Blue…
Nope, I wasn’t feeling blue by any means! I likely would have been, though, had I made that other choice… but I hadn’t. ‘Blue’ had become my mantra for the day… More precisely, ‘ride towards the blue’ had been the full utterance I’d followed… It’d served us well, too, and kept us from maybe having to cope with… all that dire stuff the weather folks had been wringing their collective hands and gnashing their beautiful, capped teeth over… “OMG! There is a puffy cloud in the sky over on the distant horizon… AND it’s heading your way!!!” Millions of folks could be impacted, and the course of human events might be adversely altered! Those folks do dramatize everything to the max.
Unfortunately, they sometimes get it right, however, so they can’t be dismissed… hard to believe them sometimes either… I’m not sure I know which I hate worse… when they get it right, or when they get it wrong… One thing for certain, though, is that no matter what the forecast, it will be unreliable to a large degree and will change daily! Will it rain? Yes! Will it not rain? Yes! You see, there’s a ‘percentage’ of this or that, yadda, yadda, so in the end we have to actually decide for ourselves… and become our own ultimate forecaster. Just the other day, I made my call and rolled the dice… My reward was entirely appropriate…
Naturally my first thoughts for a ride were of visiting Rocky over in Newberry for some pork chops, this time that is, but ordinarily I go for the ‘Q’… Well, I wimped out on riding that far from the hacienda… just in case the weather folks might possibly be right… On the other hand, I still had a fancy fantasy to get some ‘Q’ someplace… but where? Was that place, I think it was Roger’s BBQ, just across the river and barely into the forest still open? Hmmm… Or I suppose if I thought about it much at all, I could come up with something along the way… Hey, what about that place Bert had taken us to once upon a time up by Micanopy? Shucks, there ya go!!! Shoot, let’s just ride… something will surely pop-up…
With no particular route in mind, we just sort of turned here then there as a notion struck us, then wound-up gliding right by the Café Risqué with all the big trucks parked outside on their spacious lot… I’d gone in there once, and… Yeah, the nude waitresses were something to behold for sure, but… no BBQ as far as I know… Besides, those lasses had all been much younger than even my own grand-daughter, and I’m not now nor have I ever been a pedophile… Heck, just looking at any woman under sixty nowadays causes alarm bells to go off in my noggin’! Besides, we were really close now to the Pearl…
Bert took this pic way back when… I hadn’t thought to take one this time…
It’s actually a gas/convenience store with a mini restaurant built in the back portion of the interior… Bert had told me they offered some of the very best ‘Q’ he’d ever had… Ummmm, mighty danged good it had turned out to be for certain! This visit only confirmed what he’d told me before, and that I’d also concluded to be some pretty amazing pig parts! I rate that place as a full-blown ‘mighty fine plus’ on my personal scale of desirability…
Exiting the parking spot proved a bit more vexing that I’d anticipated. I’d been mindful of the loose gravel surface and the slight decline to the spot when we’d nosed in, but I’d figured we could handle it rather easily… Valks don’t have a reverse gear, as we all know, so it’s always a good idea to ponder the situation before entering a ‘down-sloping’ spot, even if it's only a slight angle… It proved to be a wee bit more of a struggle than I’d bargained for, but… we got ‘er done anyhow…
What a ride this had been! In addition to everything else, we’d also ascended Mt. Pedro. Yep, even though Florida is not known for mountains, there are a couple of locations with names implying such. We crested the lofty peak, and I smiled as I always do at the thought of such… No danger of nosebleeds or anything, even though there is a wee bit of elevation to it… I’d guess possibly something even a bit more than 100 ft. above sea level at the highest point… similar to Mt. Dora and Mount Verde, only much less populated.
That shard of sunlight, the one that had finally tipped the scales when the original call to go for a ride had been made, had vanished before we’d even passed the city limit sign, but no moisture was ever encountered anywhere along our route all day… The sky did look darker north and west of us, though, less so south and east… WOW! Look at that! The clouds appeared lighter, and there was even a hint of smallish patches of pale blue here and there amongst the otherwise overcast sky to the southeast! Probably wise to ride towards the blue, I figured… no matter how slight…
DDT
