got up and smoked a cinnamon swisher that i’d bought last night. we checked out of the hotel and took off. us84 to natchitoches, then highway 6 to many. at many we traded bikes for the first time. we crossed that long bridge over the toledo bend reservoir into Texas. stopped for pics, of course, and traded bikes.
21 to 103 to lufkin. at lukfin we ate at bryan’s bbq, which is the first place we ate at when we got back into Texas on our road trip last summer. it was very good again, like last time. although this time they were playing top-40 country radio instead of good old country stuff. 94 to 19 to huntsville, where i ended up putting us going down i-45 instead of on 30. but it gave linc a chance to see the huge sam houston statue on i-45 (photo op). we then got back up to 30. at fm1791 we parted ways, he headed on 30 toward austin and me going down to houston.
i took fm1791 to fm149, both enjoyable roads. i hit 249 which i took into beltway 8, then i took 8 around to my house. i got home around 6pm. 17978 on the odometer, so the trip was around 1700 miles or so. and thus ends the road trip.
i was at home about an hour and a half, then i headed downtown to kaveh kane’s for the monthly geek gathering. in my car.
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failure is not an option. it's a requirement.
Welcome back…glad you guys didn’t drop your bikes…or your weight eating moon pies and yoohoo 🙂
i wouldn’t say the culinary choices of this road trip were geared toward health. we tried to find locally owned places to eat, which generally means food selections that aren’t healthy (but are good).
my brother didn’t have a moon pie or yoo-hoo though. if i recall, he had a dr. pepper, peanuts, a foster’s, and some chips or something. he bought a peanut butter twix, but he forgot it in the fridge. he bought a regular swisher, and smoked it the night we bought all the junk food.
when are you getting a bike again so you can join us on some road trips?
It was pretzels I had with my Foster’s. A pretty healthy meal. Followed by dessert, a Dr Pepper with peanuts poured in the bottle. I’m still annoyed about leaving that damn peanut butter Twix behind. I wish I had it now.
When did the Sam houston statue go up? It’s been many years since I’ve been on any stretch of I-45. Is a part of North Freeway still under construction? I’d hate to be disappointed by hearing that they are done working on it for awhile…
i think it’s been up for a couple of years. maybe more. it’s huge. that picture makes it look kind of small, but you gotta understand that it’s across four lanes and a median, plus distance on each side. the statue is like 68 feet tall, and on a 10 foot base. and they placed it so when you are coming north from houston it looks like it’s right in the middle of the road, so you can see it for a mile or two or more away. at night they have bright lights on it, so it’s this glowing white speck in the distance that gets bigger and bigger until you’re like “oh my G-d, that’s a huge ghost-white person in the middle of the road!”
and don’t fret about the north freeway being finished: it’s about as finished as that stretch of i-45 up around ennis or where ever. what’s that…like 15 years or something? so rest soundly in faith that drivers will continue to be frustrated by the construction for years and years to come.
Every time I saw that Statue, it creeped me out. At night, it is especialy creepy. The first time I saw it was at night going south, so it just appeared suddenly out of the darkness where nothing had been before. It was just wrong.
Are we to assume that the absence of posts is evidence of the ebbing of the ocean of self pity? Or is the bitterness prompting attention to other tasks? Or, as another before me suggested, are you still cackling at the victims of the hurricane whose homes you must have noticed during your midlife crisis motorcycle journey?
oh, joy. it seems i’ve been visited by “mithras-lite”. mithras at least had novelty on his side. and seemingly a bit of intelligence. the “beard-hater” here is evidently honing his schoolyard-level taunting skillz. (at least i hope this isn’t just a regressed mithras…maybe after an accident involving loss of brain function…it pains me just to contemplate it…*wipes tear from eye*)
seriously though…sadly, i’m afraid i may have somehow engendered the wrath of the middle school neo-pagan philosophers’ guild — a fearsome band of pseudo-intellectual teens who rove the internet (anonymously, of course) looking to use their burgeoning crazy-mad mental skillz and teen-fueled omniscience on poor, unsuspecting bloggers. i must admit, it’s obvious how much skill and craftsmanship and thought go into their work. rather quaint, don’t you think?
i’m afraid i can’t spend too much time on responding to miss o’pogon though…self-pity, bitterness, and midlife-crisis cackling simply demand too much of my time these days.
It pains me to see someone else using such a great handle so irresponsibly (and, like, dammit, I thought I was the only dude to come up with it).
Enjoy the road, good man, comforted in the knowledge that some of us named beard-hater actually can grow the beard that an ironic moniker requisites.
your good moniker was denigrated by one of two or three “friends” of my ex-wife, who were checking/following my blog back in the day and making snarky anonymous comments from time to time.
fortunately, your handle was probably just used by them as a one-off to “showcase” their intellectual cleverness and rapier-like wit. i’m sure they grinned smugly to themselves as they typed in their clever, obscure gem that showed off their trivial knowledge. and probably suffered an arm injury in the process of vigorously patting themselves on the back about it.
but i doubt they ever used it as a recurring online name.
so enjoy your ironic, obscure reference in confidence, my friend. my numerous and varied beard styles over the years salute you!