Lost Tales- (in no particular order)

I was thinking about that "MBdaydreaming" aspect, out on the backroads with 360 degrees of vision, going at a speed that is perfect for observation. Its hard to get bored, because something new pops up around the bend or over the hill.

What I've found is I can begin an hour ride with a puzzle or problem or project in mind, and by the time I get to the destination, I've pretty well worked it out.

The physical act of becoming "bewildered as to place or destination" is pretty durn simple. I live 25 miles from the county seat, and traveling by auto since 1974, to get downtown I could make one right turn on US 278, or make a right, left, left and get there on US 69.

But on the bike, on my favorite backroads, to get to my usual spare gas fillup/water fountain stop at St. Bernard Abbey or lunch with the sisters at Sacred Heart Monastery, it takes between 9 - 17 twists and turns. In the city itself, I can race a vehicle from St. Bernard Bridge to either side of town, however, and get there faster with my shortcuts.

I once started on the north side of town, on US 31, and hit ALL 16 green lights in a row. I never touched the brakes, never let off the throttle. I sped through every intersection on that 4 laned main drag, thanks to my engine and the traffic engineer's planning being in perfect sync.

When I first started riding these things in 2005, to figure out those 9-17 turns, I GOT SUPER-LOST. Yogi Berra said "when you come to the fork in the road, take it", and I found that advise really works. I blame it all on the 911 System, when the names of the roads were changed to numbers, and on the oil companies, who shut down all the small country stores like my dad's Amoco.

Country stores usually have a bench in front, the "Liar's Bench" is what we called ours.

On my first long ride in neighboring Blount County, I came across a bench full of liars. That week it was all in the news, on all the television stations, that they had photographed a mountain lion over there, and I rolled into the station at the US 278/79 intersection in Brooksville, with it's 3-4 locals sitting outside, a chawin' and a jawin'.

Since I was the first and only motorized bike in the area, after I showed them how it worked, I said I was out on a lion safari, asked them "which way to the wild cats?"

By this time the store owner came out the door, and he listened as they gave me directions....lets put it this way, those tobacco spitting bullshooters knew they had a fish on two wheels.

Their paved roads would turn into gravel roads, then would turn into dirt. I'd U-Turn and go left, then somehow the west would head east. Half the "Dead End" signs must be stolen property, they sure were missing in that area.

Cullman and Blount counties are both "dry", and used to be you could get the the Etowah county line beer stores 30 miles away driving nothing but dirt roads. There were quite a few quarry-swimming holes, and a carload of teenagers in a convertible could spend a full day and barely ever see asphalt. Think "Dukes of Hazzard" and clouds of dust.....

Those dirt roads from my youth were now paved, but barely.

Modern air conditioning keeps folks indoors these days, too. It took me two hours and all of my spare gas and drinking water to get back to a highway (US 75) I even had a clue about, and I finally spotted a farmer mowing his yard. So I rolled up and begged for a splash of gas and drink of water, enough to get me back to US 278 in Snead.

As the crow flies, I was twenty miles from my original destination, all thanks to decades of Susan Moore High School's football rivalry with Holly Pond'ers. (SMHS is a class 2A football powerhouse sitting in a gully up in those hills somewhere).

How do I know that?

When I got back Brooksville, the store parking lot and that bench was empty. I went inside where the owner was smiling. I told him to tell that bunch of overall wearing ********'s that the "only Lion in Blount county was the Lyin' on that **** bench."

He said my mistake was mentioning Holly Pond, there had been an upset sometime in football, I dunno if it was in 2005 or back in the 1950's-60's when those ******* went to school. I got aggravated and said "****, I don't even live in Holly Pond, they just have the Post Office. I was a Rough Edger !!!

I got my revenge a year or two later.

Blount Co.'s long, straight highways 231, 79 & 75 and were perfect for my "breaking in the engine" 50-100 miles on my bike builds. (Just don't make any turns !) I've seen those liars many a time since, it's still a laugh for them. And I'd always roll up and ask, "seen any lions lately?"

