17 James

I bet he has never ate hotel yogurt on his trips!

     It was a short ride to Texarkana AR to see James, our cycle friend. ( have to be careful when you say that.)   This is a picture of him from a recent return trip from California.  It is only fitting that James has his own page, now before the stay here, a little background.  A few years ago we decided to ride a trike to the March Daytona bike rally.  When we started out it was 10 degrees. ( see the madness didn't just start.)  We ran into snow in Chicago but that's another story, we said we were going to shorten it.

James's friend with her new blinged Bandana

    We didn't spend very long at the rally, we have found out we aren't to excited about the big bike rally's.  It is fun to go there and see the large group of motorcycles and admire the tricked out ones.  But the danger and traffic congestion plus inexperienced riders puts us on the road pretty quickly.  We would rather ride with a couple of bikes and see the country.  Besides the cold weather had followed us south, snow in Jacksonville FL that year.  We went down to Key West to find some warmer weather and then started for home.  We were following  a camper pulling what we assumed was a trailer with a motorcycle in it.  A school bus we were meeting put out the stop sign for oncoming traffic at the last minute and the camper had to really get on it's brakes to get it stopped in time.  We could see that the bus driver realized what she had done and mouthed a "sorry" to the camper.  Up the road a bit we all pulled into a gas station.  Of course Ruthie went up and started talking to the people in the camper.  By the time I had finished filling with gas there was a plan in place.

    We were going to follow James and his friends, stop somewhere and pick up groceries,  go to a campground and cook out.  They left the gas station before us ( maybe trying to out run these disturbed people from Minnesota. they had probably been warned to watch out for people on trikes by their parents.)  Fortunately Ruthie knew the plan and the route so when we were finished at the station we took off determined to catch them.  It is amazing the lead a vehicle traveling free way speeds can get on a stationary vehicle.  For a while we traveled five to ten miles over the limit then we kicked it up to 90 mph,  a little nervous about my speed it seemed like a long time before we pulled up beside them.  Ruthie had told me that they had been at the rally and the second day there his Harley had been stolen, ( 50=Harley's stolen 0= gold-wings, I guess the public has voted.)  they were from Texarcana  AR and one of the friends had a booth selling pony tails.  She actually knew a lot more but you get the idea, it doesn't take Ruthie long to find out your story.  We stopped at a grocery store and split the cost of steaks and the fixin's.  We then proceeded to follow them to a campground, seemed to take hours we were getting very hungry and the smell of baking sweet potatoes with marshmallows coming out of the camper was making us hungrier.  I apologize this is getting to be a Ruthie story and I promised to shorten it!  But now I either have to delete it or finish.  After what seemed hours we stopped at a campground and James cooked some great steaks, we sat around the campfire and he told stories of some of his rides.  He is a hard core rider.  A bare bones Harley and sleeping where ever he can, one of the stories that made me laugh and it is probably the way he tells it.  He was riding to Sturgis SD for the rally speeding along in the middle of the night he said he was almost knocked off his cycle when he got hit in the middle of his fore head by a hard backed bug.  Maybe it was the long ride across Florida, sleep deprivation, sitting around the campfire, I don't know but when ever I think of James all I can see is him getting knocked of his cycle by a "hard backed bug".   A few years ago we rode down to the South Padre Islands and of course stopped and seen James,  he cooked up some steaks and told more stories but my favorite is still the "hard backed bug" story.  When you are going to see some one after a long absence you wonder, will I recognize them?  Have they changed much?  I half expected to see a mark on his forehead from getting hit by the hard backed bug.   No, he was the same old James he took us to the store to get some steaks, they are his specialty. what a gentleman he put a cooler down so Ruthie had a step to get into his truck he says he has to do the same thing for his mother.   I think I pulled a muscle pulling myself up into it.  He is the only one I know who has a 3 gallon bucket of a special steak seasoning so he won't run out.  It was another great experience with James, Be safe my friend.