Virtual-Doug

Onward to Houston

The ride from Crowley, LA,  to Houston was scheduled to be the shortest day of the ride -a  mere four hours.  I wanted to enjoy dinner with Trang, now a doctoral student at the University of Houston, so I planned to take my time, yet still have time to get into my motel room, then ride to her apartment.

From this photo, taken in a tiny town near the coast, can you tell what area I am in?  Its Cajun country - the "French Culture" as they refer to it. The small town of Gueydan is in the heart of the state's rice growing area and calls itself "The Duck Capital."

(If you can't read the top line of text on the sign, click on the photo and you will see a larger version.)

As I ride through the rural American South and in many rural areas of West Texas, I see places like this.   Seeing them makes me curious - what is the story behind these old broken homes?  Was there a family fight when the family scion passed away?  Did the kids move away from home to find a job? Did the former owners just get tired of floods and hurricanes?  I'll never know, of course, but it is fun to let the imagination run wild while riding.

But I soon came to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and I got on the Interstate.

Yuck - how I dislike the Iinterstate when I'm riding.  Oh, the bike does just fine, but the noise of the big trucks when they are right next to you is deafening.  People drive too fast - or worse, too slow - and nobody seems to see the world outside their windows.  I crossed the river and the state line, then got off the super slab and back onto some small roads.  I found a Mexican cafe for lunch, then launched into Houston traffic, headed for the area around Hobby Airport on I-45.  Again - the definition of craziness is the interstate highway.

As always, it did my heart wonders to spend time with Trang.  Strangely, we didn't go out for Vietnamese food as I didn't want to ride all the way over to the Bellaire area.  It spooks me to have her on the back of the bike without her wearing real protective gear.

As I rode back to my motel room after saying goodbye, I thought about the next leg of the trip was ahead.  Eager to get home, yet truly enjoying the trip.

 

The Return

This is is posted a little late.  The military reunion in Columbus, GA, was a huge success, but Sunday morning I awoke sneezing.  I caught a cold sometime during the reunion and it manifested itself the first day of the trip home.  When the first two days' rides were over, all I wanted to do was crawl in bed and sleep, with the hope I might feel better the next day.  I'll post the entire trip - and a bit about the reunion too.

Sunday morning - the reunion over, I wanted to pack up the bike and be on my way as early as possible, but breakfast brought lots of conversation with the guys and it was after 8:30 before the wheels started rolling.  There was no traffic in Columbus.  The four lane highway went through Ft. Benning, then for a wonderful short time, I had a nice twisty two-lane road with bright skies.  Great!

But, that all disappeared once I got to Eufala, Alabama. I rode a four-lane down to the beaches of the Florida panhandle.  I had chosen a beach side route in the hopes I would see seafood shacks and little towns.  Instead, I got four (sometimes six) lane divided highways populated with fast food joints and the kind of chain retail outlets that are homogenizing America.  All too often the beach front was crowded with multi-story condos.

Boring.

It stayed that way until I got to Pensacola, then I had another brief spate of cozy two lane roads until I had to get on the Interstate into Mobile. 

I have the kind of helmet designed so that the entire front part flips up out of the way - a very handy design indeed when sneezing my head off.  I got fairly practiced at "Ah ah ah - flip up helmet - CHOO!"  I wonder how many windshields I gummed up that way.

Motel room, eat dinner quickly and sound asleep by 9pm - and didn't set an alarm.  Seven in the morning found me awake, with the cold slackening and I was feeling like another day on the road.

Two Lane Roads and Southern Skies

Bad golfers keep playing golf because once a year they make one really great shot - then they tell themselves that if they did it once, they can do it again.  They put up with all the bad shots as they wait for next really great shot.

The ride from my sister's house in Huntsville, AL, to Columbus, GA was like that - it was the kind of day that makes up for the nasty rainy days.  This was a ride made in motorcycle heaven.

Cruising along the Tennessee River in northern Alabama, the sun was out and the temperatures brisk.  Mists rose off the water and filled the valleys.  The road dipped and turned and was great fun.

(As always, if this picture is a little too small, just click on it and a larger version will appear.)

A left turn at Gadsden, Alabama, put me on a wonderful two-lane road towards Georgia.  In one area, I must have some distant relatives living there.  Besides this church, there was also a Youngs Farm Road and a Youngs Station Road.  I know some of the critics reading this will want to admonish me for the lack of an apostrophe, but look at the sign - it is "Youngs", not "Young's."