However, whenever I got 10 miles away from that intersection, in a restaurant, or at another station in another town, and ESPECIALLY if there was a grey-haired grandmother within earshot, I'd report I'd seen something that looked like a black bear, on the far side of some pasture.

Then I'd get to another community store 10 more miles away, and report that some grey haired old lady told me she'd seen a 200 pound black bear in her garbage that morning.

It was about a year later, about noon, when I rolled into that Brooksville store with the overall wearing liars, and when I asked about the mountain lions, one of them exclaimed "we ain't seen that puma lately, but you better watch out for bears !!! "

I thanked them for the warning, and rode off a smilin'.

Ever since then, I NEVER ask about that mountain lion. Often when I meet a Blount Co. person, and especially when 3 are sitting on a bench, I inquire about the "Bear Situation over in Brooksville."

Rough Edge 1 - Susan Moore 0.
 
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Reminds me of a stunt a friend and I pulled in High School. We took an old pair of rubber boots, and sculpted new soles for them, complete with "claws" made from shaped nails. Grizzly bear paws, specifically. BIG GRIZZLY BEAR!

Mark was six foot eight, and weighed about 300 pounds himself, and we loaded 250 pounds more on a backpack frame. Then he walked out of the woods alongside the football field, stomped across the muddy field, and used the gardeners trident we'd modified to rip some BIG scratches in the door of the refreshment stand under the grandstand, then walked back across the field into the woods.

Man, that was a 90 days wonder - according to the state fish and game warden those had to be grizzly tracks due to their size, depth, and length of the claws. Nobody had seen a grizzly within 200 miles of there in 75 years.

Mark kept those boots. At our 25th High school reunion he brought them with him, put them on the display case above the plaster casts of the "bear tracks" from 25 years before. We had a good laugh at the dumbfounded looks they brought.
 
ahahaha ^ you old fullers came up with the greatest **** when you were younger.
keep up te good storiesif you have any this is a good thread!
 
ahahaha ^ you old fullers came up with the greatest **** when you were younger.
keep up the good stories if you have any this is a good thread!

I'm going to confine the nostalgia in this thread to two wheeled adventures. If we want to have a bullshooting thread about our perilous youthy daze, we'd be here all morning. We've got porches to paint and hay to haul !

But, one thing I've noticed on MB.com is that there isn't a shortage of folks like me who got a driving license back in the pre-Lynyrd Skynyrd era, when our 340 cubic inch 4-barrels could outrun the troopers who had sleek looking 1974-76 American Motors "Javelins". (Talk about a gubbmint experiment that didn't work, Alabama bought a super discounted fleet of those streamlined road hazards, and I think the troopers eliminated the problem by sacrificing them in roadblocking collisions and/or donating them to Hollywood chase scenes !! They were known as "moving barricades".... )

"Getting sidetracked" is similar to "becoming lost", and when you are in the 50 y.o. +++ category, it doesn't take much to stir the dead brain cells into trivia and nostalgia. Monday I saw a guy, 2 years older than me, who used to have a Pontiac GTO with 3 deuces, the second fastest car in Holly Pond. Marchman's Malibu was the fastest, I had my Dart GTS, then a Charger, and my neighbors owned '56 and '57 Chevy's.

Somehow we got to talking about those Alabama State Trooper black & gray Javelins, parking at the Dairy Bar or hiding behind the town oak tree with radar gun pointed. Teens would sneak up in back of them, and instead of scratching "WASH ME" on the trunk, would write "SLO MOVING VEHICLE", "SPEED BLURS" or similar phrases in the dusty black paint. It was a three year running joke, those scary looking Javelins .......

BUT...MUST...RESIST...GOOD...OLD...DAZE...STORIES

Because I looked in the "Introduction" section this morning, and there are something like 60 or more new members in the last week, many of them young'ns.

