Just Call Me Easy Rider

It’s Fall I guess, in the weather sense if not officially.  (When does Fall officially start?)  That means time for my favorite weather of the year, and time to start burning vacation, which coincide very nicely.

motorcycle As such, I took Friday off to go on my first official “motorcycle trip.”  My bike isn’t really set up for touring, being supremely uncomfortable and having no storage, but I’ve been slowly collecting enough gear to make it feasible at some level.  That’s my nifty set-up on the left there, complete with my hillbilly saddlebags, i.e. a backpack and a handful of bungee cords.  No, I wasn’t trying to be artsy-fartsy with the black and white picture, I just don’t know how to work my camera very well.  Somehow I keep setting it wrong.  Anyway, I took off Friday afternoon, destination Hermann, MO, where my friends the Red Buffalo BBQ team were doing a ‘Que competition.  I’m not too keen on the Interstate, so I went up 50 highway to Jefferson City, then cut over to 94 for the rest of the trip.  I had my iPod stuck in my ears for amusement, and the trip went remarkably fast.  When I turned onto 94 I found myself right beside the good ol’ Katy Trail, and I had a good laugh remembering that hellish trip.  It looked a lot better at 60 mph than 12 mph, I can say that for sure.  All-in-all, I really enjoyed the trip.  If you’ve never gone tearing alongside the Missouri river at 95 mph with the wind in your hair, listening to some DMB on an awesome Fall day, I highly recommend trying it.  OK, actually I am sure I never exceeded 70 mph, I have no hair, and I had on way too many layers of clothes to enjoy the weather.  But, I did listen to lots of good music and I got a little bit of air through my sandals.  Yeah, I know it’s a bit of a contrast to wear an armored jacket and sandals.  But, frankly the world would be a more beautiful place without my feet so I don’t worry so much about protecting them.  I got to Hermann around 4:00, and spent the rest of the day hanging out at the ‘Que contest.  The whole thing was pretty much a blast;  The ride, the contest, everything.  Fun stuff, at least for my boring world.

Saturday I got up and hung out a bit, but not too long.  I wanted to stay around for the competition, but at the same time I had absolutely no interest in riding home in the dark, so I loaded up and took off around 10:00.  It was another great day of weather, and there were literally dozens of motorcycles on the road, especially the 94 highway stretch.  I got lots of practice on my official wave.  I’m still fine-tuning it, but I’m pretty sure it’s one of the coolest motorcycle waves in existence.  It was a quite windy ride though, and I took a few more breaks than the previous day.  When I got to Lee’s Summit I turned north and headed up to Martin’s house, and by the time I got there I was more than ready to dismount for a while.  Martin had the big smoker fired up, and I spent the rest of the day helping him prepare a rather massive amount of food in preparation for the party next weekend.  Donette came up and got me that evening, and I left my motorcycle abandoned in his garage;  I don’t think my butt could have taken another 10 minutes on that seat.

Sunday I got out of bed and found myself nearly immobile.  Man that ride was a good time, but it took a toll on my old bones.  My back hurt, my shoulders hurt, and my legs wouldn’t straighten out.  I hobbled over to the couch, turned on the television, and spent the rest of the afternoon clicking through football games and watching my fantasy football teams.  We did venture out around halftime of the Chiefs game.  We headed up to the Martin’s to watch the second half and pick up my bike.  But, after we went out to dinner, it was kinda dark and the roads still looked a little damp, so it’s still there.  (Either that or I still wasn’t ready to get back on it.)

3 thoughts on “Just Call Me Easy Rider

  1. Don’t think the little picture insert is going to count as a pictures update. I’ll assume you are just waiting to make a big post after the Royal. BTW – you kinda have an easy rider theme going on in the artistic photograph…

  2. Fall started on September 21st.
    The bike looks great.
    I hope your sore body recovers before Friday.
    What type of food were you cooking up?
    Is Todd coming back to KC for the big event?

  3. We cooked up around 60 lbs. of pork, and 60 lbs. of brisket. Should hold us for a while. Last I heard is Todd changed his name to the “NO Show” and skipped out on us; We’ve brought in a new chicken-guy.

Comments are closed.