did the bar-b-Q, we cooked beer-can chicken and corn on the cob. The corn turned out very well. Corey and I made the tomato slices with buffalo mozzerella appetizers (yum!) and Glazed carrots. Marc made the garlic mashed potatoes and green beens, and of course, dessert - Cocoa Krispie squares, which were very good!

Behind!

Geez, I'm falling behind. I have pics to post from the storm, of which are practically occuring every night! we are getting lots or rain and some pretty severe weather, but not like the other night.

Pass The Pigs went well, we certainly achieved our objectives, unfortunatley we had rain. No bike games, no bike portraits. But all in all it was fun and successful.

This week, more rain. Busy at work with training and homework. Also 3, yes 3 hockey games. Its playoffs. We won the first round of D tonight and need to win tomorrow for C league, otherwise we are out in C.

Whew, quick update, will post pics, etc when I get a bit more time!

Storms!

After a late start, this spring is turning out to be quite a wet one. Not so much constant rain but when it rains, it rains big! This past Wednesday was no exception. Within the past 2 weeks we had a major rain with signficant flooding in Denton, up to 8 inches of rain. In Mckinney we had quite a bit but not that much. Now Wednesday, we had tornadic conditions but thankfully no tornadoes, just 60-80 mph gusts! Fortunately we had not damage although others in the neighborhood weren't so lucky.

The creek at Winniford park was a full as I have ever seen it, and probably more so. Lots of tree limbs down in the area and some were pretty big. We lost power for over an hour. I don't know the last time we had lost power for even that long.

Lavon Lake is still a bit low, but is near full, which is pretty amazing. Late last summer it was 18 feet low, nearing Stage 4 drought conditions. We are still under Stage 3 for some reason. Even as recently as 3 months ago we were still about 15 feet low. I haven't ridden by the lake in a few weeks, I am sure it looks very different now, like a lake, not a pasture!

Pass the Pigs

This Saturday is our annual primary fund-raiser. Its for Cumberland Children's home, which is actaully a new recipient, and is much closer to the dealership and within the community. Hopefully we will have great weather and a great turnout. The ride is over 100 miles long in the North Texas area. It will be an all day event and I think we must have well over 40 volunteers assisting.

My primary role will be as a photographer and will be setting up a photo "booth" for bike portraits. Will be interesting to see how this all comes off!

EDS Bike Show

Tuesday was the rescheduled EDS bike show. It probably worked out better as it got a bit more visibility, and allowed for some additional perks including a (brief) appearance by the Teutuls of OCC and American Chopper fame. There were a total off 69 bikes entered, of all shapes and sizes incliding a bicycle, a moped, several racing bikes including a drag bike, jap bikes, American V-twins, a trike and even a Honda Rune.

Unfortunately as previously there was rain scheduled and even more so this time, it actually came, in buckets! We had rainfall of up to 8 inches in the North Texas area, I think in Plano/Mckinney we had multiple inches as well. Of course as soon as the show ended the skys opened up, with severe weather. I got ready and left as soon as I could, but it was not soon enough and got thoroughly soaked on my way home. In fact my feet were wet before I even left the parking lot. I don't have a lot of experience in the rain, but that was probably as hard a rain as any I have driven in, even in a car.

Wildflower Ride

Well this weekend was the Wildflower Ride. I must say, if you were to be plopped down in Texas, at this time of the year, in this part of the country, you would never want to leave! What a great trip, beautiful sites, sounds and smells.

We took off Friday morning, all told I believe we had 62 bikes depart, I don't know what the final count was. It was a unique KSU, as we had a friendly police officer block traffic so all 5 pods could leave at the same time. With the additional 50 or so miles from Mckinney, we put on about 380 miles that day, with a couple of nice detours and the Willow City Loop. We rode some of the best rides in the Hill Country on Friday and this weekend, without a doubt.

Saturday was a bit more of the same, our group was the laid back group, a shorter ride perhaps but a lot of fun. We went and had BBQ at Coopers in Llano, which was phenomonal.

Friday night's meal was at the Auslander Restaurant in Fredericksburg and Saturday was BBQ (hams, hots, sausages) back at the hotel. Both nights were a lot of fun.

On Sunday Marv led us home, heading out in wet conditions. We had some unfortunate occurances however. After a relatively problem free weekend, we had two bikes go down. We passed Kim and Glen on the side of the road, thinking Kim may be having some discomfort as Glen waved everybody on, however she was (unknown at the time) nursing a broken hand and waiting for Luke to come and rescue Old Blue. In the end the news all around was a lot better than it could have been.

I have to double check my mileage but I think it was around 850 miles total.

