Been a little while since I posted here. My excuse is that it was 70°-80°F the other day with zero wind (i.e., "perfect"), so I got out and about.
I wound up in Paris.
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| Took Bettina to Paris |
Well, of COURSE it's Paris, TX. Do I look and/or sound like the kind of guy who spends any time wandering around Europe? C'mon. THEIR Eiffel Tower doesn't even have a cowboy hat on it, so what's the point, really?
Besides, Bettina does NOT like salt water, and although she'll tolerate a run to Galveston or Padre Island or Mobile or some such, I expect it would be an unhappy crossing should a Eurotrip come up.
Paris was in fact the final stop on the tour before I had to head back a couple of hours to home to beat the rain. I'd put a few hundred miles on scouting locations and roads for my upcoming Iron Butt attempt (click here for IRON BUTT if you don't remember me yammering on about that).
While I was at it, I saw dinosaurs, an old gas station and motel (long since abandoned) made entirely of petrified wood, and the biggest Bowie knife in the world.
I was gonna run down to the only international border marker actually inside the United States. Near the present Louisiana/Texas border, it's an old 19th-century pillar marking the Republic of Texas border back in the day, but I ran out of time. Having no desire to ride an extra six-eight hours in the dark, and needing to get Bettina in for her yearly spring "front to back" do-it-all maintenance, I gave the history a miss this time.
I think I may be settling in on a "three-Paris" tour for the Iron Butt, running from home up out of Texas to Paris, Arkansas, then to Paris Tennessee, then looping back to Paris, Texas, then home, with pictures of all three Eiffel Towers. Two of the three appear to be in backwoods deep-south country and are probably hard-core shithole little towns. So then, practically Europe after all.
It should be well over the thousand miles I need. But I'm also thinking in terms of West Texas Desert -- there being a couple of loops there that will get a thousand on without ever leaving the state.
It's a pretty big state.
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| Texas: It's Pretty Big |
The desert appeals at the moment because this is the only time of year to do it; beginning about late spring you could melt a roll of lead-wire solder out there on those roads.
We'll see. I'll let you know.
For the moment we're in the middle of a couple of days of rain and I'm writing here in lieu of riding. But it's gonna be in the 80s again tomorrow, so maybe I'll grab my newly refreshed bike from the maintenance dudes and head for the border (about where Munich is on the map above). Should soak up a pretty good chunk of the day...
That's a hell of a ride. I'd love to do that ... if I had a bike and both she and I were in shape for it. You'll be passing just under the Ozarks, where I have a bunch of distant relatives. My great-grandfather lit out from there for California before the Civil War, so they're pretty distant. I'm sure they'd get along with this coastal urban Californian just fine.
ReplyDeleteMaybe your return loop takes you right through their country. I don't know. I've not guessed from your rambling precisely what state you're in, though I have narriowed it down to two or three.
Oh hell, I've probably got even more distant relatives in the Paris part of Tennnesse, being as my greats' parents stayed there a year or two after leaving North Carolina with their caravan of wagons and children before they carried on to Arkansas in 1842-ish, and one of the brothers stayed behind. These are all direct line male ancestors so I'm talking cousins with my last name.
A-speakin' a weather, record snow out here has forced my girlfriend to stay at my house for going on three weeks. She lives up in the foothills where life is nearly at a standstill. Not because Californians can't handle snow (most can't, but plenty live where they must). I think at present the depth is only one or two feet, as it does melt given the pravailing temperatures. But she has clients who've had neither power nor access to the ends of their driveways for two weeks. Of course they were prepared. They know where they live.
I'm in Texas, which lends itself to various long-distance options. In fact, one of the "Three Paris" loop issues to settle would be whether to hit the "Texas" Paris first or last, either option of which radically changes the nature of the "loop". And, as I said, the "Three Paris" option is appealing, but might well be trumped by one of the West Texas runs, wherein the speed limit is pretty high and in any event essentially a poorly-regarded recommendation, which means chewing through miles as a goal is easier.
DeleteHowever, the real issue with any of them is, quoting you, "...if...I were in shape for it..."
And there's the rub, innit? I'm told that at my age, doing a thousand in 24 hours is unlikely, and a review of the Iron Butt literature tends to support that. The number in my age range who pull it off is not zero, but is pretty skinny. I know that the last two consecutive 450 mile days (with a six-hour stopover between them) I put on just out putzing around kinda beat my ass. Can I do 1000 in the saddle with essentially no breaks? Eh, who knows. Used to be able to before it occurred to me to keep track of it, but that was a different time in my life, blasting down I-10 at 90MPH in a pack of 15 or 20 sunshine or rain, stopping for nothing but gas till we hit Tampa. Even in those days there was nothing easy about it.
In short, I'm gonna love giving it a shot, and that's the point. But I'm a realist and I'll not be unduly annoyed if I can't pull it off. It's a "that would be cool" goal, not a life milepost. The fact is I mostly like my bike, the lone-biker community, and just riding to ride. Truthfully, any time I get on that thing, it's eight chances in ten that I have no clue which direction I'm going until I hit the end of the driveway, so mapping out a 1000-mile run is completely new to me. We'll see how it goes.
Texas is huge! Good luck to your butt!
ReplyDeleteMy butt thanks you. Especially after yesterday, a six-hour, over 300 mile run beginning to break myself in for the spring. I think I can do 600 at the moment, but I got a ways to go to get to the level of butt-toughening I need. (shrug) We'll see.
DeleteAnd, yes, Texas is substantial. I think I mentioned a Scottish woman I was chatting with once. She was explaining to me that Euros didn't understand Americans since we never seem to travel (we probably have the lowest passport per capita numbers in the western world). She told me all the countries, cities, beaches, party towns, etc., she was going to be visiting on holidays the next year and she is truly and routinely an international traveler. And every single piece of it would be a long day trip in Texas, never leaving the state. The entire western front of WWII, from Blitzkrieg thru Festung Europa thru D-Day, thru Hitler sticking a pistol in his mouth would have fit into the area between El Paso and Texarkana. And that's just one state of the lower 48. The US is physically enormous -- I couldn't see all the parts I want to in a single lifetime, and I don't need a passport to get to any of them, and have never felt any desire to go hang out with some crusty statues in Rome when I've got the Jim Bridger wilderness to disappear into. Eh. Different styles, I suppose.
Goes both ways, of course. Most Americans don't realize that all the of lower 48 states fit nicely into the top 1/3 of Africa (mostly Sahara Desert) with countries sticking out of both sides. You want a huge place to go putzing around in, the African continent would be a good start...
I've been to a decent number of countries but I will be content to stay within the States henceforth. Having been some of there and done some of that, I don't feel the need to go anymore. This country is an amazing chunk of the Earth and the language barriers are minimal (though not at all non-existent).
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