Lost Tales- (in no particular order)

bamabikeguy

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(a real telephone conversation)...."Hello?"

"Good morning Mrs. Canter. This is that bike guy, I had a message your husband called."

"Oh, he's already down at Jack's, on that bike you built him. You turned my 80 year old husband into a durn kid".

When I finally got hold of her 6'4", 250 pound senior citizen "kid", with his 2 artificial knees, the remark that caused the most laughter was him saying "and the next thing you know I was in Georgia !!".

A week ago, I got another phone call, from an even older potential MBer down thataway, Mr. Canter had given him one of my "Statelines Crossed" flyers.

He said he didn't know how to type, but he sure has learned how to click. Wanting to know where he could read about that recent trip, I sent a link to his wife or daughter's e-mail, (I'm not sure which).

Well, yesterday I got another call from him, he said he found MB.com, and has spent day and night (because its been raining EVERY day and night) reading about all the fun we are having.

Then he's been going down to Jack's in the morning, and relaying the stories to Mr. Canter and the sausage biscuit crowd. MB adventures plus Mr. Canter's newfound toy are now the stuff of legend.

When he asked me where some more of the Crossing Stateline stories were, I had to explain to him, that well, er...bits and pieces are all over the place.

Some of the better ones from 2006 are in a blog that I forgot the name of, much less the password to.

And how his inability to type various internet addresses, and my inability to organize worth a **** kind of made that a tough proposition.

BUT/SO/ & HENCE I do not want to disappoint this unlimited coffee refill crowd 90 minutes south, their gardens are too muddy to plow anyway.

I'm going to see if I can't find a few of the loose, lost tales and do some lazy copying and pasting. Remember, "In No Particular Order" is exactly which way a thread entitled"Lost Tales" is supposed to go.

Apologies if you've read some of them before, but as they say, we gotta be KID Friendly, (even if all "the kids" are getting 10% Senior Citizen discounts.)
 

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When traveling cross country, without compass or watch, diversions are part of the fun. This first Lost Tale takes place in Ada, Oklahoma, explaining how that ugly t-shirt, on the front page of the Ada Evening News:

"Alabama man retaliates against high gas prices"
http://www.adaeveningnews.com/siteSearch/apstorysection/local_story_158130507.html

got me back in the black, back on budget in 2006.

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This one has it all, laundromats & casinos, a frugal monk & Chickasaw police chief... Let's see if I can tell it without any more of these over-sized images !!

The Ada Evening News states:

Stopping in Ada on his way east, taking the scenic route through Crater of Diamonds and the Natchez Trace in Louisiana and Mississippi, Crabtree is headed back to his home in Joppa, Ala. Crabtree rode his bike to Denver, Colo., to attend a May 19 concert with a friend.

That is NOT exactly true.

The fact of the matter, while Ada, Oklahoma is the Chickasaw Nation headquarters, I was really looking for the Choctaws, located in Durant, OK. I was only lost by about 30 miles, but then again, I live 15 miles from Joppa.

Both St. Bernard and Sacred Heart had provided scholarships, for many years, to boarding students from the Mississippi Band of Choctaws. Swinging my jumbo possibly papally blest Medal of St. Benedict, I thought might finagle lunch and a tour in Durant. Plus, I'd been lugging around a copy of The Choctaw Trading House, 1803-1822 , by my old history mentor, Fr. Aloysius Plaisance (1955), and a picture of an Indian Trail Tree (also called a "signal tree") discovered in my county recently.

I had been using a traveling gimmick, (started doing it during the Grateful Dead mini-tours in the mid-1980's.) About a month before I planned to leave, I'd called my bank and special ordered $200 worth of $2 bills, I'd add my contact number on back if they were interested in a bike.

I blew my $10 a day budget on the way out to Denver, to shower in a motel room in the extra dry and dusty West Kansas town of St. Francis (St. Franny), on the Colorado border, the day of the vapor-locking ethanol.

But thanks to the excellent Coloradan's hospitality during my eight days there, I was still semi-liquid on the return leg.

