2025: A Girl, a Motorcycle, and a Gypsy Soul

The next day we slept in a little - reloaded our gear into the bikes after drying everything out for a few hours and headed to the Texas Country to our friends - friends house. We were in the middle of nowhere Texas - down a REALLY long gravel driveway we rolled - up to a trailer house. I believe that the description by our friend prior was something like 'its a cute house - it fell off the trailer while moving but she's done a lot of great work to it". Wasn't sure what to expect. One thing I wasn't expecting was to open the front door of the house to see a king size bed in the living room. The house was decorated super cute - it was the little things that threw me for a little loop here and there. First, the bed, then the bungee cord contraption system in place to keep the back door shut. I am not good at mazes, which I knew. And this confirmed i am also not good at problem solving to get outside. Anyways - back to the point. We were going to chillax and BBQ an...

After a couple of rough weeks on the work and home front, I just needed to get the heck out of dodge. Not really knowing where I wanted to go, I called my friend in Texas to see what she was doing in 1.5 weeks and she was surprisingly off of work all that weekend. So, that set into motion the plan of me riding down to visit and hang for a couple of days on a whim. Thankfully, my boss approved the last minute time off request. I met with  a friend to ride local one afternoon about a week prior, and mentioned Texas, her response: "I'm in!". As crazy as my ideas may be, I am lucky to almost always find someone to go with me! I was going to do it regardless, but having company along the way is nice. We took off on Friday morning at the ass crack of dawn - a balmy 27 degrees.  As we crossed into Iowa, the clouds were building and the skies were getting a bit gloomy looking. We stopped in Cedar Rapids to check the weather and sure enough, we were about to ride into a mas...

   FL 3/17/17 @ 10:50amFinally made it! 30 hours! We woke up not overly enthused about getting back on the bikes for another day of cold riding. Granted, it was in the 20's already, but.... Off we went determined to get to FL today! We didn't see another motorcycle until south of Nashville - weird! Of course that whole area of the country was under 'colder than normal' weather. We made it to Daytona Beach around noon on Friday, having left on Wednesday morning.  We made a stop at the Ironhorse Saloon to catch up with my Daytona friends - over the years of attending bike week, I have made some pretty great friends there! David Allen Coe was playing on stage, the sun was shining, the beer was cold, and life was GOOD! It *almost* made the trip worth it ;) NExt stop - We met up with The Boy's brother and cousin at the Speedway -to check out some vendors, see some bikes, and the boys toured the Speedway museum while I tried to find us somewhere t...

 Here it is, April in Minnesota and I already have 5,100 miles on this year! I don't know where time went or how that happened!    Started out the riding season just putzing around Central MN - there was still quite a bit of sand on the roads in February, so cornering was slow and cautious to say the least. Eager for an amazing riding season and only 33k and change - my bike is still a baby!!  I have been fortunate/spoiled in the last few years, to have my first motorcycle in FL to use at my leisure. While I tried not to take that for granted, this was the first year of not having that luxury, therefore going to be the first year I miss Daytona Bike Week in ?? years. I was brainstorming ways to make it all work, but reality is, March in MN is not a personality to mess with! Well, a little over a week prior to Daytona week, the boy and I were out riding in 60 degree MN weather, when I mentioned that I was bummed to miss out on FL this year, and he said what I ...

A.D.D. makes blogging a GREAT idea! But something that is hard to remember to do when there are 1,900 other thoughts going through my brain! And once riding season is over, I try not to think of riding, because, well - its sad.  Anyways - I started the 2016 riding season in April with 14,112 miles on my bike. I ended it with 38,877 miles. This means that I have surpassed my all time season riding record by a long shot! Add in the miles I rode Suzi from Florida to Minnesota, and I rode a total of 26,192 miles in 2016!!!  24,765  on the Victory and 1,427 on Suzi. Through 24 states total. 12 'new' states for the Victory. There were so many fun trips - from local riding, to Arkansas in May, Pike's Peak in June,  the Pacific Coast Highway in July, Sturgis in August, Florida/Georgia/Kentucky/Tennessee/Indiana/Missouri in September, Eureka Springs bike week in September, Iowa & Wisconsin in October, Illinois in November, and lots of other little trips. Of the 24 sta...

