Started our trip at 7 am on August 14, 2010...first stop...Newman's Bakery in Bellville Texas for a bite to eat. Newman's is always a great place for breakfast, they have anything you could ask for and lots of it, the company there is always friendly and ready to visit with total strangers...a great way to start the day for a long hard ride.
Once done with our breakfast we head out, the day is really starting to warm up. We only have 5 hours and about 180 miles more to go.
I'd love to tell about all the really cool things we see on a ride like this, but there is no way to explain the sights and smells and the way the air feels hitting your skin. The farm animals, feeding their babies...and in some cases making babies...the junk left along the roadways that's been yanked from the back of a pickup truck by the wind or simply discarded. Dodging the suicide birds and bugs. The children and old people that wave or give you the thumbs up as you pass them by, I sometime wonder what that means, do the children just watch us in amazement like we are something of a freak show? Do the old people remember when or wish they'd been more carefree in their life? It's truly refreshing for the mind and body.
Reading a road map going 70 miles an hour is pretty impossible, however, I do my best based on the instructions from the night before, Kemper gives me a list of rode numbers will take and could take to get there...a lot of them...I'm never really sure which plan his is going on from one turn to the next and I do get caught up in just riding, thinking and resting...so needless to say maybe next trip I'll write them down and keep the list handy...I missed a few numbers...so after a detour through Rosenberg, which is an interesting little town, we hit 59 for a few (okay a hundred) miles...the clouds are our friend today making for a warm but for the most part pleasant ride. Along this stretch we come up behind two cars in tow, the vehicle hauling the appeared to be tow worthy as well, the car in tow was packed to the top with junk, or treasure...not sure, anyway they were headed to the border with the prizes.
We stop plenty for fuel and just to stretch our legs and drink water, Bucees' of course, they have clean rest rooms. I think I freaked out an old lady there, pretty sure she wasn't exactly comfortable sharing a mirror to apply lipstick with a biker chick...heehee...lighten up or I'll shank you with my nail file.
There is a really long stretches of nothing but near desert along Hwy 77, miles and miles of it, we stop at a little junky station to apply more sunblock and drink some water, this was kinda the only place around, a couple there just married meeting up with some of the wedding party to hand off wedding gifts and other items, appearing to be on their way to the Honeymoon destination...plenty of Mexican workers there getting soft drinks and taking a smoke break, they obviously were not allowed to smoke in the boss's monster truck.
After a rest we are back on the road...a few miles down the road Kemper is kinda acting strange...slowly passing and looking at a gas station on the other side of the freeway...I'm not sure what he's doing or thinking, but I trust him so off we continue...this road is long bare and nothing...its dirty, hot and LONG...it's obvious we are near the border, the few cars that pass us are junky and smoky. Up ahead we see once again the cars in tow...we both laugh as we pass them again.
Now Kemper is acting weird again, looking down at his gauges and back at the road in front of him, I'm concerned, are we have bike issues? I look over his should to discover we are out of gas, I mean out of gas, in the red...I guess he missed the sign that says next gas 200 miles...I don't say a word to him, I can tell he is growing concerned as well, all I can really think of is that he is gonna make me stay with this stupid bike while he walks looking for gas or hitches a ride with some creepy guy and leaves me beside this desert road. I watch scary movies...this is how it starts!!
As I am sure this is my certain destiny, there is a sign for food and gas...left exit...we take, whew, we're gonna make...or are we? More long nothing road, now only 2 lanes...we go on for what seems like miles...over the hill is civilization, well of some unknown time. A Stripes convenience store, thank God!!!
We pull in to the first fuel pump, I jump off to get water and cool off a minute. While I was inside Kemper met a friend...of course, Kemper met a friend...I can't leave him alone for a minute. Well, after being formally introduced to the new friend that is looking for a ride to the next little town, because the girl he'd just met last night had to leave him at her house because her brother had a stroke and she had to go see about him, then as he walked to the the Stripes store he was chased and attacked buy a dog ripping his backpack, fell down and tore his jeans his cell phone didn't get a signal so he couldn't contact his buddies to tell them where he was and to come get him. Man, the way I see it if this guy didn't have BAD luck, he'd have NO luck at all.
Not much farther to Corpus we blast off again, we are still having a great time, enjoying the ride and each other's company...however, I must say had Kemper left me standing beside the road with that stupid bike while he went for gas, we might have to reevaluate our relationship, heehee.
Once into Corpus, we parked the bike and walked to the Surf Club, good food, interesting place and interesting people here we met and hung out with…Michael and Karen Chrane, she was an artist and he a retired Professor.
After an unknown number of Vodka tonics…we luckily found our way back to the hotel…the next day we rode the area and walked the piers watching the shrimpers, bring and sell their pay. I mostly enjoyed watching the pelicans gobble up what the fishermen would toss aside as they went through the shrimp culling the bad ones.
Oh, and a side note: if you ever want to ride the ferry in Port Aransas and you are on the bike...Don't follow the cars, bikes have their own line, and you get on first...wish we'd have known.
Lots more stops coming home than going, lots more sunblock for sure.
One interesting thing was our dinner dining experience. We stopped in Wharton to eat and rest fur a spell…not a lot a choices in Wharton but the one place long side this lonesome trail was Jr's Texas Best Smoke House, seemed like that would work just fine for two tired trail riders on a Ironhorse. We walk in and are greeted by a young girl with a thick South Texas accent and a gingham apron…we are OBVIOUSLY out of place…thinkin they didn't much like our kind in these parts, with all eyes on us we sit down order our ice tea, as the little filly brings our tea she starts in about the days specials, as she concludes her spiel, she invites us to help ourselves at the "Salad Wagon" Kemper and I couldn't contain ourselves any longer and laughed out loud…then quickly bellied up to that wagon…Oh I have to say…it really was a wagon…full size wagon filled with all the salad fixens you could want.
All in all, it was a great trip...always fun when Kemper and I are together...one thing for sure never a dull moment!
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