I was having a great time in Oklahoma, once I got south of Cordell. I'd stopped by the offices of the Wichita, Apache and Delaware Nations in Anadarko, where I did a newspaper interview. On the map of Oklahoma below, I actually spent an extra day camping in Stratford (c#8)at the invitation of a family of Comanche, to visit their swimming hole in Sulphur, picnic at the Chickasaw Recreational Area.

The point of that explanation is, in the snapshot of the ugly shirt, there are two things you can't see.

In my pocket I only had 3 quarters.

And wrapped tight, I mean supertight, in a cylinder zip-tied under my basket, were 2 Benny Franklins, my cash reserve. I had it stashed better than microfilm on "Mission Impossible".

I had really been putting off a stop at a laundromat, that was the last clean shirt I had. Touching the c-notes meant the budget was truly blown, unpacking everything, cutting loose the hot wax sealed cylinder, trying to poke out the bills without tearing them, then having to buy a pack of gum to get washer/dryer change & soap....besides, I was nearing the Crater of Diamonds, where I fully expected to walk in and walk out with 10-20 karats worth of gas money.

So, I missed free lunch in Durant, but Ms. Brewer made a phone call for me after she completed the newspaper interview, talked to the Lt. Governor of the Chickasaw Nation, and when I arrived, Larry, the uniformed head of the Tribal Police, met me at the door....

TEN MINUTES LATER I'M IN LARRY'S POLICE CRUISER


Yep, I'm getting a tour of Ada with Larry, my bike Rocinante is safely locked in his office.

I'm hearing about some "John Grisham in Ada" controversy. The headquarters are blocks away from the casino, but I'm not paying attention, we're just yakking away. I gave Larry Fr. Al's "Choctaw...." article to pass along to anyone interested.

Would you believe, I was then 49 years old, and had never been in a casino, much less gambled at a electronic slot-like machine? I'll play poker with friends, used to bet weekly on football, but casinos had no allure for me.

THAT'S true.


This Chickasaw casino is one of the biggest in the Native American Gaming system. Next thing I know, I'm in this elaborately lit main room. I'm kidding Larry, asking if he "gets a cut by dragging in tourists and speeders".

But the moment of truth has arrived, while I'm not going to tell Larry about my dire financial straits, I brag about "shooting the moon", when we pass this rouletty-looking, punch in numberish machine that took quarters !!

ONE ONE, ONE TWO, ONE THREE

Last December, when Justin rang up the blue recumbent, "faring" (windshield), accessories and sales tax, that is what he said "one one, one two, one three".....helluva number to write out on a check "one thousand, one hundred, twelve dollars and thirteen cents." He even called over Melissa, to check out the funky numbers.

BUT THAT'S WHAT I PUNCHED IN WITH MY THREE QUARTERS IN ADA, 11-12-13 !! Why do you think I remembered it so vividly?? Surrounding the twelve with the two primes...

And I won $29!!

I sure wouldn't remember it if I lost. "Beginners Luck" works, I recommend it !!

And I don't remember which number hit (the rules weren't anything like roulette I'd seen on James Bond flix). In fact, it spit out 2 types of papery ticket things, I didn't know how much I won for another 10 minutes.

It was nothing like those jackpot moments, sirens and bells, coins spilling on the floor Las Vegas images. Anti-climatic or not, I just wanted my cash, pronto !

I knew, taking my tickety things to the redemption area, I had more than enough to get me to Arkansas, grab up my diamond(s), and then roll on home...

Larry gave me a hard time about stealing from the natives, but I told him it was getting late, could he give me directions to the nearest washateria? On the ride back I confessed about the 3 quarters...and he was giving me some "happy hunting ground/no man's land" information about my local Alabama area as we rolled Rocinante out the door.

And my most excellent lucky streak continued, the laundromat was next to the Goodwill! I bought 4 clean t-shirts for a dollar and donated all my old stuff in the box by the side of the building.

Cheaper and quicker, and I was shortly off, headed to the Diamond Mines !!
 

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The Worst Day was the First Day March 2006

I had started building and selling MBikes in mid-summer 2005. I got lucky by September, I had found the solid Sun Retro 7 speed and figured out the importance of 12 gauge wheels, right when Hurricane Katrina hit and the locals experienced $3 gas.

