This blog is something I have been looking for, for a long time, I plan on using it to keep up with friend and family and anyone else who wants to read along, about things I do, places I go, and just thoughts that run through my mind, trust me my mind can be a scary place.
Morning everyone, time to tell the story of the great Arkansas motorcycle road trip,
Let me go back in time a few days a do a little foreshadowing (big word, see I got book smarts)
Our original plan was to leave around 12:00pm Friday and meet up in a small town in Arkansas called Pine Bluffs. Here is a link of the trip… RIDE MAP
Well as you might have guessed it did not happen…AS PLANNED!!
I guess around Tuesday I came down with a bad cold we had been passing around the office, I ended up getting a fever and missing Wednesday at work.
I sent my ridding buddy Walter an email and told him we might need to move the ride to Saturday due to illness. About this time, Walter had sent me an email saying that the town we had picked for our first night was ranked as one of the highest crime spots in Arkansas,
not good when you are ridding easy to steal motorcycles. So a new location was picked, Star City was the new destination. Woke up Thursday feeling better…RIDE BACK ON AS PLANNED!!! Well so I thought, I was packed and ready to go Friday morning,
and then I get a text message from Walter telling me he had come down with something and asked could we move the ride to Saturday morning. (See lots of foreshadowing)
Woke up Saturday ready to go, I had around a 300 mile ride ahead of me, my buddy Walter around 400 mile ride. I decided at the last second that I would like to get a new full face helmet (due to the cold weather),
so a quick trip to Hattiesburg Cycle would be needed on my way out of town. (I’ll do a review on the helmet in a post soon)
I guess I was on my way around 10:30am.
The ride started out beautiful, I have to admit I spent the first hour or so fiddling with my new helmet, pushing and pulling buttons trying to figure out how to raise and lower the shield while ridding. Once I entered into Louisiana, I really started getting into the ride; I crossed through huge cotton farms in the middle of picking. I did run into one small shower, not even enough to get my jacket wet, lasted less than a minute, then sky’s turned bright blue again. Oh yea this is what ridding is all about…then came the ARKANSAS STATE LINE SIGN………
Wow!!! Long time since my last post, truth is I’ve been working on another blog BIG ALS QUEST for some time now trying to improve myself and I'm glad to say "it's working."
I got many; many stories to share with everyone here hope to start posting soon but for now let me tell you of and up and coming motorcycle trip.
It’s in the late planning stage now; as a matter of fact I head out this Friday. Where you ask? Arkansas
that’s where, just myself
and a long lost high school best buddy, Walter
reunite for a 1200 mile 3 ½ day trip around the mountains of Arkansas. The plan, around 12:00pm Friday I head out to Pine Bluff, AR from Hattiesburg, (from work) Mississippi.Walter will leave sometime that morning from his home in Huntsville, Alabama. Both of us will have around a 300 mile solo ride from different direction. Once there. we will get a room and head out on our journey early Saturday morning (see map of the ride) RIDE MAP looks to be around 650 miles, we will break that up over Saturday and Sunday ending at Helena AR, then making around another 300 solo mile ride home Monday.
I’ll post more about it once I get home, not sure yet if I’m going to carry my computer or not…I will have my camera and will be clicking at every stop.
Had some vacation time just burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to take Thursday and Friday off and have a long 5 day weekend. Well since it was Labor Day weekend I decided to do some labor…Hmm what to labor on, that is the question? It did not take long for me to realize it was time to clean my garage it had become a pig sty in the last year.
I got to admit at first it was a little overwhelming, where to start first.
We have been remodeling our house over the last few years and the garage has become a catch all for all the stuff we ripped out of each room. Our garage is a little over 1600 sq feet and I swear you could barely move around in it. I guess my breaking point came a few days back when I went to do a simple one hour job that ended up taking hours because I could not find tools or just got tired of climbing over the piles of stuff to get to them.
To get started I backed my truck and trailer into the shop and just started throwing things away.
Then went around and picked up all my tools and stuff and hung them on the wall. Once everything was off the floor a good sweeping was in order, followed by the wet vac and the leaf blower…I got to say it turned out nice, very nice just like it was before…yea…I got my shop back.
The above looks easy on paper, but it took me most of two days…then I had the problem, what to do with the stuff in my truck and my trailer. To the dump, to the dump
I went all away across town in Hattiesburg. I got to admit its been years since I have been to dump (land fill) things have changed…
First you have to weigh your trash, and then they hit you with a bill, in my case $ 21.05.
