Just riding around

365 Group (I rode mine today)


These last few days have been unusual weather wise. Warm, up to the middle seventies and cold down to twenty six. I have done quite a bit of riding this past week. It's just been one of those weeks when the bike seemed to out weigh a car.


Heading into town it was about cold. I had planned to get an Early start and be done with all my business by the time it had warmed up enough to shed the cold weather gear. As my luck goes I had to defrost my bike. Literally! There was a heavy frost on it and I used an old hair dryer to "defrost" it. Once I got everything thawed out I fired my old beast up and discovered that my throttle cables were frozen. For some reason this struck me as funny. Out with the hair dryer again and in no time everything was back to sort of normal operation. All this put me about half an hour behind schedule. So much for running around before everyone else.

Pulling up to the stop sign at the Highway I fall in at the tail of a line of cars. They were moving at the speed limit through the middle of town. As we came up on the twin bridges I had picked up a few behind me and found myself swept along with the whole herd and coming off the second bridge at a very cold seventy miles per hour. Apparently all these people had a good working heater and were all late for work. This was the fastest crowd I've been in since summer ended.

Coming up on my turn off at Habberton Road I had a car on my tail and was seriously wondering if I would be able to turn off without getting hit. Man they were close! I managed to ride the shoulder and make my turn without getting bumped. Once off the highway I put some distance between me and the line of traffic. My experience has been that there will be someone else turn off and then they will crowd you. Two vehicles turned after me but I had put enough distance between us that they never got to worry me.

As I made my turn to head into town I noticed that my bike was starting to chug. Looking at my speedometer I say that I was almost out of gas and hit the reserve. Looked like my first stop would be for gas instead of breakfast. Gas has taken another price upturn lately. It was irritating even riding a bike. A dollar thirty eight last week and now back up to one seventy four. I'm glad that my take only holds three gallons. I don't think I could take trying to fill up one of those large pickup s or even a small car.

All gassed up and hungry I headed for Hardees and got a couple of bacon biscuits for the ride. My plan was to run over to Pea Ridge and see if I could locate a friend of mine. He had invited me over back during Bikes,Blues and Barbecue. Since I had the day off and it was going to warm up and I knew he wasn't working, why not?

Funny, this whole area has almost grown together and is starting to resemble a small metro -plex. Running out of Springdale and into Lowell and then into Rogers you wouldn't have known you had ever left one if you hadn't seen the City Limit signs. The run on over to Pea Ridge was slow and poky. Morning traffic was bad with everyone trying to get to the job at the same time.

Between Rogers and Pea ridge is a nice little ride if your coming out of Rogers. It gives the impression of being more rural than it really is. I like the laid back scenery when I ride, even though I know it really isn't.
I pulled in to a gas station and filled up. While I was there I got a cup of coffee and tore into one of my Biscuit specials and wondered if I could really keep my "girlish figure" by eating these things. Ah, well, I'm sure a couple wouldn't hurt. After eating I called and asked for directions to Jim's place and got the answering machine. I left a message and started tooling in the general direction of Garfield and the area where he said he lived. About five miles down the road my phone went to screeching and buzzing and Jim had left me a message in answer to mine. Seems him and the wife had run off to Branson for the day. "must be nice". So with that bit of news I changed course and headed toward Eureka Springs and lunch.
I really don't remember much of the trip over to Eureka. I sometimes get into the road and just don't pay attention like your suppose to. Everything was clicking right and the road just took over. Pulling into town I headed down the hill to see what was open and might interest me. I made a couple of passes through and then headed back up to the highway and a burger. To me the big chain burger joints are all the same. just something to eat that's quicker than hunting for good food. Today's lunch was no different.
While I was pushing the burger down a group of bikes went by. It looked like I wasn't the only one that thought today was a great day for a ride. I finished my meal and walked back over to the bike and had a good laugh at my self. I caught myself reaching for a smoke. One of those after eating gotta do habits. I had quit smoking almost two years ago. When I say I smoked, I mean I burned em down. Four packs a day of the absolute best on the market. Non filtered Camels. I cant describe how good a Camel tasted to me. Anyway, back to real time. I was chuckling at my old habits and I noticed a couple in a car next to my bike and I'm sure they thought I was nuts. Firing up I decided to just head down the highway toward Berryville and maybe make a lazy loop through to Alpena and back to the house. I pulled out and wound up as I approached the first curve in the road and got into a good slingshot kind of lean around it. Everything was still clicking and I felt really good as I eased out of town.
About four or five miles down the road from Eureka is the Biker Joint Iron Horse Stable. I have been in there a couple of times but really don't know much about the place. It does a real good business during the summer as there always seems to be lots of bikes there. The bikes I had saw earlier were there as I went by. Not sure if they were having any trouble but they were all looking at one of the bikes and one of the women was rubbing here rear.
I headed on down the road and again got myself lost in the ride. Gassing up at Alpena, I made a fairly quick run back to the house. I had to let my "ankle biter security squad" out for a while and then on to dinner with Bud and the other assorted Riff Raff. The seventy or so miles up Highway 412 is a nice ride since the construction is over with. More so when traffic is light.
Pulling into my parking place at the house I revved up a couple of times to alert the "ankle biters" and thought today was a good ride. Even if I dint go anywhere.
About 5:30 I headed out to meet everyone for dinner at Chilli's on Milsap and the weather was still holding. Dinner was good and as usual with those guys a blast. we all said see ya about 7:30 and that's when I noticed how cool it had gotten. As I pulled on my face mask Bud said call if you have any trouble. (Later I almost did.)
I pulled out on to Milsap and headed back to Highway 71 and I noticed a thermometer on a bank that said it was twenty four degrees. From then on I noticed how the stiff cross winds had a wet feeling bite to them. I made it to a convenience store about three miles down from the restaurant and had to pull in and put on my snowmobile suit. The next seven miles to the house were absolutely pain full it was that cold. I finally pulled into the house and got out of my heavy clothes, turned on the blanket and jumped into a hot shower.
Now, today's ride was officially over and I was warm again. I find myself looking toward tomorrow and wondering if I'll have as much fun as I did today or will it just be cold.
catch ya on the road.