Watching the news reports on Hurricane Matthew and seeing the devastation it has caused first in Haiti, then in Florida, and now up the coast, is surreal. The first photo I saw of the FL coast was that of the tiny little beachside town of Flagler Beach. This happens to be the town in which my good friend lived in, and in which my bike (Suzi) has vacationed for the past couple of years. In fact, the garage in which she lived was across A1A from the ocean... Less than 1/4 mile from where A1A was tossed around and takenout to sea.  My friend relocated to Texas before I could fly down, so she was not there when I flew in 9-1-16 to ride Suzi home. I went to Flagler Beach and to the Pier 'one last time', to soak in all of the fun times and memories made in and around that town. I visited there all of maybe 10-14 times over the course of 2-2.5 years (dates escape me now) and yet, got to know many of the locals pretty well. Flagler Beach is a cozy, laid back, beach community that welco...

NW Arkansas for Bikes Blues and BBQ rally was nothing short of amazing, as usual. The weather was perfect - sunny and in the upper 80's every day. The lodging was great - both our hotel for a couple of nights, our AirBNB house in Fayetteville, and our AirBnB cottage in Eureka Springs. We had several days of stellar riding - a total of 2,270 miles in 6 days. My bike turned over 35,000 midway- right as we rode back into Eureka Springs - my favorite town in Arkansas. This was our scene as we rolled into Eureka Springs after 11 hours on the road. I felt like saying WELCOME HOME - I love it here. The three of us girls had no issues with our bikes, no injuries, and no regrets on the roads we took! Well.. there was one potential (should have probably been an issue) issue the morning after our arrival (the morning I woke up on the floor thinking someone was in my bed, when in reality the effects of Tequila Sheila made me think bunched up blankets were a foot...) Here's ...

Naturally i procrastinated on getting ready for the trip to Arkansas, which led me to finish packing at 3:30am. I set my alarm for 5am.. just long enough to get a little drool on my pillowcase. I rode to Lakeville to meet the girls for our adventure to NW Arkansas. Surprisingly, I am early - gassed up and ready to roll ahead of schedule! While waiting for the 3rd girl to roll in, an older employee of the gas station came out and started talking about her old panhead bike that got her 'into nothin but trouble'. While ocassionally remembering to take a breath between taking drags off of her smoke, She gave an example, which was a 'dooozie' of a story at 7am, told by someone who has clearly been awake too long and drank too much coffee for her own good. She went on to say that the last time she went to Sturgis o nthe bike, she drank too much, "fell asleep" and woke up with a tattoo on her arse. She was crackin herself up mid story and clearly thought we were head...

I travel often and yet, never learn that I should plan ahead, start packing ahead of time... heck, at least have some clean laundry available TO pack. But... as usual, that whole plan ahead concept is an epic fail. I'm so much more productive when there is a definite timeline in place. A 'run around like crazy, sweating profusely, and swearing at myself because I don't have time to do everything" timeline.  And usually that timeline is 12 hours prior to a relatively big bike trip. For example: I am headed to Arkansas for Bikes, Blues, and BBQ's tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn. It's now 12 hours prior and here I sit. Distracted by everything that is NOT as important as packing and sleep. Meanwhile, I forgot my rain gear at the boys house, which means I need to drive (round trip) almost 2 hours to pick up the raingear (tonight), because if I don't, then it WILL rain. I need to start laundry, make a list of crap to pack, and lastly, start packing. Not to...

I've been pretty fortunate so far in 2016 - I've managed to make my New Years resolution of going on one trip/adventure out of MN each month. While there were a ton of highlights, June brought an unplanned, long weekend trip (weird!) to Pike's Peak in Colorado which was exciting as I'd never been there (on motorcycle anyways - which is all together a diff experience than in a vehicle). We had 3.5 days to conquer 2,044 round trip, not including riding while in that area. We left early in the morning to try to conquer the 1,022 mile ride (one way). Turns out Nebraska is THE most boring state ever and it made us way too sleepy to finish the ride, so we crashed (slept) in west NE, leaving just a few hour ride to Pikes Peak for the morning. We lucked out BIG time on the arrival part of things, as Pike's Peak is only closed FOUR times a year - and guess what? That weekend was one of those four times it would be closed- for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. ...