There was little traffic - just the occassional pickup truck - but the scenery was great.  Nice curvy roads cutting through idyllic farms.  Alabama morphed into Georgia, but I could scarcely tell the difference.  The speed limit was a comfortable 55 mph, but I rode even slower than that - just to enjoy the view, the sun and the road.

Riding is hungry work.  I try to eschew the chain fast-food joints so I found the Smokin' Pig barbeque place in Bowden, Georgia.  The only thing better than the food was the slow Southern drawl of the waitress as she asked "Whatcha want, honey?"  I fielded a few friendly comments about my unusual ride, then one of the older men noticed the Purple Heart tags on the bike and I was bombarded with "Welcome Home" from many of the other patrons.  Nice people in Bowden, Georgia.

As you travel southern back roads, you see lots of small churches tucked into the trees.  This one is typical, and notice the year of it's founding.    This is a conservative land of slow change - and the people rely on their faith a lot.  As I stopped to take the photo, I wondered what it would be like to attend a worship service at one of these small rural churches.

Then on to Columbus.  My ride was for fun, but it is also to bring me to a reunion of the men I served with in Vietnam - the men of Company C, 2nd Battalion 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division.  I am intensely proud to be associated with these fine men.  Yes, we're a step slower these days, and at each reunion, I see more canes and wheelchairs, but these are men who are proud of their service and are thankful they are getting older.  Old age is a gift denied to some of the men we knew many years ago.

I'll be back on the road on Sunday - taking a different route home.

 

 

Huntsville or Bust

I slept in - no sense in setting out early if there was still rain in the area, so I didn't leave Memphis until 9am - and the skies were still threatening and cloudy.  A glance at the radar on my smartphone told me the rain was ahead of me, but there were little patches of wet stuff hanging on here and there.

I had no desire to find myself in a patch.

US 82 across the top of Mississippi and Alabama is four lane, but its more like an overgrown two lane.  There wasn't much traffic and (typical of back east) the speed limit is only 65 mph.  I still had lots of small towns to ride through.  Much of it is near the Tennessee River, so I even dropped off to look at some of the power plants built and run by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the depression era government agency that brought electricity to the area.

Seeing kudzu draped everywhere, I thought a word of explanation might be in order for my western and  northern friends.  Westerners - think tumbleweed.  Kudzu is a non-native plant brought into the US to control erosion because it grows very fast.  It does that all right - but it also has no natural enemy, so kudzu grows unchecked and chokes off trees and other native plants.  Its a noxious weed, just like tumbleweed, which is really Russian Thistle and was brought into the US by accident.

I stop for fuel about every 150 miles (or so).  People are always curious about my unusual machine, and most of the questions are "How fast does it go?" and "What kind of mileage does it get?"  The answer to the first question is "I don't know."  Supposedly, its top speed is about 92 mph, but I have no desire to go that fast.  I had it into the mid-80s once, while passing, and it was rock stable and still accelerating.  As to the second question, milegage varies according to the wind, but I am usually around 60 miles per gallon of regular gas.

Then the scoot got into its fourth new state - but this is the first time I have been able to record the event with a photo.  On to my sister's house where I'll spend two days, then on to Columbus Thursday morning.

Life is good.  God has blessed me richly.

Ridin' in the Rain (Day Three of the Eight State Scooter Ride)

The old gentleman had pulled up his favorite chair on the front porch, morning coffee in hand.  He watched the sparse traffic go by on US Route 82.  His little town of Buckner, in southwest Arkansas, doesn't see much excitement, but when a funny looking red scooter went by, honking it's horn, and the rider waving at him, he had an answering wave, delivered with a big gap-toothed grin.

That happened about 7:30am.  The sun was supposed to be up by then, but I never saw the sun the whole day.  From the time I left my motel in Texarkana until I pulled up at the motel in Memphis, it rained - sometimes a pestering drizzle, but at other times it was a harder steady rain.  I had picked a great route - US 82 was two-lane, lots of small towns and a 55mph speed limit - perfect for my kind of cruising.   But, I couldn't see the vistas and I had to dodge the showers thrown up by the big trucks.  Then, once over the Mississippi River, I took State Route 1 along the river through a lot more small towns.  Sure, a ride is always fun, but some rides are more funner than others.  This was an "other."

