Brady, TX, a short time back had been interesting in a way more likely to be appreciated by a loner seeking solitude, peace, and time to reflect… Someone just like this gypsy lover of all things… well, nearly all things… bugs being at least one notable exception! If they weren't a necessary link in the food chain, I'd be in favor of eliminating them altogether.
I was reminded of that line of thought just yesterday, as we cruised along on backroads, in no particular hurry other than to beat darkness to our next home for the evening. I was in that special zone thoroughly basking in my good fortune just to be me and to be there at that moment! Breaking that spell was the realization a bug was crawling around in my right ear… "Dang! I sure hope that one ain’t of the stinging persuasion!!!"
It wasn’t the stinging kind, mercifully, but there was still that itchy, annoying sensation just enough to prevent me from doing some more basking… I stuck my gloved finger up in there and that seemed to work… for only a very short time, however. OK, time for more drastic measures… I stuck my hand between my legs so I could remove my glove, and then proceeded to dig in earnest with my bare finger for that rascal. I thought I got it.
Nope. More digging around, then… A pull-off picnic area beside a rather nice lake was just up ahead, so I figured to remedy that problem once and for all. I did. Only… As I removed my helmet, a dead bug fell out onto the seat, and I mumbled, “Gotcha, you menace to tranquility!” I took a pause to enjoy the view and to rest my well-worn rump… Then it was back to… the zoning enterprise so recently interrupted… Then I felt it again!
Before that, though, the de-bug stop mentioned above… A very restful pause…
Dang! I just killed at least one of y’all, how many of you are there any way! Were those diabolical critters part of some bug tour group? OK, time to pull off again and this time do some serious investigating… It always pays to do the job right the first time, and I was now paying the price for not having done so. I never did get to the bottom of that mystery, but at least the nuisance tickly feeling stopped.
What a fabulous ride we’re having!!! Weather has presented some serious challenges, but we’ve managed to remain dry and relatively mobile. We always have a large array of gear with us, because we always encounter extreme variations in temperatures, wet and dry, yadda, yadda.
I do carry a lot of gear, too much most would say, but that’s more to accommodate flexibility and to extend our range and length of time we can comfortably stay out on the road… The idea is, each time we depart my land lady’s house, we can stay out indefinitely, if we choose. We are usually already self-sufficient, but for anything we might need but didn’t have, we could always pick-up along the way someplace…
It is a pain having to lug all of that baggage back and forth to motel rooms, for sure, but it is nice being able to ride off in nearly any direction at any time, with no need to head home any time soon! Whim accommodation and facilitation, you see…
By roaming south in winter and north in summer, we can deal with just about anything without breaking a sweat! The only real ‘risks’ are those associated with the effects of ‘aging’. Doctors everywhere can pretty much care for a vintage rider, but millennial mechanics tend to struggle mightily with twenty-one-year-old bikes!
The flirtation with weather almost felt like being at a sock-hop in bygone times… I was trying to ‘dance’ with the rain and not get out of step… I’m not fond at all of the consequences of failure on that score! More than just trying to keep a gal willing to even dance with me in the first place, I was trying for a different but equally worthy outcome… certainly at this stage of the game, any way…
It can be done, and we were proving that. It does result in some mighty peculiar routes being drawn on a travel map, however! If you’re going west, why did you make that jog east or south or north? Nothing interesting enough to have produced a detour like that for us, we were simply ‘riding around’ the rain!
The forecasts are usually never entirely spot-on, but they generally are close enough to make course variations possible… How did we ever get along without all the gadgetry and services we now take for granted?
DDT
