2023: A Girl, a Motorcycle, and a Gypsy Soul

After potential plans to ride to Colorado were axed for the weekend, I contemplated what to do with a full 5 days off... naturally, I was going to ride somewhere, but the difficult question of the evening was, where? SO MANY options calling my name, some of which I have familiarity with, others not.  Rough evening and tough decisions to be made. Last minute I asked my dad if he wanted to ride as we hadn't done a trip in several years. He was game! Sitting in the sunshine, flip flops kicked back, and ice blue mountains in hand... the 'pondering' stance I LOVE Arkansas and talk about it all the time, so dad said lets go there. Done!!!  I sprinted out to the garage and collected my AR maps - riding maps galore. I am pumped!!!!  Oh.. I need to start packing. But first, I had to go play bean bags at the local bar for several hours.  Turns out I made some NOT so smart decisions at bags (winning free drinks....), so the night went well into the wee morning hours....

Little late to do a recap, but I swear I am still shaking my head whenever I think of that Texas trip. From Clear Lake IOWA and onward, the trip was WEIRD. Stopped for gas @ Clear Lake - went to pay and a guy with an eye patch is walking out saying how he just got his bike out of storage yesterday (WHAT?!)  and how he was jealous of us. I asked if his wife punched him after he took the bike out (HAHA) - he said no, but then loudly stated (IN the gas station) "I'd let you tie me up and punch me in the face anytime...DAMN"  What the? Its 8am and our first gas stop, and that was the intro to the Trip of the Weird. From there, it went to sleeping in an RV with 4 people, one bed, a pullout, and a deathly cat allergy + 1 cat.... to  BFE Texas where we stayed in a trailer home with a king size bed in the living room, a maze of bungee cords holding the door shut, two twin beds on the floor with three people sleeping on them, a twister hitting an hour away, and roasting marshmallo...

We arrive in Austin, find a Super 8 to crash at and I don't think we have ever been SO happy to get off of the bikes as we are in that moment. Its hot, traffic was brutal, its been a nervewracking day/drive and we just want to chill and grab a beer or three while scoping out Austin. We chilled in the hotel room for a while to unwind - until this point, its been on edge nerves in action all day and we can finally relax! We head out and walk towards downtown Austin - not quite a mile walk. Over the freeway, down the hill, past the cop shop... wait!!! What?! They  have a SWAT style vehicle right there on the street? Just for us to take a picture with?!  Heck ya!  < we also found one in Sturgis and its a great pic > We hit downtown thinking - LIVE MUSIC! Austin has to have live music everywhere, right? Nope. We couldn't find live music and food in the same venue to save our life. Its Sunday, but still. Its Texas! They do everything big, including...

Let’s go to Austin! The “CITY OF WEIRD”, because we haven’t seen enough weirdness yet!   But first, the trip to Austin. It’s a short 6 hours or so – it’s going to get warmer as we head south. Its boring freeways there, but we just want to chill vs technical ride – especially me, leading us granny style to Austin.   The traffic in Dallas and Waco was AWFUL. Our hands hurt from all that clutch work we had to do. I locked up the brakes (all ‘2’ of them) at 70mph on the freeway and came pretty damn close to giving the bumper ahead of me a little love tap. People are cutting us off left and right, distracted drivers galore, people staring so hard they are drooling, and then THE semi. The one that is swerving all over the place and is lookin a little ratty. Its seen better days. I cling to the far left of the left lane and just want to get by this guy – hoping Shelly also notices the hot mess of a semi with a driver who is either dancing to tunes, texting, falling asleep, or messi...

Day 3: We wake up and everything is THICK MUD. It rained REALLY hard for a long time and the mud was like clay that just clung to my boots, making them each weigh 15#. By the time I brought all my gear back to the lean-to where my bike was, I pretty much had like 300 leg kicks done because I couldn’t really walk very well with 4” of mud on the bottom of each boot while carrying all of our shit through the grassy/mud bog field. I get to the bikes and realize that the lean to was great to keep the bikes out of the direct weather, it also did a great job collecting rainwater… and now my bike was engulfed by mud. Lots of mud. There was zero percent chance I was going to push that hog backwards in mud, with mud pies for boots, solo. <--pre-mud/storm; now just close your eyes and imagine this same scene after (literally) 4" of rain and a tornado touch down 70 miles away.... We all took turns helping everyone gets bikes out while slipp...