By Carmen Juch
WARNING
This article is based on opinion. It can contain sarcasm, derision or incongruities. Protective clothing may be necessary when reading.
The pressure, OH the pressure. We went "Nationwide" with distribution on newsstands in all 50 states and Canada!
Boy Howdee! Happy days and that entire hullabaloo. But once I finished dancing around to the ZZ Top lyrics "…We was laughing and I'm jokin' and we feelin' alright. Oh I'm bad, I'm nationwide. Yes I'm bad, I'm nationwide" I stopped and suddenly realized "Hey, I probably have to be more creative in my writing." Where's the fun?
So I sat back to analyze my options for this story and decided the only real way to get a great idea is to get on the bike and ride. Surely a trip would bring forth a great story. And it is SPRING in Texas. The wildflowers are blooming and the humidity is held at bay (a little). In Texas, the weather is practically perfect at this time of year. What a better narrative to fill my word quota for this piece, I ask you?
After weeks of enduring four walls, I was certainly overdue for a little bike time and it wasn't hard to persuade a few others to buy a ticket to my idea. So we made plans to meet up on Friday, not too early because well, because we wanted to miss the early morning traffic (OK, I wanted to sleep in).
I am sure you know that Texas is big. You can pick out some places IN Texas and they are still bigger than several other states combined. We have parks bigger than some states. We have beaches, deserts, plains, places where it snows, forests, mountains, just about everything. But since this is a weekend ride, we decided we would head to the mountains.
OK, you may not think of the hills of the Austin area as "mountains" but they have to do for the area we are in and they have some great riding and camping. So we went to all the places you have been or maybe haven't but I bet you wish you could.
Friday afternoon we stopped in on 6th street just for a quick walk on the boulevard. We planned to stay outside the city and didn't want to be traveling in deer country too late at night so we went on, heading towards our first camping site. The night was clear, the weather unbelievable and we sang those old familiar songs late into the night. I am sure you know them, Gilligan's Island, The Addams Family, Beverly Hillbillies, I Love Lucy (one of the riders was a bit older than the rest of us), and Green Acres (we couldn't remember the words to The Partridge Family). Ah, the memories.
The next day we just kept on riding with no real plan but to enjoy everything, the day, the food, the ride. I don't know if you have ever been to Johnson City but it is a fun little place to stop in on a ride with great café type restaurants and antique shops. As the birthplace of LBJ it got them on the map but Johnson City was named after cattle-ranching ancestors of the late President.
Did we have fun? You betcha. Was the riding good? Awesome.
We camped, we fished a little (well, not me), we cooked (basically me) over a campfire and it tasted better than a four-star restaurant (because it was me) and we returned home rested and tired and happy all at the same time and wanting to do it all over again.
What is better than riding with good friends on a perfect weekend with no obligation to do anything but enjoy each other’s company? Did I come up with a story? Well, I did fill the page with words and it does have to do with riding a motorcycle so what can the boss say?
Now for the next issue, I'm thinking beach?