Floribama Riders

The last riding day of my 2008 trip, en route to Antigua

[Written 8 October 2008
Antigua, Guatemala]

Guess what? Restaurant staffs in Latin America play loud, energetic Latin music for their amusement. It's not just in the U.S. I'm sitting close to the bar of El Arco Restaurante and Bar. The bar happens to be empty, except for employees, and I can hear the contrast in what they're playing for themselves, as compared to the tourists in the restaurant. From the bar side, I can hear interesting Latin music, but it's drowned out by the likes of Celine Dion singing the Titanic song. Oh, now it's Chicago from the Peter Cetera era. "You're the inspiration ... " Yuck.

Great weekend.... perhaps the most intense racing I have ever experienced. We sat through Ike as it rolled through and dumped several inches of rain with sustained winds of 70 mph. Not gusts, but flat out wind of 70. And they RACED in that. Holy cow. David Crandall and I had seats against the mesh fencing at the top of our section, completely exposed to the elements. Wet, wind whipped, and completely soaked, we enjoyed every minute of the action.

My (not so) funny story........

      It's Sunday night and I leave on Wednesday. I have been busy getting my bike prepped for the MotoGP trip where I'm moto-camping. The bike is a BMW K1200RS which is cumbersome (at best) to work on. After going two weeks without riding it, my garage looks like a BMW parts bin. I finally get everything sorted out and I'm ready to do a shake down ride. It's about 8:00 pm and I've got it loaded down with my camping gear and some extra weight in the Givi trunk to simulate clothing and shoes. The main reason for the ride is to adjust the headlights which just got new high output lamps and PIAA foglights that are also new. Also new tires will be scrubbed in. I know its dark not the best time for this but its better than leaving for the trip on new rubber. Also I've mounted a radar detector with helmet speakers.

     Enough of the background.

I left Birmingham for Goodland, Kansas on June 11 with a plan to ride my motorcycle 1005 miles of dirt roads through western Kansas and Nebraska, through Colorado and back to Goodland. Technically is just a Saddle Sore – but more affectionately called a Dusty Butt. Only a handful of people have completed this ride. This area of the planet is a special place where wide open spaces and lots of dirt roads come together. There are very few places where such a ride could take place.

The alarm is blaring into my ear and I jump up out of the bed, land on a hair beret, curse, stumble, and finally find the right combination of buttons and violence to silence the racket.  I haven't had much sleep, having paid for the kitchen pass with a long, long night of watching period chick flicks - I now know way more than I ever wanted too about the machinations of females in pursuit of royalty and the associated rewards.

Tired or not I am stoked to be up and finally on the way to the ride I've been looking forward to for several weeks - really since the last time Moby led a ride through the Talledega National Forest with Gadget, Stan and myself in tow.  The riding is incredible with little traffic and a great mix of easy gravel roads, harder gravel roads, and some technical rocky hills.

Full speed, full lean the front tire finds a patch of loose gravel and starts to slide - without slowing at all, disaster is averted with a slight change of body position and a quick input to the bars.  I yell to the rider - "Slow down and look where you want to go" but she doesn't listen.  She just keeps pedaling as fast as she can - tiny legs pumping up and down in a blur while still looking just ahead.

Morgan - the youngest of those that call me Daddy - is fearless, unfazed, and hard headed.  She loves to go fast and has always been fascinated by motorcycles and the sketchy looking men that ride them.  I found out today that her favorite part of riding is to go through the turns fast and leaned over. 

I just bought her a new bike for her eighth birthday - the old one having shrunk in the wash or something and I think she has already used every bit of the tire on her purple Hannah Montana two wheeler.

I started to tell her how she could get air on the sidewalk cutout but Selena scowled with the promise of a chilly holiday weekend if I continued - that discussion will have to wait.

Under cloudy skies and the weather man's threat of gloom and thunderstorms, Selena and I set out for Mt. Cheeha aboard the borrowed Sprint Executive.  The idea behind this little trip was to get Selena used to a longer day on the road and to exercise BD's Triumph a bit.

The clouds shaded us throughout most of the trip but the threatened thunder storms never materialized.  I had planned on stopping at around 50 miles or so to make sure all was good, but our first stop was actually Ashland which was about 90 miles I think.  We stopped for gas and a pee break before getting into the twisties of 49 and 281.  By this time the stretch to the bars was taking its toll on me and my upper back was on fire but the twists and turns on the way up to Cheeha let me move around a bit more and the pain subsided some.