You ride for yourself.

365 Group



Today was a typical springtime day in Northwest Arkansas. Rainy looking, overcast blah of a day.
I had made plans with some people at work to come over and help them do some maintenance type stuff to their bikes. Several of us were going to meet and put on the saddle bags and other stuff then make a short ride.
I called Rick at home and asked if it was still on for today. Rick said as far as he knew everything was still "go". At 9am I headed toward Springdale and as I wound up the old Kawasaki I really felt that even with the threat of rain it was a good morning for riding. Temperature was about sixty five and this early on a Saturday morning, traffic was light.
Running down the four lane to the north side of town I noticed a few bikes and they looked as though they were riding with a purpose. Must have been a poker run somewhere today.
Pulling into Ricks place I saw that his garage was open and his bike was missing. I pulled up and stopped just short of his garage. As I was getting off the bike his wife stuck her head out and said that Rick had gone up to work to start something that had quit and would be back in a few minutes.
While I waited I took a few minutes to unstrap my thermos and poured a cup of coffee and then did a once over of my bike to see if there was anything that need attention. I found that I had an almost broken throttle cable. It was splintered badly and in serious need of replacing. This is serious on a lot of bikes but not as bad on my older model as it has a push/pull system. Two cables, one pulls and one pushes. Seeing that the pull side was the splintered one I took it off and moved the other to it's place. Now I was down to a single cable on my throttle system. I had often wondered why this had such a system of two cables. Maybe this was what the designers had in mind? Anyway it was working as good as before and would do until I could order a new set.
Just as I was finishing up with the cables Rick roared in and looked kind of puzzled. I explained the cable problem and showed everything to him. He was really interested in the repairs and kind of filed them away in the back of his mind in case it ever happened to him. That's one of the things I like about Rick. He likes to ride and wants to know the riding business, so to speak.
After about an hour no one had shown up and Rick started making calls to see what was up. Most had a weather related reason for not showing up. "it might rain on me". This seemed to bother Rick some and I pointed out that a person rides for themselves. You cant hold it against someone if they aren't comfortable riding in bad weather. Finally it sunk in and he looked at me and said, "now what?" Now we check over the bikes and see what we can find that might need attention.
After about an hour tinkering with the bikes and still no rain we decided to go for a short ride.
I pointed out that we could "frog hop" if the rain got to heavy. Once I explained that Frog hopping was going from gas station or car wash to any place with a roof we could get under between showers he got the picture and pulled out.
We made it about 10 miles out of Springdale before a light shower hit us. It didn't last all that long and we stayed on the road.
Pulling into the cafe at Marble I explained the Hush Puppies rule to him and we had a few. I could tell by looking at his face that he was a Hush Puppy convert.
After eating we made a plan to run over to Kingston and cut across and hit Highway 16 and back through Fayetteville and back to the house.
The ride was a good one. Traffic was light and the rain inter mitten and we never had to pull off and wait. As we eased up to a traffic light coming into Fayetteville I leaned over and told him that I would head on home once we got to Mission. He nodded and gave me a silly grin. When the light changed he took off like he'd been shot out of a gun. It was kind of silly, But. he wasn't going to leave me like that. As I passed him his silly grin changed to a look of surprise.
Pulling up to the light at Mission we were both feeling good. I yelled at him that I'd see him at work and took off for home. I saw him take off when the light changed and thought that he'd be some one to ride with.
I spent the next eight miles to the house thinking about how you ride for yourself and you cant let anyone push you into doing other wise.
Hope to catch ya on the road.