This ride started at 8:00am on “Cool Saturday” following “Black Friday”.
Before I get into my extra cool ride I would like to show you some natural Christmas decorations in our neighborhood. The tree below is just a couple houses away from our home.
Red and Green provided by nature. I assume the tree decided to turn partly red because these neighbors do not decorate for Christmas.
Now for the Cool Saturday ride. The day started with a short ride in 40 degree perfectly clear weather with no wind to the Flying J truck stop, where we had planned to meet and begin the ride at 9:00am. Since I arrived early I went inside and had breakfast at the Denny’s.
The ride route was put together by Jason with a text message stating the route, start time and starting point. I had no idea who would be riding today but one or twenty one, it would be a good day to ride. I decided if no one showed for the ride I would head down to San Antonio and have lunch at the Sea Island.
At 9:00am I went outside to see who I would be riding with. Jason was there ready to ride but the other invitees were either busy or it was too cool for them to ride. We started this ride with a temp of 42 degrees. Jason led the ride as we headed southwest. We had ridden about 20 miles when I asked Jason to pull over so I could put my ear plugs in. For some reason the radio sounds better coming through the speakers in the helmet if I have ear plugs in.
You may also want to know, that I took a minute and put a second coat liner inside my jacket, as it was a somewhat cool ride in 40 degree temps at 70 mph.
We had an excellent ride continuing to the west. If you live in Texas you would know it is deer hunting season and the hunters had many camps set up. Many of the hunters have nice camping trailers and at times we would see several trailers parked together in a field.
Below is a photo of a view with at least two deer stands in the photo.
The photo below shows some of the prairie land we rode through. There were plenty of curves and hills in the ride too. The photo below reminds me of riding in New Mexico.
One of the high spots of the day was our stop for lunch in Bend Texas. The place we ate lunch could not be called a restaurant but they did make hamburgers and fries. Below is Bad Bob’s Bend Store where we ate lunch. We went inside and place the order and paid then we went outside and they brought the burgers out to us.
There is a sign (below) indicating how good the food was at Bad Bob’s Bend Store. You might also notice the rusty barrow below the sign. It had hundreds of holes in it from being shot with guns.
A sign in the window indicates how good their service is. You may note they have my name in their window.
As we enjoyed our food, (it was good food) there were several people arrived to eat of which most seemed to be hunters. We spoke to one man who had been deer hunting with his three sons. Below we see their morning kill, a 300 pound hog.
After lunch we continued our ride in temps that were near 60 degrees. Jason knew of a suspension bridge so we decided to ride to it. It was about a mile off the main road and this gravel road was like a wash board. Seriously the road had bumps about 6 inches apart for most of the one mile. Even though there were no pot holes, this was a rough road to ride.
The bridge was possibly 100 feet above the river, it was worth the ride. The bridge had a wood floor that popped and creaked as we rode across. We stopped to take a couple photos.
We continued our ride eventually stopping for gas in Goldthwaite, TX. It was 2:45 and we had to decide whether we continued the ride which would take another couple hours or get on highway 84 and ride directly back to Waco. The temp had risen to a warm 64 degrees and we knew it was going to begin to cool down now that the sun was getting lower. We decided to get on 84 and make a fast trip home.
We did exceed the speed limit most of the way back to Waco. I arrive home a little after 4:00 and my odometer indicated 318 total miles for this Cool Ride.
From the Cool Ride mind of Don Ford
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