From: joe@rider.cactus.org (Joe Senner)
Newsgroups: tx.motorcycles
Subject: Hit the road Jack, er, Kent
Date: 24 Nov 92 04:07:59 GMT
Reply-To: joe@rider.cactus.org
Distribution: tx
Organization: NOT

kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) writes:
]"Storyteller" Joe post the ride tale.

sure, stick me with it, you just wanna make fun of my spelling and the
fact that I can't remember the road numbers...

]2) My rear shocks ain't got no rebound damping (Yeaooh!)

I looked like the rear was connected via Slinky (tm) on a few corners there...

](na na na na na na na) Take it from here, Joe.

well, blaine and mark and whoever else that thought about going and didn't,
you guys missed out *BIG* time. all tolled, sunday was probably the best ride
I've been on to date. we had perfect weather, fabulous roads, and some of 
the best hill country scenery around, and that includes watching kent grind
off not only the centerstand but also the outer edges of his boots.

steve 'brakes' bade, my 6yrold son and I left austin sunday morning at 8:00am 
sharp. the skies were crystal clear and the sun just starting to make some 
headway into getting things warmed up. if I had to guess I'd say the temp was 
in the low 50's. this wasn't too terribly bad, except when you throw in a
20mph wind out of the west and us heading into it at about 70mph. needless
to say the trip to bandera was quite chilly. with the prelimaries out of
the way and the blood flow slowly returning to the extremeties as the day
warmed up, we hit the road to the south from the OST in bandera at about 11:00.

even though the map clearly showed the road as "non-maintained earth roadway",
kent promised us more than once "it'll be great! don't worry!". about 6 miles
later, after the pavement had gone, this "road" turned into a private driveway.
yea kent, that was a blast... :-) in all fairness, for a dirt road it wasn't 
in very bad shape, it just didn't go anywhere. after listening to the 'fading 
memory' stories from kent we decided to head north and see if we could find 
some paved curves. 

if I remember right (help me out with the numbers kent), we took 470 out of
bandera to 187, just north of utopia. it was either that or 377 to vanderpool,
I can't remember now (hint hint kent & jerry, KotDoFL). I'm pretty sure it
was the 470 route as I remember it being fairly straight until we turned north
and got into some sweepers on 187. we stopped at a little log cabin type 
gas-gro-beer place and found a picnic table to eat our packed lunches on. 
we came upon this place none too soon, I'm convinced that my fuel pump was 
compressing the fumes in the tank into actual fuel to keep the thing going.
'brakes' and I came all this way on one tank of petrol, and were ready for
a fresh tank of go juice.

when kent said that our run up there was the warmup for 337. I half brushed 
it off remembering our earlier jaunt down the dirt trails. as it turns out 
he wasn't kidding. what a road. it's only a couple miles long and is over 
right about the same time you're just getting into the groove, but it was 
well worth the hours we spent getting there. 337 is basically a lime creek 
road carved into the side of a nice steep hill. having grown up in wyoming 
where they have things like the grand tetons, I refrain from calling it a 
mountain, but it was a pretty darn good hill. there's something about 
running a nice tight road lined on one side by a wall of rock and on the 
other by a dropoff that makes you conentrate just a wee bit harder about 
setting up for each of the corners. I remember one particular corner I came 
upon where kent was signalling slow/caution. he later told me it wasn't so 
much the corner as it was that people would sometimes stop to take pictures, 
and since there's no shoulder they stop in the road just around the corner. 
that's all real nice, but a sharp 90 degree corner on the edge of a cliff is 
sufficient reason for me to make darn sure I'm comfortable with my entry 
speed. I'm sure none of us had any idea what our speed was like through that 
section since noone dared take that much time to look at the speedo. the 
ultimate in fun. we pulled away from 'brakes' a ways up the road, and if it
had been any longer than it was, kent would have lost me as well. I'm not
sure which was harder, mentally controlling and planning the lines through
the corners or realizing that that old guy on the PC800 with a passenger 
was slowly pulling away from me. brakes got stuck behind a motorhome about
halfway through, probably the same one kent went flying around on a corner.
you had to see it to believe that one. those motorhomes didn't cut you any
slack either, you had to pass them hard and fast or just ride it out.

I wouldn't have believed it, but the next run turned out to be just as much
fun. it wasn't as tight overall (it still had its 25mph corners), but it 
lasted MUCH longer. we coverd a good 30 miles of roadway consisting of tight 
corners seperated by nice smooth sweepers. rest assured that the next 
splatterfest will put you on the roads in this area. the only drawback to 
this road was the lack of signs indicating cattle gaurds. we hit a few
of them pretty hard, and I was sure I had bottomed out on a couple of them
from the loud "SSSHHHHCC" sound I heard. as it turns out it was just the 
sound of the air being forced out of my son's lungs over the helmet/helmet 
intercom. he didn't seem to mind though, he kept playing his own version of 
F16 fighter pilot as we snapped back and forth through the corners, "SSSHHHHCC!
I'm hit! I'm hit! red-dog leader, I'm hit! AAAHHHHHHHH!!". a true type-a 
personality in the making.

the route into kerrville (1340?) added a nice dose of up and down to the left 
and right while the road wound back and forth across a river, barely a cage in 
sight, the sun to our backs, it was good. all in all brakes and I clocked 
410 miles on sunday, I imagine kent clocked something close to that. after a 
quick sub sandwich in fredericksburg we parted company, the sun was going 
down and it was starting to cool off. brakes and I made the run back to 
austin in just a bit over an hour. I think my biggest fear there at the end 
was not the cops that might be coming my way, the radar dectector would help 
with that, it was the chance of running up behind a cop going my way.

while kent's working on his rear suspension, I'm gonna be working on a way
to mount my video camera to the bike, I just gotta have a video of these
roads. of course that means two things,

1) we gotta go back and run them again! AWWWWWW! POOR US!!!
2) there'll be a record of kent loosing the rest of us on his two-wheeled
   lounge chair

in summary, sunday provided images that I'll no doubt carry with me for 
quite some time...

-- 
Joe Senner -- joe@Rider.Cactus.Org           aDoF#?                Austin, TX

    'When I asked Unix to make the witches burn I got:
         mcad.dunham-frodo[ 10 ]%make witches\ burn
         Make:  Don't know how to make witches burn.  Stop.
     Ergo, it must be the wizards.' -- Jerry Dunham