oooooooo i've slept in the nashville jail

4hrs of ot, then the highway

couldn't wait to bust out of work and hit the road while the gettin's good. one more riding day!!! managed to get warm enough to ride about noon, totally wasn't expecting this. wandered west of town and aimlessly kept turning up smaller jankier country roads in the hills south of i-40, west of town, then headed over to pfisters house for a smoke break. good thing too, he talked me into going to a place he and his daughter had just gotten back from. i've stopped at it and pulled in the lot many times, last saturday in fact, but have never talked myself into getting off the bike long enough to hike down the trail. never knew how far down the trail the "lakes" were, and there is never anyone in the p-lot to ask, nor is there any info on the info kiosk they built, so never knew how long the hike was. hidden lakes state wildlife area is my newfound favorite park. two old rock quarries tucked up in the woods right off mccrory. nobody was there hardly, saw maybe 4 other folks, and the bigger of the 2 quarries is peaceful as all hell; had it to myself for better part of an hour; tossing rocks and watching the ripples in the sunlight. it's actually across the river from the veterans cemetery i always go to for solitude; freaking gorgeous. and of course i'd left the camera behind...good thing brian had a phone this morn, i stole his shot off fb. much props, ya grumpy bastid.

it's so fucky outside

late thanksgiving

i'm thankful i got to squeeze one more riding day out of this fall, couldn't have asked for a more perfect day, especially as they're calling for snow and highs in the upper 30's come monday. hit the veterans' cemetery first for some gorgeous, deserted peace and quiet; love that place, real pretty on the backside, and nobody is ever there. so while i'm sitting on the hill enjoying the sun and wind, i look down at this tree trying to figure out what this white spot is tucked up in the trees knees. at first i thought it was mushrooms, then gradually a cat's face started taking shape; so i stroll down the hill and sure enough this cat is straight chillin, tucked up & using the tree as a windbreak. instead of spookin him, i got semi close and laid out in the sun nearby, keeping up a steady conversation with him, reciprocated every other word or so with meows. after 20 minutes or so, i got ready to leave and talked him over for some loving and he was game. fat middle, but skinny haunches leads me to believe that he is surviving on birds and voles in the fields surrounding the cemetery. little to hassle him there, other than a weekly mower, hawks and perhaps a coyote or two...can't be too bad of a life, he seemed very contented. nice interlude but i had more miles to eat up.
wandered semi-lost in the south harpeth area then made my way up the bluffs through kingston springs to a lil coffee house up in white bluff for lunch and more joe, then a little hiking in a part of montgomery bell i'd never visited before. i emerge from the woods when a gal all decked out in wedding gown practically runs up, skirt hiked, and begs me to let them use the bike in their photo shoot, haha. guess la cucaracha will now forever be part of someone else's cherished memories too...

creepy crawling white bluff

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it's gonna be an excruciatingly depressing winter without the bike. get word to april to rescue me...

ferk!!!!

i've missed the HELL outta this bike, so little sunlight left in the year.......................

please don't let it be curtain call just yet, damnit

the world still needs you...or at least mine does

brisk fall ridin'

chilly ride, but damn satisfying. met up at casa de hensley, then we bugged out through the backside of woodbine and headed out to north williamson county. i haven't been out to leipers fork since my dad and stepmother lived out there in the late 70's, much has changed since then; there were affluent sheeple crawling all over the place, their suv's cluttering up the shoulder on either side of the highway, much different than the sleepy nowheresville i remember. the natchez trace was somewhat crowded too, but it's hard to blemish that gorgeous drive. fall colors flashing by the eye, turkeys scattering away from traffic, it was a good day to do some of this road... should've done more. during a smoke break up firetower hill, i almost had ivy talked into climbing the tower, but she punked out at the last minute. i'm sure the view would've been worth the climb, but the view from the road today was enough for me... now the hornitos is sitting on the table next to me, whispering about celebrating

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tequila sundown

raced the sun back to the city, barely won. afeared this was the last 80degree ride of the year, i relished every mile...




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righteous

what a day to be in the wind.