Then the next thing I was told is, you will need a hard hat and orange vest on the entire time you will be out of your truck at the dump. Hmmm just did not happen to have one on me, seems I’m not alone as they have a big box of loaner hats and vest you can use. Got to say I looked pretty stylish in my new attire.
Got everything unloaded and made the long drive home…but do you know what? I had a very clean garage to pull my truck in when I got back…I did good!!!
I can’t think of a better word than "PRICELESS" FOR THIS. . .
I hope the picture below will go through for you - of this Army soldier in Iraq with his tiny 'plot' of grass in front of his tent. It's heartwarming! Here is a soldier in Iraq, stationed in a big sand box.
He asked his wife to send him dirt (U.S. soil), fertilizer,
and some grass seed
so that he can have the sweet aroma, and feel the grass grow beneath his feet. When the men of the squadron have a mission that they are going on, they take turns walking through the grass and the American soil
to bring them good luck.
Of all the things he could have asked his wife to send to him from home...........he asked for American soil. WOW.
If you notice, he is even cutting the grass with a pair of scissors.. Sometimes we are in such a hurry that we don't stop and think about the little things that we take for granted.
Woke up early but somehow got a late start, went down stairs from our room and had a breakfast fit for a king, some of the best coffee of the trip and the service was great. After we packed, snapped a few outside photos of the place and we were on our way.
The drive was beautiful great scenery along the way somewhere around 150 miles to Maine.
Got to what the locals call Old Port Maine around 1:00pm still full from breakfast so we decided to walk around the port and check out some souvenir shops. Parking is first come first serve, on our third pass down the road we found one. It had a parking meter,
two hour max; we walled through many stores then ended up at the Porthole Restaurant,
yep you know me well by now it was another Diner, Drive-in an Dive on my list. (I be posting a post soon about the place) anyway we went for lobster but were disappointed it did not serve whole lobster, so we just got an appetizer and when on our way (more to come, trust me) then back to the streets we went. We shopped till around 3:30pm until we found ourselves at Becky’s Diner. (YEP, another dinner on my list)
So you know the drill by now here is a photo, you will have to wait on the post coming soon.
Then we were off, to Rhode Island, but first we had to get through New Hampshire and Massachustts…
Woke up around 8:00am, had breakfast at the hotel and headed to Vermont
for a night of camping (yea right) anyway we got on the road late, somewhere around 10:00am with many miles ahead of us. We arrived at our camp spot
somewhere around 3:00pm it ended up being on top of a snow skiing mountain that now being summer was like a ghost town.
We checked out the camp sites to find out we had the place all to ourselves…Score!!!
Right? WRONG!!! The little wife gave it a thumbs down…she was not happy being the only ones on the mountain (I think she had a doe deer attack flash back). With that said, I snapped a few photos
…sniff, sniff and down the mountain we went, this time with the GPS locked on to New Hampshire,
we arrived somewhere around 7:00pm. My turn to pick the room, I picked The Centennial,
wow did I do good, I got many, many brownie points
on this one. it turned out to be a beautiful place, it was an old antebellum home that was turned into an inn. Really, really nice, breakfast
and room service for 119 dollars a night,
I’m pretty sure my wife would have moved in there for good.
After many hours of driving, we crossed into New York to our next stop Lake Effect Diner.
Yep you guess it another Diner, Drive-in and Dive. We got to the diner somewhere around 1:00pm our GPS brought us to the diner right through what my wife call the bad part of town;
I just call it old.
Anyway we made it safe and sound, the diner was small, but cool looking. As with the last post, here is a photo, I will be doing a complete story in a post soon.
Next stop Niagara Falls,
it took a bit to find the place (only one of the biggest water falls in the world) but once we did, we got a room at the Comfort Inn right next to the falls (easy walk) we unpacked and headed to the falls, it was somewhere around 60 degree with a lots of wind so we stopped off at one of the many souvenir shops along the way and bought my wife a Niagara Falls sweatshirt to keep her warm during the walk.
The park itself is beautiful, lots of walking trails to and around the falls.
Well we made our way to the falls, and I have to say the scene from the movie Vacation came to mind.
The falls are beautiful
but seemed kind of small. I guess I had built them up in my mind. We took some photos and a few videos
then made our way around to the other side.
Then back to the room we went for some much needed rest, we had been doing back to back 500 mile driving days.
Woke up around 10:00pm that night to the sound of what I thought was thunder, then I realized it was not thunder at all, it was the fireworks show over the falls. I could see them from my window, the wife was dead to the world never moved out of bed…I guess I need to start calling her MY OLD LADY!!!