No photos - sorry, but the same excuse holds - I didn't want to get my camera wet.  And its too bad because the bridge over the river was new - and quite striking.  There was even a place I could pull over and take a picture of the barge being pushed downstream.  Some of the countryside homes were also snap-worthy.

I stay fairly dry.  I say "fairly" because I have a good rain suit and my feet are (mostly) protected by the floorboards of my scooter, but my gloves are just plain kevlar - not waterproof.  They were pretty soppy - I had dishpan hands by the time the day was over.

The weather and I seem to be married.  I have tracked the same low pressure zone the entire trip - I keep chasing it.  Tomorrow is a fairly short ride to Hunstville, AL, where I will spend a couple of days visiting my sister.  Think I'll have an extra cup of coffee in the morning and let the rain get ahead of me.

I just went outside to get something I'd left in the scooter.  She looked forelorn sitting there in the night rain.  Not a very nice way to treat a lady who just added three new states to her discoveries, eh?   But, I can't figure out a way to get her into my third floor room.

Finally - there is a reason for this ride.  On Thursday through Saturday, I will be attending a reunion of the guys who were in my unit in Vietnam - Company C, 2nd Battalion 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).  Besides catching up with each other, we vets plan on visiting the Infantry Museum and I personally want to visit Kelly Hill on Ft. Benning, where I was an original member of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade in 1966.

Now to call the wife-mate on the phone, tell her I miss her (which I really do), then on to bed.  Riding in the rain tires this old man.

On to Texarkana

Six o'clock in the morning.

Normally, I consider that a condition, not a time.  But - I was up and at 'em at 6 this morning.  It wasn't even light outside.  The motel's breakfast nook wasn't open either, so I fired up the scoot and was on the way by 6:40am.

A quick Egg McMuffin and a big cup of coffee (most of which went into my Thermos mug), and I was on the ferry from Galveston to the Bolivar Penisula by 7:30.  A ride up the almost rebuilt sliver of land (courtesy of Hurricane Ike) to see some beach fishers.

By the time I finished the coffee, I was back on the mainland and watching the landscape transition from the bayous and canals into the piney woods of east Texas.

(Of course the photos are small.  Click on them to see larger versions.)

East Texas reminds me of deep south Georgia (or Jawja, as the natives say)  becausethe land is full of pine trees, the spoken accents are the same and the mix of black and white folks is like Georgia's.  I cruised on one small county road and was treated to neat homes with ponds and horses and comfortable brick homes.  It was also the first time I had a chance to ride anything that approached being twisty.

When I stopped to take this photo, I noticed them accumulating on my clothing - and on the windshield - and on the bike.  Not smashed - they were just flying around and landing.  They were love bugs - another reminder of deep south Georgia.  Once I got rolling, they got thicker, and of course, they began splattering all over the windshield.  The piney woods breed lots of bugs.

But that was the last of the photos.  Just like yesterday, it rained the last part of the day's ride.  Not a heavy nasty rain - just somewhere between a drizzle and light rain.  Just enough to annoy you.  But I made it to my motel room in Texarkana.  Its on State Line Road - and my motel is on the Texas side of the street.

The belly is full, the bike is locked - and I plan to be in snooze land very soon.  Off for Memphis in the morning.  The local TV weather forecaster tells me I am traveling right along with a cold front - supposed to be rain all the way to Tennessee.

Oh well - I get wet on purpose once a week anyway.

Eight States on a Scooter

Yep - it rained a lot of the way.  I left McAllen, Texas, this morning about 10am and made the boring two-hour ride to Corpus Christi.  There is no other way to get there besides the super-slab, but after that, my route took my through small towns and roads less traveled.  I'm bunked in for the night near Galveston.

No pictures - my small camera is not weather sealed like my big cameras are.  Besides, I've ridden this route before - Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula.  That post had lots of photos.

I've ridden in rain before - no big deal - but I did discover that it is best to wear the rain pants as well as the rain jacket.  Just damp - not soaked.  But, other than having to watch out for idiots car drivers who panic in rain, it was no prolem.

On to Texarkana tomorrow.