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i've missed you so much

it feels so good to have you between my legs again,
it's been a long 2 months...

my calluses ached for you something fierce...

them were the days, still gives me gooseflesh

the poor, poor gulf

i headed out for my trip to the gulf early to do some partying in birmingham on friday, and to see the motorcycle museum. spent the afternoon at the bottletree, really cool bar that books a decent selection of out of town underground acts, the decor of the place kills. the whole place is done up really cool, but the wall of black velvet paintings up front had me loving the place from the get go. so after several drinks i stumble out in search of a fleabag motel and dinner, both found real close to the bar. so after dinner and a few more drinks i head out to see wanda jackson play down the road from the bottletree, she put on a hell of a show but ended fairly early so i headed back to the bottletree. wound up getting completely crosseyed with the crazy bastards from the haints mc(http://haints69.blogspot.com/), those nutters know how to party down. from what i can remember, i had a hell of a time.

so me and the 600 lb hangover made it fairly early over to the barber motorcycle museum the next morning. this place is freaking huge, and i never thought i would say this, but way too much motorcycle for one day. i left totally overstimulated, so much to take in, i think i started to shut down towards the end, haha. just way too much to see in one visit, crazy collection of bikes. i will definitely have to go back. soon after, i got on the highway to the poor blighted gulf.

of course there has been minimal news coverage in the country, but the bp well is leaking again with several miles long slicks very prominent from the air. samples sent to lsu have confirmed that the slicks are identical to oil from the macondo well, bp of course denies this. and all this at a time when our country is about to allow bp to restart drilling operations. signs of the disaster still abound in the gulf and not just the prodigious amounts of dumpsters that dot the landscape, dumpsters labelled "oil contaminated material". or the natural beaches in wildlife reserves that are now closed to the public. or if you get up early enough in the mornings to beat the bp cleanup crews to the beach, you are greeted by crab and fish kills littering the sands. these are mostly picked up and carried off by the roving crews long before people are up and out on the beach each day. according to locals it turns out after initially starting to filter the sands in gulf shores/orange beach area by machine(which to me sounded like a good idea) the state decided to just cover all the beaches with new clean sand. it was almost unbearable to be at the beach and not swim in the sea. and don't get me started about how hard it was not to eat the seafood. but enough preaching

aside from all that, i still had a good time and even saw some wondrous things. it appears that bio-luminescent algae is in the waters of the gulf; while i have never seen it in the states, i spent a glorious drunken night swimming for hours in it in jamaica. i happened to see it late the first night while out drinking in the sand, lighting up as the surf crashed and agitated it. went back to the house and got the family so they could also see it and we spent the remainder of the night watching it light up, an activity revisited throughout the week. we saw dolphins off and on throughout the week, with me and mom catching them breach/jump one morning, i saw two jump at once through binoculars, freaking awesome

coffee county waterfalls

started a mini-vacation today, and the bike is out of commission until my tank liner arrives in the mail; so to take my mind off that i decided to hunt me up some waterfalls. damn good decision, coffee county is crawling with em, and it only takes an hour to get there. started with one i'd never heard of but is damn near one of my favourites now; rutledge falls. freaking incredible, it's on an old gigantic farmhouse's land, they allow folks to visit the falls, but don't want you on any of the rest of the property. damn fine of em cause this place is beautiful. you cut up through the woods and as you come out on the bluffs, the second thing you see(besides the falls) is an old beautiful metal statue mounted on the cliffs. at first i assumed it was a virgin mary, but was actually just a well done old school partial nude. she added alot to the eerie awesome feel to the place already, but when you climb down to the riverbed below the falls the temp drops like 15-20 degrees; killer natural a/c. and the water is absolutely freezing; it's on the highland rim but not on the plateau, but damn it was cold as swimming in grundy county. only ducked under once, ball crawling cold...could not stand to go below waist deep after. waded out to the falls and took some shots, smoked and drank a little coffee, had the place to myself for a good 40 minutes, and then the bikers who showed up only stayed 10 minutes, but i had already packed up, so headed on down the highway to machine gun falls.

these falls are in the short springs nature preserve, and are about 1.5 mile hike out and down, pretty damn steep. but so worth it, the photos don't do it justice; just can't convey the sheer drippy mossness of it all, nor the cacophony of the water; thus machine gun falls, according to a local i met up on the top part of the trail. it's listed as machine falls here on the internets, but he said everybody round there knows it as machine gun. not deep enough for swimming, but definitely can get up in there for a shower, and theres a deep enough sitting pool underneath the lower falls. had this place to myself for good hour, got a shower, came out and dried off and ate some lunch,but got hot enough to take another. the falls aren't big enough to churn up enough mist to cool it off much, and had more direct sunlight. but damn good spot, definitely be going back to both the first two...

third and fourth(big falls & blue hole), not so much. idk, if i had not been spent already(it was a hot sweaty climb back out of short springs) they may have been prettier if i felt like hiking down underneath em, but the falls at old stone fort were lackluster after the first 2. so i didn't really get any good shots of the bigger falls there, just this cool little trickle shelf. plus the ranger told me that the water has fecal coliform so didn't really want to do any wading. but i did hike out to em, maybe half mile, 3/4's. they are nice, but a waterfall i can't get in just holds little of my attention span. so i only hung around for 30 minutes or so and split. good day, pretty damn good motorcycle ride substitute.