Black Current wine, from a drunk guy: Part 2

The first thing I heard when I woke up, was the children at Roy’s campsite, downhill from mine. They were all excited, chattering about about going fishing (I found out it was opening day in MO.).  The second thing I heard?  The sound of Dude stumbling past my campsite to Roy’s. He greeted Roy rather lethargically and said, “You don’t happen to have any water I could buy from you? I’m really wobbly this morning.”

“Yeah, you had quite a bit to drink last night, I think we have some water you can have, take a seat,” said Roy, sympathetically, as he fetched a bottle of water from their cooler. Dude sat down and drank some water, and acknowledged how good the water tasted, “Yeah, my friends up and left me here last night, and they forgot to take my tent out of their trunk.”

At this point, I struggled to keep my internal laughter, internal, as Dude excitedly asked Roy’s kids, “You guys like hot dogs!?” After they affirmed they did, Dude exclaimed that he had a pack of them up at his campsite, and quickly hurried off to get them, returning several minutes later. I can only hope Roy didn’t allow the kids to sample the dogs.

After a bit more chatting, Roy and the kids started to load up the pickup to go fishing. Dude said his goodbyes, started up to his campsite. I heard his shuffling, then he stopped, close to my tent, and I heard the sound of a glass scraping on concrete, then he sauntered on. Somehow I wasn’t astonished when I got up to see the bottle of Black Current wine he had given me last night was missing from the concrete picnic table slab. Welcome to Missouri!

Black Currant wine, from a drunk guy: Part 1

When I arrived at the Lakee of the Ozarks campground, I quickly went about searching for a good campsite. The first site passed was occupied by a guy (who i will refer to as “Dude”) and another person. I selected the next campsite downhill. The one I selected was bordered on the downhill side by a guy (We’ll call him Roy) and his kids. As I set up my tent in the dark, I saw a car leave “Dude’s” campsite, and a few minutes later, I heard Dude yelling at his dog, who was wondering around the woods and other campsites. I tried to stay busy as dude stumbled around in the dark, up the slope from me, and doubled my efforts on setting up my tent when he stumbled down past my campsite, down to Roy’s. It was obvious that he had been drinking a bit too much (as he passed it smelled like a really bad dive bar). He struck up conversation, and offered Roy a bottle of some sort of booze. Roy declined the bottle, and after saying goodnight, Dude started back to his campsite.  He stopped when he reached my campsite, and said, “here you go” and hands me the bottle that Roy had just passed on.  It caught me off-guard and I took it, and was like, ‘uh, ok.” He continued back up to his campsite without saying another word, and I quickly placed the bottle on the concrete slab that my site’s picnic table sat on.

I finished setting things up, cooked dinner, then after eating and cleaning up, I got in the tent for the night. As I drifted off I was aware of Dude yelling at his dog, “come back here!”

Midwest (South) ride, part 1.2 2007-09-14

From Sedalia, I took US65 south, Highway 52 at Cole Camp. Then east to Highway 5 south. This was where the fun began! The roads so far had been surprisingly beautiful, but relatively straight, which we had in Nebraska in large quantities already. The open areas started to disappear as I headed south, changing to a very hilly heavily forested terrain. It was just amazingly green, and unfortunately I only stopped to take one photo of this section until I reached Camdenton. A real pity, as this was just amazing road, curves that would satisfy any rider, surprisingly large hills and valley’s, with greenage on both sides of roads, with sporadic openings that displayed hills and valleys in the distance.

I can’t relate how incredibly impressed I was with the beautiful scenery, and quality of roads Missouri offered. It would be great to return for a week of riding backroads, and spending some time at Lake of the Ozarks, and several times, I thought to myself that I wouldn’t mind retiring in that area. Ok, so that’s a long way off, so what!

Here’s a photo looking over forest to Lake of the Ozarks:

This was the point in the day where my luck went kinda bad, then back to ok. My thought was to camp at Lake of the Ozarks somewhere near Camdenton, but when I got there, it was about an hour until sunset. I looked at the camping options listed on the GPS points of interest database. It showed camping at Ha Ha Tonka State Park west of town. After wasting 10 minutes heading up a wrong turn road, I backtracked and made it to the park. I drove up through the park a couple miles, looking for the campground signs. I just kept riding, and the miles kept going by with no signs, and soon I was out of the park. It was getting dark, and now i was like crap, where am i goign to camp? I headed back to the park entrance and by chance, there was a lady cleaning the building, who told me the only camping they had (which was free) were hiking accessed campsites about a mile from the mile from the road. No thanks.
Some views of Lake of the Ozarks:

It was completely dark by the time I got back into Camdenton, and after the dissapointment of two campgrounds listed on the GPS being non-exsistant, just about the only camping option looked to be Lake of the Ozarks State Park about 10mi away. I started up the highway, and finally turned off on the road out to the park. It was dark, windy, and did i mention, dark?