My personal red Sun Retro 7, Rocinante, the one in all those newspaper pictures, was purchased in amongst a surge of that model of bike. It was still on the carport in January 2006, when GEBE beefed up the mounts, belts and gears. That winter I hurried up and retrofitted all my earliest customer's bikes, because the better belts improved the efficiency up into the 90% range.

As I started riding around the area, further and further from home, I then realized that the new GEBE setup was capable of long distance travel. I got bored of the area I knew, wanted to explore the places I didn't.

The first idea of a challenge was going to be traveling to every cave and cavern in North Alabama....

Did you know?


http://www.outdooralabama.com/watchable-wildlife/Watchablearticles/underground.cfm

Alabama has one of the highest densities of caves and karst features found anywhere in the world and the northern part of the state has a particularly high number. Much of north Alabama is underlain with deep deposits of limestone, formed over millions of years by the deposition of innumerable calcareous organisms in a shallow marine sea. These gray limestone deposits can be seen along highways that cut through the area's mountains and hills.

But sometime in February of 2006 is when my friend started planning that Bob Dylan birthday bash in Denver. That sounded like a better challenge.

I have another friend living above Jacksonville, FL, near Amelia Island. I knew, to get ready for a possible month long adventure to Colorado, I had better do a warm up run, and what better way to go than Florida at the end of winter? 4 capfulls of oil per 22 oz. tank, (for my 25cc Zenoah Red Max), that's really all I had to know.

It was really spur of the moment, that Florida run. The baby goats had all hit the ground, the 2 week weather forecast looked promising, and a day after thunking up the idea, I was on the road, headed south.

Tarps, not a tent. No saddlebags, everything crammed in my basket and backpack. Too many sweaters, not enough fleece, wrong kind of blanket.... And every tool I could think of.

By the time I was 30 miles from the house, about to drop off the steep Sand Mountain area into the Coosa River valley, I knew I had to dump some weight.

Another friend lives in St. Clair county, about 60 miles from my house, so I veered thataway. It was his 5 year old son who found me a box, his dad took a ride on my bike while Braxton and I unpacked/repacked my gear. I remember distinctly handing him my spare slime tube which was still in the box. Little did I know.......he got distracted by the nerf football in his dad's open trunk, and days later, when I called and asked him to look, Geoff told me that's where he found it.

You never think about that type of item until you need it. But I was distracted too, trying to move the weight from my backpack to either the basket or the cardbox box.

The second piece of bad luck, that first day, was a notorious, always under construction, US 280. Of all the highway shoulders I've encountered, on my very first overnight attempt, I met THE WORST.

Crossing the bridge into Childersburg, I snapped my DeSoto Trail picture. US 280 was going to be my magic carpet 4 lane ride into Auburn and Tuskegee.

US 280 had been in a state of construction for 50 or 60 years, they say. When the shoulder wasn't chunky and rocky, it was topped off by recycled glass. Besides dodging typical road debris, every two-ten miles had a new road crew, with a different shoulder creating technique. One of them was experimenting with a 3 foot wide ridge maker.

I looked at the map, and decided to abandon US 280 in Sylacauga. If only I had made it that far. I was in front of a granite countertop company when the rear tire went squirrelyishly flat.

I had cut a "V" shaped gouge/flap into my tire, about the size of a quarter. I pulled into the countertop parking lot, and asked if I could fix my flat over in the shade. When I tore EVERYTHING out of both my red Marlboro bag and my backpack, my stuff strewn all over, I realized the spare tube was AWOL.

A Wal Mart was 10 miles south, the countertop folks said, so I stuck out my thumb and went tube shopping. With TWO $8 slimes and a bottle of water, the same guy who had carried me south came by within 5 minutes of thumb out, to carry me back north.

I sure was glad to have my flat at a place which had an air compressor, because that's when I found out how sorry my air pump was. 5 layers of duct tape, wrapped around a pencil, was one of the items in my tool kit, I made a folded patch to put on the hole in the tire.

That seemed good enough to pass right by the same Wal Mart, instead of returning and buying a new tire. WHAT WAS I THINKING????

