We were in Versailles at Cliff's Aunt Gertrude's yesterday when Cliff's cousin, Darryl, gave him a tip. Now, he's had motorcycles before, and he knows what kind of road is perfect for riding on the Gold Wing. Over five years ago, he told us about a road near Eldon that goes past Burger's Smokehouse; he said it had lots of sharp curves and nice hills. Aunt Gertrude heard him telling us how to find the road and said, "Oh, who would want to take that old, crooked road?" Cliff's younger sister and her husband were with us that Saturday on their Harley; we indeed found the road and enjoyed it to the fullest. The next day was Easter Sunday, and we rode our Gold Wing to church in Oak Grove. Two days later, Cliff was in the hospital for open heart surgery. When Aunt Gertrude heard about it, she said, "No wonder! He probably had a heart attack from riding on that old crooked road!" Anyway, we've learned to pay attention when Darryl tells us about a motorcycle road, so yesterday when he said State Road "D" was a good ride and was newly paved, that's the way we chose to go. I was sitting there enjoying the pretty sky and the hills and curves when I realized this would be a great video opportunity. My little Canon Powershot takes decent videos, and that way we'd have a reminder of our fun day. Plus I could share the ride with the Internet. Cliff and I aren't spring chickens (surprise surprise), and are pretty tired when we get home from a ride. I was very anxious to get my video made, however, so I came in and loaded it to my computer and then used imovie to edit it. I don't mess with editing enough to remember what to do, and I'm not at my best in the evening anyhow. But I was anxious. I wanted to remove the wind noise from the over-four-minute clip and add music. I have hundreds, maybe even thousands, of songs on my computer. I opened itunes and started looking for a song that was between 4 minutes and four-and-a-half minutes long. I saw one by Merle Haggard, "Are The Good Times Really Over For Good", that was the right length. I added it, hoping against hope that the copyright police on Youtube wouldn't strip it off as soon as it loaded. It's a pretty old song... that was in my favor... but Merle Haggard still has quite a bit of popularity. Sure enough, after all that work, Merle's song was removed. I did not want a silent video; a song breaks the monotony. I didn't want to spend my whole night finding a song the right length that would make it through the gate intact, so I just started looking at John Prine's list of songs. I have more songs by him on the computer than probably any other artist, and he's not famous enough for Youtube to worry about. The heck with four minutes, I decided. I'd pick a song and trim the end off the video to fit the song. Good grief, it was almost bedtime! And that's how I came up with the video in the previous entry. First of all, I know that only about a third of the readers will bother to watch a video. I realized some people would probably find the lyrics offensive, and I knew that 90% of the folks who listened would wonder how anybody with so little singing talent ever made it to a recording studio: That song was recorded at John Prine's first appearance after having surgery for throat cancer several years back. His voice has gotten steadily worse since that time. Why do I listen to him? Because I love the lyrics he writes. He makes me laugh, and sometimes he almost makes me cry. Anyhow, I got up this morning resolved to find the proper song and redo the video, one that was the right length and that might seem appropriate for my video. Once again I went down the list and made a note of every song that was the right length. When I came to Moe Bandy's "Americana", I stopped my search. I wasn't sure about the copyright thing, though. But I hoped Moe might be enough of a has-been that he wasn't in Youtube's catalog of copyrighted artists. This time, my wish came true. And here you have the amended video with a new sound track and a couple of things added at beginning and end.
Cliff's brother, Donald, called in the middle of last week to say he was going to ride his motorcycle (a Gold Wing) up here from his home in southern Kansas. Cliff told him to call when he was ready to leave and we'd meet him halfway. He called, we headed out. We rode and rode and rode. Finally we arrived at our meeting-place.
There he was, smoking and smirking. He informed us that his calculations had been a little "off", and we'd gone forty miles past the true half-way mark. Oh well, as we bikers like to say, "It's all about the ride!" We got home shortly before 6 PM and Cliff's sister, our next-door neighbor, had lasagna ready for us. Wow, can life get any better? Where are you going to find a renter who cooks supper for you?
And a delicious supper it was! Donald's wife wanted to be here, but she doesn't like to ride on a motorcycle. We've missed our old motorcycle-riding buddies, Charlene (Cliff's younger sister) and Pat, her husband. They're way off in St. Louis these days.
But today Rena rode with Don on his bike, so we had some people to ride with. Here you see Cliff, Don, and Rena ready to ride. It was a blast.
Here they are behind us. Oh, we took so many back roads and twists and turns, you wouldn't believe it.
If you'd like to ride along with us, here's a video. I originally put a Merle Haggard tune with it (Are the Good Times Really Over For Good) but YouTube's copyright cops caught it. So I did it over with an Iris Dement-John Prine song. One thing about folks songs, they are so little-known that nobody cares about copyrights. Enjoy the ride.
The forecast was a pretty good one, with highs not to exceed 90. We haven't gone for a lot of motorcycle rides this summer because of the extreme heat, and it looked like this was a day for a ride. We set out early this morning.
We were just going on a little jaunt, and I had ice cream in mind.
This place is in Versailles, Missouri, where so many of Cliff's relatives live. Cliff says he remembers getting banana splits here when he was a kid. So yes, I did get my ice cream. We visited with his Aunt Gertrude and then chatted with a couple of his cousins, Darryl and Dale. It got a somewhat warm coming home, but it wasn't so bad as long as we were on the move. Poking along through the towns and sitting at stop signs was a little uncomfortable. It was a good ride.
Cliff took today off so he could have a longer weekend. We watched the weather this morning, and learned that although it was going to be cloudy all day, there was no rain in the forecast. We headed out on the open road, thinking perhaps to go to Hermann, Missouri and spend the night there, returning tomorrow before the forecast rain started. Today was supposedly rain-free; the next four days had rain indicated. Are you with me here?
Not a half-hour from home, sprinkles started, and continued sporadically for the next couple of hours. We didn't get wet; our leathers were sufficient to protect us, and the tall windshield on our fairing kept it off Cliff's face. Missouri's rolling countryside is beautiful even on cloudy days, and we enjoyed ourselves. However, somewhere along the line, Cliff suggested we simply ride to Versailles and then home.
Lunchtime approached, and we couldn't find a suitable place to eat. The rain finally let up, so we decided to have lunch at the first city or roadside park. I carry a large freezer-bag with emergency rations in the Honda, consisting of at least a couple cans of sardines, a roll of crackers, some 100-calorie packs of cookies, and single-serving cans of fruit.
Not far out of Boonville, we came to this park (click to view pictures larger).
It was cloudy, but we had ourselves a satisfying lunch. All we lacked was our after-lunch coffee; we prefer McDonalds for coffee, but couldn't find one. so we stopped at a Breaktime station, where I took the following shot of us:
When I take these self-portraits, I always seem to be giving the world a shot of the inside of my nose. But YOU try holding a camera at arms length, aiming it at yourself, and shooting with the camera backwards. Not an easy task, I assure you. I was quite proud, by the way, that I accidentally got the Gold Wing in the picture.
We stopped by Cliff's Aunt Gertrude's in Versailles. Her son, Darryl, is living with her right now; he and Cliff had a great visit. As we were getting ready to leave, these Clydesdales came past. I have no idea what they were doing on a city street, but it was a pretty neat thing to see.
So we've started our weekend with a bang. If the rest goes as well, I will have no complaints at all.
Oh, about the forecast of rain for the rest of the weekend? That's all changed. No rain is forecast now until Tuesday.
