Marking History

Veronica and I were out and about all afternoon, mostly just enjoying a perfect riding day.  Wound up in a Historical Place that I've been to before up on the Red River and I made Veronica pose for some amateur bike porn. She's filthy at the moment due to long hours on the road, but still looking good, don't you think?

She's under the sign that explains that this is the place where a bunch of Spanish got their asses handed to them by a village of Taovayas Indians back in 1759 in a battle alternately called Battle of the Two Villages or Battle of the Twin Villages (since the village extended across the Red River into Oklahoma.) 

What is not mentioned is that the site was also a major trading site for the Wichita/Taovayas where they engaged in a LOT of trade with the Comanches and the French. The Taovayas were farmers, and traded crop and veggie stuff for meat from the nomad tribes (e.g., the Comanches) and they all bought and sold Apache slaves, whom everyone in that area except the Apaches and their Spanish allies considered to be not-human or at least not-people. This and the fact that the Wichita/Taovayas were rapidly expanding south apparently annoyed the Apaches and Spanish the latter of whom thought the place belonged to them. As a result, they sent a punitive expedition up into North Texas to run 'em off, and found that 

(a) there were a helluva lot more of them than they thought; and,

(b) the Taovayas and Comanche were pretty handy fighters. 

This combination resulted in the Spanish and Apaches getting their asses stomped into a mud-hole and me getting a historical place at the end of low-traffic, twisty two-lanes to ride to when I have a few free hours and a couple of tanks of gas to spare on a nice day.  (My pleasant day of riding is probably incidental to the dead Spanish and Indians, but one never knows which bits of tenuously connected histories are the important parts.)

In other words, tough shit for the Spanish, but totally worth it.

Completely unrelated: Notice the "Chisholm Trail" marker in the background…a lot of history has tromped across that ford in the Red River.

After pix and a bit of relaxation, I came back up out of the river-bottom and nearly got killed. 

I was blasting up one of the two-lane twisties previously mentioned and, running about 70, coming around a steep corner with my foot-pegs actually touching asphalt. The pickup came roaring out of the weirdly-angled dirt side-road doing about 40 and completely ignoring the stop sign. 

In that part of the country, traffic is so thin that a stop sign is seen mostly as a recommendation to keep your scaredy-cat Aunt Mabel from an attack of the vapors, since your average driver hasn't seen any cross-traffic there since back when the Taovayas were killing Spaniards, and certainly none blowing past running 70 in a 55 and already pushing the limits of the rubber/road coefficients of friction.

I caught him coming up on me out of the corner of my eye, and screwed the throttle down, which jumped me up to about 80 and straightened me up a bit, opening up the curve and powering me into the oncoming lane. 

I got off the throttle just in time to keep from running off the opposite side of the road, my tires chattering on the white stripe, still in the curve, footpegs back in the asphalt again, and prayed that no one was headed the other direction as I coddled Veronica up out of the centripetal well, back onto the main road, and, finally, back into my lane.  

The pickup driver and I genially exchanged middle fingers and I pulled off the road at a wide spot down near a creek bridge as I needed to take a few minutes to convince my asshole to let go of the seat.  

The pickup had probably missed me by about 10',and I'd missed running off the road into the trees by inches.  My own damned fault, of course — I know better than to let my mind wander out on those roads.

I wondered if I'd been a little slower or he'd been a little faster if I'd get a monument. Up over the river into Oklahoma up out the other side of Madill, there's a memorial, and I quite liked it:

A biker named "Booger Red" had some sort of unfortunate incident back in 2002 that took him out of that curve you can see in the picture after which some fatal thing occurred. His friends or family installed this little stop, where I've more than once spilled a bit of Jack for him, although I never met him.

Having seen (and been party to) a number of motorcycle accident scenes that look a lot like this, I presume that a bit too much speed and a physics principle called "gyroscopic precession" resulted in jerking the handlebars the wrong direction and, presto chango, you're in the weeds or dead or some such nonsense.  

Which, incidentally, is why so many motorcycle accidents look like the riders steered right into whatever they were trying to miss -- that's exactly what they did. More than once, if they happen to survive, the rider complains that the bike's steering seized up on them and they "couldn't get it to turn." No shit.  This video explains why (no blood and/or guts -- the guy lived, but I don't know why.)
 



Anyhow, the curve that my pickup buddy and I negotiated together reminded me of Booger Red's little tribute, which is why I was deciding on MY memorial. 

However, a with bit of reflection I realized that had I gone into the woods in this remote chunk of the world, the odds are no one would have noticed for upwards of a week that I was missing, and I likely wouldn't have turned up at all till a road crew came through to mow the shoulders. By that time, just getting me into the furnace as soon as possible would be the main priority, not dawdling around putting in a concrete slab somewhere no one would ever visit anyhow. 

So, no roadside markers. 

It then occurred to me that, more generally, no one but the Next Of Kin, some miscellaneous relatives and a couple of guys at work would know I'd gone tits up at all.  As rarely as I post in this blog, none of y'all would sort it out for upwards of a year, if then. I've already outlived most of my crew from the Old Days, and the ones who are left are so off the grid that they make me look like a Kardashian hooker-bot/publicity-whore.  Being deep in the nest of various relatives, I'll likely be well-attended, but I doubt most of them or anyone else would mark it as more than an inconveniencing dress-up day.  

Huh, is it odd that I don't really care? The only thing that really caught my mental eye as I ran through that litany was y'all. How weird is that? Other than immediate-generation family, the only thing that would really annoy me is if y'all didn't know it. 

Of course I don't anticipate being annoyed by anything, but you know what I mean.

Now that IS odd, discovering how "present" electronic entities are.

Ah, well. I haven't figured out what I'm going to do about it, if anything.  When I do, I'll let y'all know.  Maybe.

In Our Next Episode: Some incredibly convoluted method for me to let you know that I ain't coming back...or some other shiny object.  One of those.