Most of you know that Chuck and I had originally planned this Arkansas romp for Labor Day weekend. We postponed three weekends in a row due to rain in the Mountain View area. But we caught our break last week and made it happen….finally. Our plan was to meet up in West Mineral, KS, the home of Big Brutus, the 16-story decommissioned shovel crane. We planned to make Mountain View by Saturday night, ride the Bixby Ball Buster on Sunday and return home Monday. What follows is how it all unfolded.
I arrived at Big Brutus at 11am….right on time….only to find no Hickl. A phone check revealed the following text message from Chuck:
“Check your voicemail. ZRX is hosed.” Sent at 10:15am.
A follow up text sent 45 minutes later read: “Hang tight at Brutus. I’m continuing on.”
Chuck arrived on the smoke-billowing Rex at around 11:30am. The decision was quickly made that we would “Shit and git” – to quote Chuck. Without spending any time at Brutus, other than in the museum’s toilet, we took off for Tulsa to retrieve Optimus Prime, aka “the Fizzy.”
We arrived in Tulsa close to 2pm. We parked the ailing Rex, ate lunch at Subway, and headed off for Mountain View at 2:45pm. At this point, we both had about 300 miles of super slab underneath our belts. We were both dragging a little bit of ass, especially considering we knew we had almost another 300 miles to Mountain View ahead of us and would probably be arriving in the dark. We slabbed it over to Huntsville, where we picked up the Pig Trail. We stopped at the same Shell station there in Huntsville where we always gas up. Chuck scored some “EXTREME CHICKEN SHOOTERS” for a snack. We took hwy74 through Kingston and Ponca where we saw literally dozens of cars parked along the side of the road watching the Elk that roam that bottom land down there near the Boxley Corner. It was like the circus was in town. Through Jasper and by the time we hit Marshall – fifty miles away from Mountain View – it was already completely dark and a little bit chilly to boot. Jacket liners, neck gators and clear shields came out for that last push to our final destination. As we left Marshall, we passed a kid on a bicycle who greeted us with the middle finger. This got Chuck’s dander up so much that he later lamented that he didn’t stop to to punch the kid in the face for being so rude. And I quote: “While I punched him in the face, I would have said to his friend, ‘Tell his parents why I did this’.” (Just for Deekster, there’s a great line from “The Big Lebowski” here: “Do you see what happens Larry?! This is what happens, Larry, when you fuck a stranger in the ass!”) We arrived in Mountain View just before 9pm. We stopped at the Mexican joint in town before we even checked in at the motel. More than 12 hours on the bikes and 543 miles total for the day, but we made it in one piece and in good spirits.
BELOW: Saturday morning and Chuck is overjoyed by the breakfast menu at the Angler.
Saturday was the much-anticipated Bixby Ball Buster. I know of nothing to speak of in Bixby. It’s a dot on the map. I’ve just enjoyed the alliteration (Bixby Ball Buster) and the challenge of making it all the way up there and back in one day. It was fun heading up into “uncharted territory”, a sort of modern day Lewis and Clark on sport bikes. But in reality, we didn’t encounter any Lost City of Gold, no El Dorado of the twisties up north of the border. (I am getting lost in my own expeditionary metaphors here.) We did come across one unique, recently-paved, no painted lines, stretch of HIGH speed sweepers up in the Mark Twain National Forest. Route KK it was. We set it at about 100mph and maintained that for about 10 minutes. It was ridiculous. Another really nice road is HWY19, but it’s the stretch up near Eminence, MO. Jody, and Joe B and I have been on the lower leg of HWY19 in the past and only noted the continuous blind hills and complete LACK of corners. But there is some really nice stuff up near Eminence. We logged 412 miles on Saturday, a day that started with HYW9 and ended with HWY58. We scored pizza and a calzone for dinner at a little place there in Mountain View.
Monday morning we left for home via Yellville. Chuck’s rear tire was showing steel cords by the time we parted ways there. I was quite worried he might not make it back. But stupidity prevailed once again and he made it home safe and sound….I’m sure with sparks flying all along the way.
BELOW: I got the wonderful aroma of cedar whilst on the ferry ride.
I made it back at around 6:30pm Monday evening. All told, I racked up 1,360 miles for the three-day weekend. One hell of a bender.
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