And our focus is "30 m.p.h. fun"

I have a recent customer, OLDER than me, who is planning on a Taos, New Mexico MBtrip, he's got the trailer, has a friend on an identical bike to go with him, says he's spending all his time looking at maps. He put the 14 tooth on the Robin Subaru 35 (not recommended), and is claiming GPS certified 200 miles per gallon.

I've been looking for an easy way to cut and paste "Lost" stories, because his planned Taos route has "too much Texas", while I'm trying to think in reverse, how and where he could easily climb into that 3,000 feet+ elevation, the land of No Armadillos.

The panhandle of Oklahoma is over 3,000 feet, but since all the roads go in straight lines, it really is impossible to "get lost" out there. "Misplaced" maybe, but never lost.

The sun rises in the east, sets in the west, the prairie wind tells you that you are going to have a good or bad afternoon ride because you chose "south" instead of "east". One way travel through the plains states is like surfing, you are just waiting for a "wave of a tailwind" to push you faster than usual. Pick wrong and it's a washout. U-Turns are not allowed over the Kansas state line, else you'd never get anywhere.

It is ten times easier to get really disoriented on the east and gulf coast, with the curvy roads, tall trees and cloudy skies confusing you as to "where did the sun go?". Out west, with the Big Sky, get off the main road and sometimes you can feel more "alone". There were places I didn't even hear birds !! But basically you follow the sun and curse the wind.

On a motorized bike, you are seeing things on the side of the roads that the cars, whizzing by, completely miss.

3 times in those 7-8 days returning from Denver I had short sprints versus surprised deer on the shoulder of the highway. I'd top a hill and the mule deer or whitetail would take off in the same direction as me, ease its way to the right and then disappear. One of those races had to be a quarter mile, the others were between 50-100 yards. Pretty cool. You can't do that in a car, on a regular bicycle, and definitely not while jogging.

Only on an MB.

When I started this morning, I intended to cut/paste a possible "Return from Taos" route for those soon to be MBadventurers, include my record-breaking "shortest one-way-route" through Texas story.

texas.jpg


But when I went over to the other forum to copy the text, I saw how I really needed to get that in some kind of "particular order", because even though the roads out west are pretty much "go straight" or "take a left", there were a lot of surprises along the way.

And in those previous posts about that leg of the 2006, I noticed I missed a whole lot of amusing surprises.

THUS, and HENCE, I'm going to try to put newer versions, with different incidents, of the same stories. With other pictures. In some type of particularity.

When I get that potential "return from Taos" organized, then I can go back to my haphazardness.


(That's another sidetracked, over 50 y.o. trait, never tell it the same way twice !! The dead brain cell count is too blame for fuzzying up the recollections.)
 

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haha! the first long ride i went on the day it started running and moving, i went off to tim hortons. Our bike path crosses one of the roads out of town and there was cold beer and a cheeseburger at the end of it i knew. So i went. And of the one liter i put in first thing when i got there i had only a sniff left. So i pumped some and mixed it up right there lol

on the way home i ran it in really good for the first time getting it worked up to speed and when i turned off the main road i started looking around at stuff. The speed really is perfect in open air to gander around and think about how cool the earth looks!
 
Words for Bama....

I was just barely a member here when you left. I regret that I did not know you sooner. There are others that are traveling and I am sure that you would be loving their adventures. As I prepare to make many shorter trips I am reading more of what you wrote, and learning allot.
While you might not be around anymore, I just wanted to say that you are still helping others.
Thank you!
 
His stories are among the best I have ever read, he gives priceless advice and humor all at the same time. It's too bad they never profiled him on Dateline or 60 Minutes, it would have made some very interesting viewing. I find it very curious that he never made any of these long journeys with anyone, he probably preferred it that way. What really stands out about him and his incredibility long trips is his perspective. His natural ability to express his feelings like a seasoned journalist. He was truly a one of a kind in a ever changing world, we all lost someone who was truly dear to most of us.
 
You didnt bring an extra tire with you O o... why...
Everyy time i ride more than i feel comfortable walking i put 2 tubes and a tire in with my tools. Every time.
 
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