Today was a good day.  Here are three reasons why:

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Back on the road again tomorrow to Jacksonville and more friends.

Sometimes when you’re old and in your dotage, you forget how active kids can be.  I was reminded today that children have much more energy than the elderly.  It’s now been more than 14 hours since the first little one woke up this morning, and activity has been pretty much non-stop since then.

But I’m not complaining.  I can’t keep up with them, but I’m not complaining.  I actually went outside and mowed the lawn so I could rest a little.  The 12-year old was doing a school project with a classmate building an atom and I was afraid they were going to try to split it as well.  The seven-year old had a gymnastics class this morning, and the three-year old was frequently seen riding her tricycle through the house yelling something that apparently only other three-olds can decipher.

In the meantime, I got to do something I haven’t done in a decade:  hit golf balls with the 38-year old.  I never was much good and now I’m worse, thanks to arthritis and other infirmities of age.  But Hilary still has the nearly perfect swing she had as a teenager and was outdriving most of the men today at the driving range even though it was the first time she had swung a club in more than a year. I spent many years teaching her how to perfect her game, but fortunately she ignored me and listened to the professionals and coaches she worked with instead.

A trip with all three girls and Hilary to a Barnes and Noble store to shop for more books to add to their juvenile libraries that already overflow bookshelves and closets occupied some of the afternoon with the rest of it taken up pushing  the little one in the swingset and throwing a frisbee to an adolescent border collie who consistently failed to return it to my feet, making me get up every time to retrieve it so I could throw it again.

As I write now, an almost erie quiet has settled over the house as the two littles get their baths and the senior sibling slid out the door to go spend the night with a friend.  It’s quiet.  Too quiet.  Something’s probably brewing as the littles plot their next indoor misadventure.

Life for adults with children seems to be lived in 60-second seriocomic segments as one crisis is solved and another youthful enterprise begins to unfold.  But that’s life lived in an active family.  And that’s good.

I had two non-F&F side trips planned for this tour:   The first was the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa; the second was the National Military Park at Vicksburg which commemorates the battles and siege of Vicksburg in 1863.  Other than F&F, I’m all about motorcycles and history, so this trip is working out well.

Given my career as an historian, I’ve visited several dozen Civil War sites, and I have to admit I was impressed with the one at Vicksburg.  In the early 1920s, the federal government secured much but not all of the land involved in the battle/siege of Vicksburg as part of several land swaps.  As a result, visitors today can drive a loop road that covers more than 16 miles and traces both the Union and Confederate lines of battle and several battle sites.  Having read about the 1863 events on the the Mississippi River, I was familiar with the general outline of the siege and its importance, but actually covering the terrain–sometimes on foot–turns out to be crucial to understanding why things unfolded for General U.S. Grant as they did and why he was the driving force behind most of the military victories that preserved the Union.  All this is really only important, I guess, to historians and other foolish people but I just wanted to mention that I enjoyed it.

General U.S. Grant

The statue of General Grant (above) was one of about 1,300 monuments and statues on the National Park Service site, pretty much equally divided between Union and Confederate memorials.   Seeing all those memorials brought to mind the current debate over the appropriateness of Confederate memorials throughout the south.  I think all the memorials on the battlefield are perfectly acceptable because they commemorate the bravery and selfless commitment soldiers and officers on both sides displayed during battle.  They DO NOT commemorate a “Lost Cause” or a racist ideology and they are correctly placed in the location where the action took place.  That’s a far cry from erecting monuments 50 years or more after the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse to celebrate the lives of racists who fought to destroy the union and preserve the congenital defect of slavery with which this nation was born.  All Civil War memorials are not created equal.

In addition to the battlefield, the site also contains the only preserved ironclad ship from that period:  The SS Cairo (pronounced like Karo syrup).  It was one of seven such ships built for the Union for service on the Mississippi and was the first to be sunk in 1863.  But the good news is that it rested on the bottom of the Yazoo River in Mississippi for more than 100 years before a historian discovered its location and ensured that its remains would be raised from 36 feet of water and several feet of mud.  The sunken ship also contained hundreds of day-to-day artifacts that reflected life aboard the river vessel and are on display at the Cairo Museum.  The ship’s remains were meticulously restored and displayed in such a way that visitors can even walk where Civil War sailors once trod.  Pretty cool.

The SS Cairo.  Three of its 13 cannon jut menacingly from the forward gun room.  The black plating is 2″ thick iron.  Unfortunately, the ship’s iron armor (all above water) didn’t do any good when it struck an underwater mine and sunk in about 12 minutes with no loss of life.

After my tour of the battlefield and the ship, I set off from Vicksburg on a hot four-hour, mostly boring ride along I-55 until I arrived in Kenner to spend the weekend with Hilary, Peter, Annabella, Juliette and Eleana.  In the rush of getting ready for this trip, I apparently forgot to tell Hilary exactly when I was coming in, because when I called her last night she was surprised to say the least. But everything works out well and I’ll get to be on the sidelines for several grandkid activities for the next two days.