The best part of the ride was the guy in the SUV driving behind me down the dark, curvy road to the campground. He was flicking on his hi-beams constantly and staying close enough that, the lights were blinding me in the mirrors, making it hard to see what was coming up on the road. I tried to speed up and get ahead of him enough to not be bothered by the lights, but couldn’t put space between us because of the condition of the road and the corners. By the time I got to the campground I was really quite irritated. Why was this guy riding my tail so close, and using his brights.

I stopped when I got to the campground, to let the guy pass. Instead he stopped next to me, rolled his window down and said, “did you see what I was trying to do?” “No, I couldn’t see anything with your headlights blinding me.” “I was trying to warn you of the corners, and light them up a bit.” “Thanks.” I guess I couldn’t really stay all that mad at him for making the ride crappy, yet another instance of a southern resident trying to be nice.

I soon found a campsite, and set things up in the dark, during which the procedings turned hilarious, to read the about black current wine story, click here.

Midwest (South) ride, part 1.1 2007-09-14

Up but sleepy, I got all my gear ready.

I headed out around 8am, and after multiple stops to mess with settings on the new Garmin GPS, I was on the highway around 9am.  I was making good time and reached Iowa fairly quickly, and to take a pic of Suzzy, doesn’t she look happy?

I made pretty good time through the short section of I29 to Missouri, and on to Kansas City.  I had my first ‘routing’ incident as I got to North KC.  In my preparation, I had created a route of the entire trip, using city names.  Not a good idea, if you want to be efficient.  The GPS routed me to the ‘city center’ of Kansis City, which though very cool, is not where I wanted to go.  A half our of traffic, construction, etc, and I was finally back on the highway in the right direction.

Here’s a picture taken in downtown KC:

I rode east on US50, stopping for a couple minutes in Lone Jack, the site of a very bloody battle during the Civil War. I didn’t have time to go into the museum, but I snapped a quick photo, before continuing on.

I made a quick stop in Concordia at their MC shop, purchasing chain lube, then checking out some bikes and four-wheelers. I hadn’t seen the new Can-Am four-wheelers, and was impressed by their Outlander model, with a 800cc v-twin engine. That’s bigger than the SV’s engine! But can it go a “shaky” 130mph? I think not!

On to Sedalia, MO, where I had the same experience as KC, the GPS trying to route me to the downtown area. After wasting an hour messing with the gps route, it kept giving me errors, so I finally gave up, deleted the route, and continued on.

Sweet wheels, carbon fiber dreams…

My brother came up for the day to go with me to the Cycle World International Cycle Show at Qwest Field’s Exhibition Center.  It was cool to be able to see so many bikes, all different manufactuers, in one place.  We both had a good time looking, sitting on, dreaming about, and photographing so many cool bikes.  I think the highlights of the show for me had to be 3 bikes.  The first, a new model from Kawasaki called the Versys.  For some reason it just really struck me as a great looking bike, with seemingly good components and a comfortable seating position, for a reasonable price.

Kawasaki Versys:

The second bike, was a BMW GS650Dakar, that had been put through a lot of miles and conditions on an around the world 3 year trip.  It just had a lot of character and it was just neat to see a dirty bike amongst so many shiny new bikes.

BMW GS650Dakar:

The third bike that stuck out I didn’t even take a photo of.  I think it was that i was laughing after I asked the rep if they did test rides, to which the guy said they did at the dealer in Seattle/Bellevue.  Of course I asked that before pointing at this bike for a test ride.  The bike?  That would be the MV Agusta F4CC.  one of 100 built.  Cost: $120,000.

The two above photos are courtesy of www.motorcycledaily.com - and will be removed on request.  Thanks.

I mean seriously, is that not the coolest looking bike ever!??  Even the seat looked expensive:).  Evidently it’s not just looks, it’s pretty fast too.  Note the fine print from the MV website, “Price excludes any applicable freight, dealer setup, tax, title, or licensing fees and is subject to change. Actual dealer prices may vary.”  I’m guessing if you’re paying that much you’re really not going to be haggling with them over setup and frieght charges.

Below are several other photos from the show:

look at the rear sprocket on this ATK, it was called the “Wheelie King”:

Another MV:

I had to get on this drag bike:

A nice, Rooke built KTM:

Erik on the ‘08 KLR650: