Todays ride began at Fort Worth Harley Davidson. Thanks to our dealership for all of their support of our chapter! Every ride begins with meeting 30 minutes or so before the trip to talk crap and like today, slob on donuts! Then we group up, go over our road rules and hand signals. Just a side note here: did you know there are mechanical hand signals?!
The underlying purpose of each and every ride is to HAVE FUN, and safe riding is part of making that happen. After this we saddle our beasts and get in a riding group headed by a road captain.
We had right at 25 riders today and it was an absolutely beautiful cool morning. Keep in mind, beautiful MORNING! HAHAHA! The day surely did not stay cool. We stopped at a gas station somewhere along the way, dont really remember where it was just to stretch and grab a drink before moving on to Glen Rose where we took another rest before pushing onwards for the longest leg of the trip.
Next stop was Cranfills Gap, TX where we stopped for lunch at the Horny Toad Bar and Grill. And yes, there was a big horny toad inside the front door. Keep in mind it took 4 hours to get to our destination. So good food, birthday cheers, and cooling off came just at the right time as the heat began blasting our faces at 104 degrees. I would encourage any riders and riding groups to make the trip. The scenery is great, the roads are winding, and the Horny Toad provides the perfect justification to make the ride.
Each group had 8 riders and this here is a look at the group of bikes I was in which was group 2. We were the uber kewl group just because, we were. My little scooter is the street glide that is next to the furthest bike back in the picture.
A quick look at group 3 reveals that since they were behind everyone else they were obviously the slackers today.
Group 1 heads out leaving the rest of us trailing behind to say Goodbye to Cranfills Gap! We enjoyed the Horny Toad Bar and Grill and appreciate them having us as their guests!
Most rides are great, we get to see deer, rabits, squirrels, and squashed things sometimes unrecognizable on the road. The scenery is always great, and the companionship is fantastic. However on this ride home, a horrible thing happened to a cager, their car caught on fire on a lonely stretch of road. As we crested a hill and were looking down seeing the smoke billowing violently into the air, we were able to plainly see an explosion from the car. The trees and grass along the road burst into flames and apparently the debris or gas from the explosion shot across the road and caught the grass and trees on the other side on fire as well. Fortunately no one was injured, the passengers had gotten out safely and there was a fire truck pulling up as we came upon the incident. We were forced to wait until they extinguished the flames and cleared the road to safely pass.
This took about an hour to clear and we were on our way again. We stopped in Glen Rose on the return trip and were hydrating when another group of riders came in and nearly carrying a lady that had suffered heat stroke. She was in bad shape, pale, not sweating. We helped them with wet towels to cool her off and after quite some time she kind of came back to reality and we knew she would be ok. One of the men from her group left to bring back a truck to take her home in so she would not have to face the heat again.
Overall it was a great 240 mile trip, hot, exciting, and very eventful with the unusual side occurences that do not usually happen.
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