Rolling down the highway

Moving day!

Once again, a motorcycle trip has prompted me to pick up my blog again.  It's so much easier to throw some photos up on this site and do a little story-telling than to create a mass email and hope that I haven't left anyone out.  Plus, my travel partners usually get a kick out of my version of the journey :-)

In the never-ending relocation cycle of my life, a couple of years have passed, so it is once again time for me to purge my belongings and turn what's left over to movers.  I hate clutter, so I don't actually accumulate a whole lot of stuff.  The movers walked through my place and decided that it was going to be an easy day...until they saw the garage!  I may not have a whole lot of possessions, but what I do have is very heavy gym equipment. 

Early morning route and safety brief.

Even with weights and ergometers, all my worldly possessions weighed in at around 6000 pounds.  Although considered light by moving standards, I still find it a bit embarrassing that one person requires that much "stuff" to live.  And that wasn't counting my bike or car! 

Only once since I've been riding have I not had enough time to ride my bike to my new residence and had to allow movers to transport it for me.  Even though they did a decent job with the move, I much prefer to ride to my new home.  So, after all my household goods were on the move and I spent a few days tying up loose ends, I rallied with some of my CVMA family for the trek north.

Freebird and Body Slam at the end of Day 1.

Now, I'd love to say that 7 bikes of folks decided to escort me to my new home state of KS just because I was moving, but the truth is that our annual CVMA National meeting just happens to coincide with the same time and location as my relocation, so I lucked out and got to extend my time with them a bit longer.

The first leg of our journey was a bee-line straight for Texarkana.  I left my friend's house in San Antonio in a heavy drizzle before sunrise, but ended in Texarkana about 400 miles later with a slight sunburn.  It was a long day, but miles turned out under two wheels with people whose company you enjoy always seems to be worth it in the end.

Iron horse corral.

After a breakfast-dinner at IHOP, a shower and a decent night's sleep, we awoke to an overcast, but dry morning.  It's always amusing to watch other folks in the hotels in which we stay, wake up to find us packing our bikes in the morning.  Although we can sometimes get a bit loud with our story-telling at the end of ride days, we're not exactly the hell-raising biker types most folks expect when they see this cluster of bikes parked out front of a hotel.

Saying for the day.

The other tidbit to this story is that I started getting a sore throat a couple of days before we pulled out on the bikes.  Although I'm not running a fever or anything, I wasn't feeling 100% as we pulled out of San Antonio and I felt progressively worse towards the end of the ride.  By the time I woke up this morning, I was feeling much better but had completely lost my voice.  Of course it became great fun for my travel partners to banter with me and watch me struggle to rasp out sassy remarks.  I figured I might as well just roll with the fun and wore one of my favorite shirts to help me feel better.  Although I wasn't feeling great for a multi-day motorcycle trip, this saying reminds me that I've been through crappy before, and this certainly ain't it! And just like most other unpleasant things in life, this too shall pass, so just focus on the positive and roll with it.

Tin Man meets tin man :-)

Sure enough, by lunch time and a new town, I was feeling much better and my voice started to crackle back to life, much to the chagrin of my friends :-)  We all have road names, so I try to live up to mine of "Sunshine" even when I'm not at 100%.  My CVMA brother Carlos' road name is Tin Man, because he's had so many surgeries, that he's full of hard ware. As luck would have it, the BBQ joint where we had lunch had a tin man hanging from the ceiling just a couple of tables over from where we were sitting.  So, Tin Man met tin man :-)

Taking lead.

After all was said and done, we've ridden approximately 750 miles since leaving San Antonio yesterday morning.  I have lots of friends who do "Iron Butt" rides and can easily do that kind of mileage in a day.  But for me, I prefer to slow things down a bit and enjoy the scenery and company along the way.  It's a bit cliche, but it really is about the journey, and not the destination.

Enjoy the day and I'll post again from the road soon.