Wild Hogs - Arkansas Style

With very little planning other than a desire to go, my friend Louis, my brother-in-law Gary and I fired up on a rather cool Sunday morning headed up to check out the leaves in the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains in western Arkansas.

The players

Louis

Gary

 Yours Truly

I know, don't even start.  Louisiana is a beautiful state in it's own right but hey, it was October and we are not known for our four seasons.  We have the hot humid season and the not so hot humid season.  With that in mind, we figured we would put at least 400 miles on us the first day to get into curvy roads and into the hill country.  

As we began on Highway 7 in southern Arkansas the colors began to spring forth in a way we had not seen at home.  Highway 7 is a well known crooked little pig trail and following the Ouachita River north and was an adventure itself.

Reaching Hot Springs in mid afternoon, we found the city over run with hillbillies coming out of the woods to participate in a downtown Halloween fest.

Monday morning, we waited until an enormous fog burned off.  By 8:30 we were continuing on Hwy 7 toward the mountains.   The colors were even more vivid and somehow managed to distract our attention away from the endless collections of old camper trailers, abandoned refrigerators and old rusty Fords that had not moved in 40 years.  Somehow, the odor of the ever present chicken houses were not that bad.

Being a Monday, traffic was at a minimum and having to pass motor homes was not much of an issue even as we began to ascend Mt Magazine and Petit Jean Mountain.

While it was exciting taking the curves, hills and switchbacks, it was a lot of work that would later prove to be the source of sore shoulders and backs.  Imagine riding a beast 4 times as heavy as you are and guiding that thing by pulling on one horn and pushing on the other while clamping your legs around it's neck.  Nevertheless, I would and will gladly do it again.

Monday night, we found a hotel in Arkadelphia and turned in early.  The next morning, cold again, we rode down to the Waffle House to continue our quest to over-eat.  As we rode up, there was a dual sport motorcycle already parked there.  A "dual sport" is a bike that is basically a street legal dirt bike.  Finding the owner already in there, I engaged him in conversation and found he was from Illinois, had been on the road since June and had been to Alaska already this year. "Mark from Illinois" said he would probably go to the Gulf of Mexico then head back for home.  He said he just didn't like riding in the snow.  I can only imagine.

By the time we had arrived back home in South Louisiana, we had put just over a thousand miles on our bikes.

I say, it was a good trip that cleared my head of a lot of junk and will look forward to another "Wild Hogs Adventure" in the future.

Rest In Peace, Jim

                  Jim Haldane

High Times In San Jose

Each Friday, I have to check out of my little bungalow in Carmel.  Hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts or anything more luxurious than a pup tent is usually booked months and sometimes a year in advance.  Sometimes it's events over at Luna Seca or perhaps an art or film festival but at any rate, rooms are at a premium there on the weekends.

So, with the Carmel room situation at hand, I usually leave the office Friday afternoon, zip up the road to San Jose, grab a hotel room at the Hampton Inn, exchange the rental car and generally hold up there until Sunday when I return back to the Carmel and the Monterey Bay.

Friday evening, when I went out to eat, I found an inordinate amount of police (mostly motorcycle cops) hanging around the shopping center near the hotel.  Thinking it seemed a bit weird seeing lots of Cop bikers in different uniforms, I speculated on the reason but never came up with a definitive answer.

As an added benefit, the people in the room on one side of me played salsa music well into the night and the couple on the other side had a domestic dispute accented with yelling, crying and door slamming, all of which was in Spanish rendering it completely unintelligible to me.

This morning, as I filled up the car just before going to the airport, I noticed the streets filled with bikers and even more cops.  As I turned onto Kurtner toward the freeway, I could see lots of biker types entering a funeral home and cemetery nearby.  At that point, I guessed it was some kind of biker funeral.

As it turns out, the Hells Angels president had been mortally wounded over at a casino in Sparks, Nevada last month and they were finally getting around to having his funeral.  Let me see a hand of those who do not see trouble coming here.  Yep, it sure did.  Before that thing was over there had been another shooting at the funeral resulting in another Angel getting his one way ticket punched.  Who couldn't see that coming?

I could have gone up to San Francisco or Oakland but hearing the news of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and Bart protests, I thought it best not to go into the inner city.  I just didn't need to get arrested as an innocent bystander.  Maybe a few years ago, I'd have been compelled to check it out but not today. Besides, traffic was horrible in the area.

With that, I'm glad I had elected to visit the Pumpkin Festival at Half Moon Bay and get caught in a couple of hours worth of a traffic jam.  Tonight, I'll reflect on my better choices and try not to make a spectacle of myself as I watch the half dozen or so Hells Angels toying with their Harleys down in the Hotel parking lot.  While I see no one openly carrying fire arms, some wear knives in scabbards looking as big as a Roman Short sword.

Tomorrow, I'll be anxious to head back to Carmel where the most dangerous thing there is getting run over by someone's dog on the beach.

Rest In Peace, Jo Ann, rest in peace.

Rest in peace, Jo Ann. Rest in Peace.

November 23, 1948 - October 9, 2011