NASCAR

Well, the weekend is over, everyone has recovered. NASCAR is over and on to the next track. What a blast! Dale and Peter left this am. They arrived Wednesday of last week and we went to the Texas Motor Speedway on Thursday. We rented an RV and stayed next to Darlene's boss' family. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of liquor! The weather was fairly typical of this time of year, with a cold front keeping temperatures down a bit.

We caught some Busch qualifying on Thursday, some NASCAR practice on Friday and then the weather got severe! Tornado warnings, everyone that was in the facility, including us, had to huddle in the bathrooms. A tornado touched down in Haltom City, which is about 15 miles south of the track. All other events for the evening, including NASCAR qualifying and the DALE movie were cancelled. The cold weather and mud unfortunately kept the wildlife at bay as well...

Saturday was the Busch race, it was a good race, good seats. Sat night Peter was a passenger in a race car and he was very excited.

Sunday we had Pit Pavilion passes, so we had some goodies and a pit pass. we were in the pits for almost 2 hours and I got tons of pictures. They closed the pits 1 hour before the start of the race, we went back to truck, got beer and got to race after the Nat anthem, but before the green flag! Talk about cutting it close.

The race was very exciting, Peter got ticked cause Jr, got taken out of the race by a wreck initiated by Tony Stewart.

Of course the truck was parked where we left it in the morning, which was great for the mornings events but not in relation to our seat. After a short delay where we knew we would not be able to move the truck, we walked the half mile to the RV. We ate, and eventually went back to get the truck. Oh, the weather on Sunday was fantastic. We overdressed of course as it warmed up more than expected.

all in all a very fun and exciting weekend.

New Home

Well, we got moved on the weekend. Easter Weekend. Actually ended up having lots of help, was a bit concerned as a lot of folks were unavailable. We had 2 large uhauls, did the first 2 loads in 2 hours, the next two took a bit longer, misc stuff, odd shaped, we didn't pack as well etc. Sunday went back and spent almost 5 hours fininsing up the remainder of stuff and cleaning old house.

Living out of boxes, working from home this week till Dale and Peter arrive then we'll be taking some vacation and heading to Nascar.

Next weekend is the wildflower ride, I guess by the middle of
May we may be relatively unpacked!

Going through riding withdrawals though!

PTP Preride

This past Saturday we did the Pass The Pigs route to make sure and prepare for where the piglets will be setting up. The route is around 130 mile. Its basically from Corinth, to Celina, to Krum, to Lewisville, and pretty much all good FM roads.

Tomorrow is Friday and there is a bike show scheduled at EDS, hopefully the weather will cooperate. The bike show is part of the annual Byron Nelson festivities and this year, EDS had teamed with Orange County Choppers to build a theme bike, actually 3 of them. One goes to the winner of the tournament, one goes to the highest bidder at auction and the third as an EDS travelling icon for lack of better term.

Also have been progressing on the move, getting ready everything seems to be falling into place, although the pool is going to take some more work.

5 Down

Well, we are back, quite the ride. 450 miles on Saturday, we left the house at 6:15 am, and 528 miles back on Sunday. I guess that's pretty close to 1000 miles this weekend!

We got 5 Challenge points this weekend and they were in fact pretty challenging! Great weather Saturday, cloud cover and a bit windy Sunday but no rain and not cold. Although at this time of year the temp varies a bit, especially if you start when its still dark out. A couple of u-turns this weekend but not excessively so. Some great roads in East Texas.

Saturday in Nacogdoches there was a flower market or some such thing downtown right in front of the statue. We drove around a bit, then went for lunch. When we came back it had cleared out enough we were able to get all 11 bikes taken care of. We hit the harley dealer on the way out. They were having their chili cookoff so it was hoppin', lots of bikes around. Next stop the monument then on to Kemah.

Kemah was south east of Houston, and there must be only one way into the boardwalk. What a traffic nightmare. The last 5 miles of the trip probably took us 30-40 minutes. Lots of fun at the Aquarium Restaurant with the group.

Sunday morning off again at 7:30. This time we had 14 bikes. By the time we got to our 5 and final point of the trip, in Gruene, it was getting well into the day. Of course there was a festival going on in Gruene, so another exercise in creative photography was required. Holly, bless her heart, was able to coerce the sherrif that was directly traffic to accomodate us in from of the Dance Hall. It was around 3:00 in the afternoon, maybe a bit later and we still had many miles left to go. Five of us decided not to take the scenic route and to scoot up 35 instead....

What a nightmare, we probably lost about 90 minutes due to traffic. There was a major backlog south of Austin (surprise, surprise) then some more south of Waco, but the worst was about 10 miles south of the 35 split. That took forever to get through! Well we eventually got home about 8:30 pm.