Solo Motorcycle Camping Ride…9 days, 3000 mile, 11 states…September 5-13, 2009

Solo Motorcycle Camping Ride…9 days, 3000 mile, 11 states…September 5-13, 2009,

well time has come to start getting ready for the trip only seven short days until the ride of MY life time…and yes I plan on blogging the entire trip…here is how it started, I had saved up my vacation to take a week off to go to the big Sturgis Motorcycle Rally this year…

well to all my followers out there, you know it did not happen, due to a impending AT&T strike…looks like the strike is not going to happen, so now I have an extra week of vacation burning a hole in my pocket.

This is where I came up with the idea

of a Solo Motorcycle Camping Ride that will cover 11 states in nine days, camping along the way. Yep you guessed it most non riders think I’m crazy for even thinking about it, not to mention mom and dad…

so for those two have come up with everything bad that could happen to me along the way…and I mean EVERYTHING!!!... Ha-HA.

The plan…get up early Saturday morning (the 5th) and head out…no real plans…just a basic idea of the route I’m taking…the states I hope to see you ask?…Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama…Wow that sounds like a lot once you write it down. Ha-ha. This will knock out six more states I’ve traveled (See light blue states)

This will also make Chad “my packs to big” Smith, happy…

He thinks I have been engorging the more northern states and has told me so numerous times…

Over on the left hand side of this page I have created a place where I plan to put every post about this trip and this trip only…In case you miss one of the post and want to catch up on your reading…it will be called “Solo Motorcycle Camping Ride…9 days, 3000 mile, 11 states…September 5-13, 2009” the links will be titled with…a brief description followed by part 1…part 2…part 3…and so on…starting with this post…

More to come soon…
Big Al

Where I’ve been…hmmm where to start…

Where I’ve been…hmmm where to start…busy…busy…busy…then came last week. My baby girl Allison



ended up in the hospital with kidney stones…again…this started Wednesday, I think and lasted all the way till Saturday (man I hope that is over with…lots of pain…poor girl) then there is me…Thursday I showed a co-worker, David what I was thinking was a spider bite on my cheek…

No, No not that cheek, THIS CHEEK…

Ha-ha.

This turned out to be a bad spider bite (and we all know how I love spiders)…

http://bigalscompound.blogspot.com/2009/06/itsy-bitsy-spideryea-right.html

still is…I’m holding out on the doctor thing (guy thing) trying to self medicate…but not sure if it’s going to work or not. I think its getting better; well let’s say I hope it's getting better…needless to say…not a great weekend. Anyway I hope next week gets better, so I can start posting again…I truly miss all of the comments and emails.

Well here is a little something I’m trying….a slide show of my trip to Gulfport Lake about a month ago…I hope it works. I promised this post about a month ago, it’s just me riding around the bayou where I grew up as a teenager in my little boat….I also did a post a few months back on my motorcycle, it was kind of the road version...

http://bigalscompound.blogspot.com/2009/02/nice-day-for-motorcycle-ride.html

in case you missed it.

I’ll be back
Big Al

Rain gods are pissed…at me.

Here is the story, as you may remember from one of my earlier post; I try not to ride my bike to work if there is a 30 percent chance or more of rain that day. I check every morning on http://www.weather.com/ to see if I ridding or not. I do this mainly because I don’t like putting on my rain suit for a fifteen minute ride…lazy, lazy.

I say all of this above because it seems the rain gods and I have worked out a pretty good deal,

as long as I don’t ride over a 30 percent day they let me go to and from work with no rain.

Then trouble happen… after my return trip from Greenville (last post) I had to get home so I rode with a forty percent chance of rain that day but made it home dry, I might add. Well I think as punishment the rain gods decided it would be fun

to make the chance for rain over 30 percent everyday for the next week so I could not ride…then to make it worse…IT NEVER RAINED!!! Just looked like it was going to…so what I am saying is I missed a whole week of riding.

This brings me to yesterday…I woke up checked the weather…50 percent chance of rain but not a cloud in the sky….Awww the heck with the deal…I’m riding, so off to work I went. Around 10:00am one of my co-workers said “you might want to look outside…a storm is a brewing”. I knew I was in trouble…what to do, what to do? So around 11:20am (early lunch) I made a break for it jumping on my bike and went tearing down the street towards my house. I swear I could hear the rain gods yell something like “there goes Big Al; he’s on his bike again. GET HIM!! GET HIM!!!”

Well I made it home pulled my bike into the shop pulled out my Iphone took a shot of the sky,

walked in my house (this took less than a minute) walked in the den and heard thundering rain, so I snapped one more photo just so you could see…

Well I guess the moral to this story is…it may not be nice to mess with mother nature,

But its ok to screw around with the rain gods, due to their timing is off by minutes…Oh boy something tell me I’m going to pay

for that remark…Ha-ha.
Big Al

Greenville Mississippi motorcycle ride.