I intentionally mapped out a long route to get to Columbus, Georgia.  Eight states - a long trip, on purpose made long.  Why Columbus?  Its near Ft. Benning - where I first entered the Army in 1966, did my training, learned to jump out of airplanes - and was one of the original members of the 199th Light infantry Brigade - the unti I served in Vietnam with in 1967.  I'll be attending a reunion of the men whom I served with in Company C, 2nd Battlaion 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam.  I have the decals of both units on the windshield of my bike.

Off for a good nights sleep, then up and at 'em in the morning.

In Search of Vietnamese Food

Sometimes I need to give wanderlust a purpose - things just seem more rational that way.  Not that there is anything wrong with just wanting to throw a leg over my scooter and take a long ride - it just seems like there should be a reason for spending six hours out in the open on two wheels.

I mean - where would we be without at least one good rationalization each day?

And my rationale was that I wanted to see if the Vietnamese food at the Fai Foo Cafe - in Rockport, Texas -  was any good.  Rockport is 190 miles away.  Long ride - Vietnamese food.  Sounded like a fun day.

Deep south Texas is not an exciting place to ride - most table tops have more bumps than our landscape.  Worse, if you want to go north along the coast, there are only two roads, and both are four lane divided super slabs.

Boring.

There is one thing riders in other parts of the US will not see - Border Patrol checkpoints.  On both of the highways heading north, there are permanent checkpoints every vehicle must go through to get north.  Illegal immigrants trying to get into the interior of the US are dropped off by their smugglers (known as coyotes) before they get to the checkpoints, and they try to walk around the points.  Every vehicle that goes through the checkpoint gets sniffed by dogs, poked by uniformed agents, and drivers are asked if everyone in the vehicle is a US citizen - which by the way, means when we go north with any of our Vietnamese students, they always have to bring their passport along to show the Border Patrol.  It doesn’t take long, and when they see an old man on a scooter, they just ask the perfunctory “US citizen?”, then say “Have a nice day.”

Out in the flat cotton-growing area south of Corpus Christi is the ghost town of Chapman Ranch.  Well - almost ghost.  There are some farm implements parked in a big shed, but the houses are all shut up and boarded.  I found this little fixer-upper.



Then on through to city of Corpus Christi.  I took the expressway through town so I could go over the bridge spanning the harbor.  It was a very windy day, and the wind made riding interesting up towards the top.  No problems though - just motored on across and kept heading north towards Rockport.


And the seacoast town is a nice little touristy town.  If you are football fan, then you know it was the home of Dat Nguyen, the first Vietnamese-American to play in the National Football League and one of the best and most famous of all players at Texas A&M University.

The downtown area is kind of a funky, artsy sort of place with all the requisite craft shops and galleries.   Maybe not the sort of place I would seek out, but I must be sure my wife doesn’t find it or she will find a reason to go there and spend lots of money. 


But - there is a photo missing from this story - I have no photo of either the Fai Foo or the owners.  The restaurant itself is not a very imposing place - just a little joint in a strip mall and well away from the tourist area, and the inside is as much tailor shop as restaurant.  I doubt it could seat more than twenty people.  But, it is the fault of Kim, the wife part of the team, that I don’t have a photo.  Kim is a chatterbox and she totally distracted me.  I had to know her story, and she regaled me with the tale of their journey from Vietnam in 1979 - she and her husband were boat people.  Though only eight years old at the time, she told what is was like to leave her hometown of Ban Mê Thuột in the Central Highlands in 1975 and become a refugee in Sài Gòn, only to risk capture and prison by escaping the country in 1979.

Now - to be honest - the phở  was so-so, and the spring rolls rolled too loosely, but I’d go there again just to talk to Kim.

Belly full, mind stimulated and the gas tank refilled, it was time to head back home.  Going through Corpus Christi again, I went by the old aircraft carrier Lexington, the second World War II carrier to bear that name.

It was a very windy day - the trip back home took me straight into the wind.  And it really irritated me.  No - I don’t mean it was unsafe - the bike was as stable as a rock, nor was it tiring.  Its just that it ruined my gas mileage.  I normally get about 60 miles to the gallon while cruising at 65-70 mph - but my mileage dropped all the way down to 54 miles per gallon!

Ruined an otherwise perfect day.

Easter 2012

Easter eggs - - a western tradition that celebrates rebirth - the very essence of the idea of the God/Man who rose from the dead two thousand years ago.

