4-25-2009 / 4-26-2009

365 Group


This morning I had planned to head out early and spend the day in Eureka Springs at the Thunder in The Mountain rally. However, I had a few things get in my way. With me family always comes first and when I was told my sister was up from Texas for a short weekend. Well, there will be another Eureka even.
I loaded up and headed the seventy miles to my moms place and a visit with my sister.
The weather was mildly overcast and warm. Great riding weather.
I hit 412 and settled into a nice easy sixty miles per and before I knew it I was stopping for Hush Puppies and to top off my tank at Marble. After gas and grub I pulled back out and hit Highway 21 and ran hard over to Kingston and then Boxley. Running through the valley I saw several riders that seemed to be making one of the area runs that usually occurs when there's a big rally going on in the area. They all waved like they were having a good time. I tried taking a few pictures of them as I road along. None came out any better that major fuzzy.
Pulling into moms I suddenly felt hungry. This usually happens when I go home. Parking the bike I head in only to find that they all had headed to Branson To the Hospital. Seems that My uncle, moms brother was admitted for emergency bypass surgery.
After a few phone calls and finding out what was going on I settled down and fixed a sandwich.
The ride down had been a quick one. I went out to look the bike over to see if there was any noticeable problems. Other than my chain needing tightening everything looked good. Thinking about it I unstrapped my over night bag and decided to stay. Mom had said that they would most likely be back late tonight.
I don't know what time they came in. I was doing some heavy sleeping. My uncles operation was apparently, a "routine" but emergency surgery. I'm not still sure I understand that one.
I had a good visit with my sister. When she pulled out to head back to Texas I headed back out for home.
My ride back up was a good one. Lots of riders on the road. That always makes for a good trip of any kind.
Taking my usual most direct route back I was home in about an hour. All told almost 200 miles in, by the clock, about 2 1/2 to three hours.
Figuring to just coast the rest of the weekend I unloaded my bike and started looking for things to putter around with around the house. As I was getting into the idea of mowing the yard a friend called and asked if I wanted to ride over to a junk shop with him. He was looking for some wheels for a trailer. Really he admitted, he just wanted to get out and ride a bit. He had recently bought my father in laws Shadow and hadn't gotten to ride it much. He also said he wanted to kind of clear his head.
We pulled out and made a quick run over to the junk shop. It was closed. looking around as much as we could without ending up in jail we didn't see anything like what he was after. Pulling back out we headed back toward home. Along the way we detoured and made a longer ride home of it.
Running up this new section of 412 was fun. Windy, but fun. We ended up stopping at a tractor and farm supply place just out of Springdale a few miles and looking around. This place almost had everything. It would have been perfect if it had had an RC Cola and Moon Pie dispenser.
After killing a few minutes we loaded back up and headed down the back roads by the lake to the house. As we pulled into town we stopped at a gas station/cafe and got a snack.
I didn't get to make the Rally or any of the other things I wanted to do. But, This turned out to be a good weekend. Lots of short rides and good friends and family.
Now this little snack at a gas station seemed to be a good end to the day, weekend.
Hope to catch ya on the road.