Cuzzin Sam's Trip
Well yall, I hate to interrupt a perfectly good narrative, but Muthuh asked me to write a few words about the view from my windshield. I know, I know, what was he thinking but somebody has to tell the truth in this journal right?
I left town August 1st headed toward Knoxville to meet TJ and Qwaz/soon to be Wally. Since one of my latest brainstorms is to ride in all 49 states (yes I'm aware we have 50 of em but if Evel Knievel couldn't get across that canyon on his bike I'm guessin my odds of crossing the Pacific on mine are even slimmer) and since it was only an inch or so according to my atlas, I made for the Virginia border first AND made it to Knoxville on time too. Ta-daa!
TJ claimed he was road captain till we met up with Muthuh so we followed him across several states. He did an admirable job keepin us on the right roads, even got us to the correct city but boys and girls, when it came down to the fine print… well, lets just say we passed the same fire department 5 times before I convinced him to stop there, and even then he couldn't find a fireman. Since I'm friends with several local firemen, I knew that if the trucks were in their bays, I should start lookin for the big screen tv. Sure enough I found em watchin a girls gone wi - I mean training videos.
The first Kodak moment missed was me pointing right (cause the fireman told me so) at the same time TJ was pointing left (cause a passing wino told him so) Guess whose directions we followed.
I won't bore ya with the small details - Muthuh will fill in all the blanks anyway - but I will give ya some of my impressions.
Picture 20 mile stretches of Midwest cornfields broken up by an intersection with a few stores, then another 20 miles of agriculture - keep repeating until tired. As TJ put it, maybe we should stop worryin about the tall building and send someone to guard our food!
Fast forward a few hundred miles and we found ourselves on a little turnout, drinking Muthuh's coffee and waitin for the sun to come up in the Badlands. Now, I could show ya the pictures and I can describe it to ya, but it'll never come close to explaining the beauty. I'll tell ya this though - it left a motley crew like us speechless. For a while anyway.
In what now seems like ten minutes we were settin up camp at the Buffalo Chip and heading to Rap City to pick up our biker chicks. As hard as it is to believe, especially since it was the original focus of this excursion, but the Sturgis portion of this road trip is at the bottom of the list for me. Yeah, I'm glad I went, glad I saw, but I was even happier to leave that mass of gridlocked bikes far behind. Maybe I'm not the party animal but I wouldn't trade you ten minutes in the Wind River Canyon for ten days at the rally. Beartooth Pass, Yellowstone, Shell Canyon, the Tetons and ten miles of straight two lane highway stretching out in front of me - that's the memories I'll keep. Am I getting older or smarter?
It seemed like trouble was around every corner but never anything insurmountable. Okay, a few broken bones for Dog but hey, if it was easy everybody would've been there right? And come to think of it, eight guys on the side of a dusty road in the middle of nowhere figuring out that we could duct tape an allen wrench in place to repair a disabled trailer - ain't that the epitome of the American can-do spirit? Won't we be talking about Dog riding 3000 miles with a broken leg 20 years from now? Okay, 20 years from now I may be tellin it with "my" broken leg but you get the idea right? It's the trials and tribulations as much as the scenic beauty that make a trip worthwhile.
Campfires, brats grilling, buffalo roadblocks, bald eagles and lazy curving mountain roads - now that's a trip y'all.
One last thing Muthuh - I know I've held you up long enough - but you've been a little too proud of your GPS system so I thought I'd show ya mine. After splitting off from you and Canden, we depended on it exclusively for the way home. It proved remarkably accurate (within the plus or minus 15 mile range). I'm enclosing some pics - you may want to consider an upgrade.
Cuzzin Sam's Redneck GPS (GEOGRAPHIC PAPER SYSTEM)
Thanks, as always, for the rideCuz