Though I don’t know the origin of the custom of coloring and decorating hard boiled eggs (though I am sure some reader will tell me), it is always fun to watch others who haven’t seen the custom participate in it for the first time.  I’d first seen Vietnamese introduced to the custom in 2005 during the first spring we spent living in the city of Huế.  Julie, our teaching team mate, had some students from her classes over for a visit - and they had a lot of fun coloring eggs.

Ái Nhân enjoyed herself.  She sat down with Cindy and Grandma and showed her usual artistic self.  She always amazes me - she finds joy while learning and doing, and her creative talents come to the surface quickly whenever an opportunity comes her way.

(As always, be sure to click on each photo.  If you do, you will see a larger version of the photo.)

And I think coloring the eggs was a good thing for Grandma (otherwise known as Thelma, mother of Cindy.)  Activities like this keep memories fresh - memories of doing activities like this as a girl, young woman and mother.  Though the world moves slower for Grandma now, the world may have seemed a little more comfortable while she renewed the old ritual.  I’m sure she enjoyed doing it with Ái Nhân - and being able to bring someone else into the fold.

Of course, Easter baskets were filled, candy added to the plastic grass - and even a bunny for Ái Nhân. 

It was a good evening.

Sunday morning found us in the church house.  (I was too lazy to get up for sunrise service, but Cindy went.)  As has become the norm, Ái Nhân came with us.  That gave her a chance to see a local custom - the flowering of the cross.  The kids bring flowers (hopefully, from home) and some of the ladies of the church arrange them on a cross, which stays displayed through the entire service.

An Easter egg hunt is more cultural than religious - there is even an Easter egg hunt at the White House each year.  It was fun to watch the little kids “hunt” for eggs that were left out in full view on the church lawn.

And it was a good day.  I’ve spent Easter in Việt Nam and in America.  I don’t really care where I spend Easter - I am always happy to have the day - and know the events of the first Easter were all a great gift to me.

Family, Friends - and Lots of Miles

Of course Ái Nhân knew at some intellectual level that the United States is a huge country, but she found out at a more visceral level by hard experience during the butt-numbing ride that took her to Ohio and Indiana during the week of her spring break.

(Be sure to click on each photo so you can see the photo full size.)

It took two days to get the the Cincinnati area, and that meant we went into areas of the country that are very different from deep south Texas.  For instance, there are no tulips or daffodils this far south - the winters don’t get cold enough - so that meant Ái Nhân got an introduction to wild daffodils on the side of the road.

I am convinced she will wear that camera out!

It was a time to introduce her to family, and in our case, that means our son Keith, his wife Misty, as well as Zach and Ely (the two kids still at home) and our oldest granddaughter Dani and her husband Mitch.  The only person we didn’t see was granddaughter #2 - Brie is in the Army.

But the star of the show - and the thief of great-grandpa’s heart was our great granddaughter.  Now two years old, Miss Angella was the recipient of Grandma Cindy’s skills.  The doll was store-bought, but the doll quilt was hand-made.  Such is the sentimental value of quilt that part of it was made from the same batch of cloth that Cindy had used to make Angela’s Mom a dress back when she was a little girl. 

Though a very busy family, it was great to sit back and talk to my son (and solve the problems of the world as we enjoyed a cigar), but also to talk family stuff with my daughter-in-law.  As I have said many times before, if I’d had a chance to pick my own daughter-in-law, I would have picked Misty.  She is someone I love deeply.  I had a chance to talk to Mitch as well as he goes through the process of acclimating himself to civilian life after time in combat in Iraq with the Marine Corps.  As the only other member of the family who has had green tracer come in his direction, I wanted to take extra time to be sure he is okay - and if need be, to talk out anything he needed to talk about.  And of course, I am so proud of Dani - she is a great Mom, and now has decided to be a student again by going back to college.

But a week’s spring break is not much, so after too short a time, we headed north into Indiana to spend the night with some wonderful American friends we’d had when we lived in Việt Nam.  Silly me - I didn’t get a photo, but the Kimball and Gavilanez families know that it was ever so great to see them again and talk over our mutual love of Việt Nam and its people. 

Two more long days on the road - and dealing with a little motion sickness to boot - Ái Nhân was happy to be back home - as were we all.

But - - there is a lot more of America to see, and I look forward to her traveling more of this wonderful country and meeting more of the family as well.