I was thinking of killing two birds with one stone, getting to a "famous" bike shop in Auburn, showing the bike to the owners. Right past Alexander City, I killed my second tube.

While fixing this one under a tree, on the other side of the hill, maybe 500 yards south of me, a HAZMAT carrying truck "fell" onto a car, so the entire time I'm changing and pumping and cussing, police, ambulances and fire trucks are screaming past me. Imagine my surprise when I got back on the road and seeing this war zone of emergency vehicles within seconds of cresting the hill. I squeezed through the blocked traffic on both sides of the highway, and continued south.

Why did I think I could still make it to Auburn, 30 miles away?

I only made it to Dadeville, maybe 5 miles. This time it happened in front of a nightclub, which had an outdoor pavilion, right past another construction zone.

I hid the bike, walked back north, toward the town. It was near 4:30 p.m. and I knew I didn't have much time before the stores closed.

I finally caught a break, the favorite Dadeville commissioner was out in the middle of the median in his red pickup truck, with a "grabber" picking up litter and tossing it in the bed of his Toyota. He told me to hold on a sec, did a U-Turn through the grass, and carried me to the local Ace Hardware.

THREE $11 slimetubes later, I'm back at the nightclub. The commissioner said it was alright to camp there, in fact, about 8 p.m. a Dadeville police car came to check up on me, the commissioner sent him to see if I needed anything. And the next morning, another police cruiser showed up around dawn with a cup of coffee in a bag, he said it was compliments of the commissioner.

SHOP DADEVILLE, MBers !!!

I was so close to Auburn, that the next morning I limped in shortly before 8 a.m., had to wait around for an hour for the shop to open.

It was there I learned about a better grade of tire than the Kendra, and bought my very first puncture-proof tube. I also bought a better brand of hand air pump, tossed the sorry "Bell" brand pump I started with into the trash.

That combo would carry me to Florida and back, then out to Denver. The next flat I got was in El Dorado, Arkansas. It was NOT caused by the road, but by the spoke ends rubbing through the gasket.

That's when I figured out about wrapping those spoke ends in tape, a lessen learned the hard way.

Anyway, my very first day was worst in hassles, worst in miles. When I plan ahead, I know I could never repeat such a bummer of a beginning.
 

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wow that sounds like a day youlle never forget.i know i wouldnt.the commissioner sounded cool as ****.he must of liked what you were doing.
 
I hope none of these posts that Bamabikeguy makes are never removed, these stories are priceless. The most useful pieces of information come out of these long passages of his trips across America. I wish I had the courage and the confidence that Paul has on making his one man bike trips. I would be hard pressed to even go out of state with my bike.
 
wow that sounds like a day youlle never forget.i know i wouldnt.the commissioner sounded cool as ****.he must of liked what you were doing.

It really worked out best that the very first over-nighter ended up under that Dadeville pavilion.

My neighbor had loaned me her "Time-Life" ultra thin radio, (FREE with a subscription) and when I woke up the next morning, about 4 a.m., I built a small fire in the convenient pit, and I cranked up that mini-FM for the very first time.

My ears perked up right away, I'd picked up a college station out of Georgia, lucked into a very Bob Dylan'd deejay, who played out 2 hours of "nothing but Bob". I'm talking ALL the long songs, like Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts, & Isis, & Shelter From The Storm.


How do I remember that so vividly, you ask?


When I picked up the strong beamed signal, the last verses of "Hurricane" were playing, which instantly caught my attention, then came "Buckets of Rain".......

Buckets of rain
Buckets of tears
Got all them buckets comin' out of my ears.
Buckets of moonbeams in my hand,
I got all the love, honey baby,
You can stand.

I been meek
And hard like an oak
I seen pretty people disappear like smoke.
Friends will arrive, friends will disappear,
If you want me, honey baby,
I'll be here.

Like your smile
And your fingertips
Like the way that you move your lips.
I like the cool way you look at me,
Everything about you is bringing me
Misery.

Little red wagon
Little red bike
I ain't no monkey but I know what I like.
I like the way you love me strong and slow,
I'm takin' you with me, honey baby,
When I go.

Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must.
You do what you must do and ya do it well,
I'll do it for you, honey baby,
Can't you tell?

How can you feel bad about flats tires after listening to Buckets of Rain???

That two hours of seldom heard Dylan tunes, topped off by the "coffee from the commissioner" at exactly the sunrise moment, when far-off night time radio starts to crackle and hiss, was downright inspirational.

Riding on my little red bike, I could always sing snippets of Dylan lyrics whenever I liked, or put his words to a visual I was experiencing, then use the radio at nights trying to pick up similar "local flavor".

(btw- Bobby D., Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp are playing minor league ballparks this summer, should be worth the ticket price)

There were two other memorable mornings with that radio on the Denver trip.

Do you like Western Swing? Do you have downloadability?
I've listened to Joe B's show and the way he arranges his program. It keeps the audience informed and at the same time entertaining them with the best choices of Traditional Country and Western Swing music. WAHOO, WHAT A RIDE! David Cline, Singer/Songwriter, Combine, Texas

http://www.backfortybunkhouse.com/radio.htm

I was camped at a city park, next to a rodeo arena, in Stratford, Oklahoma.

It was Sunday morning, and I'm always awake in the earliest a.m. I picked up this Joe Baker show coming out of a strong Texas station, and what they were mixing was excellent music and "The History of the Cutting Horse". All the way up till sunrise, I'm gaining insights from this guest, the "grandson of a famous cowboy, son of a famous cowboy", and who ever the guy was, he was winning championships himself from back in the 1940's.

The cutting horse was the key to the whole "cattle industry". If there were no cutting horses in the 1880's, history would have come out different, and McDonald's would be serving up mutton.

Anyway, that morning was like sitting in a college seminar about "everything cowboy", with none of that Nashville crapola muzak, but Bob Wills, Asleep at the Wheel and a bunch of others I'd never heard before. Some of those songs were hilarious.

The other "me and that radio" moment was in the swampy, rice producing border area of Arkansas, 10 miles north of Louisiana, an hour away from the "to Greenville, MS" bridge. Flying bugs the size of ping pong balls, having to sleep all night dressed like a bee keeper, stinking of DEET. Nothing good to say about camping near water in the bayous, except that you have to do it to get home.

BUT at least I picked up real N'Orleans jazz on the radio, extended 7-10 minute jammin' songs, most that I'd never heard before. Then it shifted to BB King and Taj Majal type blues.

A small FM radio is a MUST have item for travel, there are times (like in the middle of Nowhere, KS) where it is worthless, but usually between 4 am and sunrise you can catch "something different" than what you get at home.

The easiest ways to feel the different rhythms of an area, as Rif likes to put it, is listen to some unique music in the early waking hours, and then to get some local flavor, order the link sausages at breakfast.

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'bama, I love your stories. You've been living my dream - riding cross-country where the whim takes me, meeting interesting and hospitable people who take joy in being helpful and kind to strangers, sharing their "wealth" freely.

I've been writing a series of stories the last few years that I call my "Bad Dog" stories, about critters (mostly canine) that I've known in my life. I'm compiling them now into book form - I wish you'd do the same with your adventures.

My best canine companion in my whole life was a half golden Lab - half Rhodesian ridgeback mutt I had in college who went everywhere with me, trotting alongside my bike for mile after endless mile throughout Oregon, northern California, and Washington. When I walked from the Oregon/Cali border north into British Columbia along the Pacific Crest trail, Max walked every step of the way with me, packing his own dogfood in a pack I made for him. There were many, many campsites where Max and I sat side by side, "singing" along with late night radio shows I could pick up on my little pocket transistor radio. Max had much the better singing voice of the two of us.

You've gone and made me nostalgic.
 
Max had much the better singing voice of the two of us.
Sad to say, Dylan sings better than me !

I would be hard pressed to even go out of state with my bike.
What we ALL have is "time to think to ourselves" whether short or long distance, it doesn't take much imagination to do a lot of "what if" scenarios.

Even looking at a map takes on a different feeling, than it did in our pre-MB years.

Its not exactly "day dreaming" we are doing on our rides, but it definitely needs a name.
 
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