Here is the Greenville trip I promised you a few post back…just a little refresher…my son Myles

was playing baseball for the state championship so I decided to ride my bike to the game (its around 250 miles from my house) and meet up with the rest of the family once I got there. I left thirty minutes before the rest of the family, I need gas; I filled up just as I left town and stopped in Jackson to refuel again. While filling the tank I called my wife and found out they were only minutes away, so I waited to follow them to Greenville. The trip to Greenville was pretty much uneventful we made it to the Hampton Inn

and checked in with no problem. We had a great time at the games Friday and Saturday…the boys came in second.

Truth is I never had time to go for a motorcycle ride the entire time I was there my bike never moved once until it was time to leave Sunday.

I got up early due to a small threat of rain in the afternoon. As I was getting on my bike I noticed something shiny on my bike seat…it turned out to be a quarter.

Hmmm how did that get there…I have my suspicions…so in case you were wondering why I was playing the song “here’s a quarter call someone who cares” in the background …well now you know….it was the first song I thought of as I was putting the quarter in my pocket…ha-ha. I took hwy 1

as I wanted to stop by Lake Washington to take a look…hwy 1 was mine

only a few cars along the road with corn fields on both sides of me…one problem no gas stations..Hmmmm I should have filled up before I left town.

I have to mention this just as I turned off to the lake I saw someone on a tractor getting ready to plow a field…as I got near I learned my eyes had deceived me…it was just a tractor made out of hay…

nice job, very nice job….loved it!

I found the lake ok it was around twenty minutes out of town.

Just as turned off on the hwy leading to the lake

I looked down and saw I only had around thirty miles left till empty. My thinking was it’s a huge lake and there should be gas stations all around it….WRONG!!! I rode around the lake snapping a few photos

Then I came across this huge old house being taking back by the land…I still wonder what the story was on this one…

but always had in the back of my mind I was slowly running out of gas. This was a bummer due to the lake was beautiful and I had to cut the trip around the lake short to try and make it to the next small town for gas.

Once back on the hwy I found gas at the next small town, along the way I saw a lot of farm equipment (most of the stuff I had no idea what it was used for)

On a sadder note I passed mile after mile of dying corn…just thinking about how much money was lost due to the lack of water…sad, sad.

The rest of the trip home went great I stopped a few times for gas and a diet root beer and beat the rain by about ten minutes…it came a storm…but I was safe and dry inside my house…great trip, I would do it again…there is always next year, I’m sure the boys will be going to State again…GO petal!!

Dream shattered!

Finally, someone Has managed to photograph the Pot at the end of the rainbow!!!




Wouldn't you know it!

Thanks for the email...David

Big Al

Showing my Redneck Side "GUN SHOW"

Saturday with nothing to do (nothing fun anyway) the sky was black in some spots with rain clouds, so bike riding was out. What to do…what to do. Then I remembered the gun show was in town.

So off I went in my trusty 1999 Ford F-150,

The gun show is only a few miles from my house…so in fifteen minutes I was at the front door with

six dollars in hand for admission. Once through the door , you are greeted by two law enforcement officers that check all guns carried into the show…for you guys and girls not in the know, gun shows are huge in the south. The shows are set up to buy and trade guns, knives and other guy stuff. So it's not uncommon for people walking in carrying many guns strapped to their body’s to trade and sale…and yea there is always a few nuts that dress in full camouflage with machine guns,

knives and things you can’t even imagine strapped to them (I guess trying to look hardcore). My friends an I usually just laugh at them as the walk by. Ha-ha…don’t get me wrong I’m all for the right to carry guns but come on guysssss….

I took a of photo of the arena so you could get an idea of how big this show is…VERY LARGE.

As you walk around from table to table you will find anything you want gun and knife related, there is even jewelry

There are books….hmmm looks like some light reading…remember folks it a gun show...ha-ha.

Knives and swords of all kinds…

You can also buy used stuff from wars of the passed (yea that a old gas mask….they have new ones too)

All kinds of ammo and brass for you re-loaders out there.

Fifty round and 100 round drum clips for your machine guns

Brass knuckles and throwing stars… funny, brass knuckles are sold as paper weights…RIGHT…RIGHT…wink, wink

Pistols of every caliber and size…

Machine guns, some fully automatic…

Let’s not forget the night vision.

Then they also sell basic shotguns and rifles…

Yep that’s hand grenades…minus the firing pin and power (funny part if you look hard you can find the pins and powder at the other table.) Always a way around the law. Ha-ha…God Bless America.

Hope this sheds some light on the working of gun shows...to you guys and girls that have not been to one…check out the next show in your hometown…trust me you will never know what you will find. I’ve been buying and selling guns at these shows for years…love them.
Big Al