The title of today’s post sounds like the recipe for a major case of depression, but it really only refers to today’s ride, during which I neither saw any friends nor visited any family.  Today the F&F Tour was just about riding.

I rolled down the same highway this morning that I ended with yesterday afternoon:  Arkansas Scenic Highway 7, aka “Scenic 7.”   The quickest route to today’s destination of Vicksburg, Mississippi, would have taken me along Interstate 40, but that was never a real choice.  Scenic 7 wound its way through some small, south-central mountains to Hot Springs where I departed its scenicness and headed east toward Pine Bluff then southeast to Louisiana before crossing the Mississippi River and coming to an afternoon stop in Vicksburg.

I had been on Scenic 7 to Hot Springs once before, so I knew I was in for an enjoyable ride.  Pretty good surface, not too crowded (only had to make two double-yellow-line passes), and challenging enough to keep me focused on the road.  But I also suspected the remainder of the day would not be nearly as enjoyable and I was right.

From Pine Bluff to Vicksburg, the scenery was flat and covered with soy bean fields and acres and acres of blooming cotton, giving those fields the appearance of a snow-like covering.  Farmers along the way were making their final harvests and mowing the brown stumps that remained after the harvesters had their way with this year’s crop.

Checking the weather forecasts last night and this morning warned me I was in for another blistering hot fall day.  The air temperature registered once again in the mid-90s but the heat rising from the asphalt was even higher.  Sleeves to protect my arms from the sun and extra water were the order of the day.

But the weather forecasters neglected to mention that a plague of unidentified large insects were prowling the highway south of Pine Bluff in search of hapless motorcyclists.  I could see the kamakazi bug bombs coming at me but unlike the occasional varmint there was no way to avoid them.  So, for about a 10-mile stretch I  was peppered with a staccato drum beat of bug bodies smashing into my windshield, fairing, face shield and occasionally my hands and legs.  No damage done.  (The deceased bugs may have begged to differ during their final squishy moments.)

Tomorrow morning I’m going to explore the National Military Park at Vicksburg where during May, June, and July 1863 General U.S. Grant attacked and besieged the pivotal Mississippi River town, inflicting a crucial wound on the Confederacy’s attempt to rend the union.  Then tomorrow night it will be family time again, this time in Kenner with Hilary and her trio of youthful Amazons.

Early this morning I bid adieu to brother Jon and sister-in-law Ulla in Andover (just east of Wichita), headed east on U.S. highway 400 and watched a lovely peach-colored sun rise in a nearly cloudless sky before me.  A few hours later the extremely bright sun made seeing the road and other vehicles rather difficult, and by noon the sun made the air coming off the asphalt pretty damn hot.   But at 7 a.m. it was still lovely.

The time with family was good.  Ulla and Jon fed me way too well, and I wish we could have had a few more days to chat.  But Jon didn’t work me too hard and he provided five bottles of Jack Daniels.  (A selection of small single serve bottles, but it was a nice gesture).  I won’t give up the verdant mountains of North Carolina for the wind-blown plains of Kansas, but it would be nice to spend more time with Jon and Ulla.

Mike, Diane and an old biker

The primary reason I fired up the V-Twin at sunrise this morning was to ensure arrival in Rogers, Arkansas by noon, so I could spend a few hours with good friends Mike and Diane from our days in Tullahoma.  Mike was a golfing buddy, a work colleague, and our daughter Hilary’s introduction to playing saxophone in a bar band.  Mike and Diane are two of the hardest working people I know and have the enormous talent it takes to work in many different industries in a changing economy.  They also raised two beautiful daughters who are repaying them with very special grandchildren. As I discovered again today, they’re also capable of remodeling houses into beautiful homes.  They have been important to Marilyn and me for nearly 25 years and they will continue to be.  We only had about two hours to catch up, but that brief time was another vital link in the F&F tour.

After more than a week of riding in Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas I was ready for something a little more challenging.  Following a wonderful quiche and salad lunch expertly prepared by Diane, I headed east across Arkansas into the Arkansas mountains. I had in mind the road I wanted to ride because I’ve ridden it several times before, including during last year’s Alaska trip with Mark.  Arkansas Highway 7 runs north to south through the middle of the Arkansas mountains and is correctly identified as a “Scenic Highway.”  The road surface is good, though I scraped it up a little with my floorboards as I raced up and down the hills and around the curves.  On the ridge top straight aways, panoramas seeming to stretch hundreds of miles reveal forested mountains and canyon-like valleys, offering something much more pleasing to the eye than desiccated Kansas fields.  I wish the temperatures had been a little cooler, but at the higher elevations it was a pleasant ride.

Family, friends and twisties.  Yeah, it was a good day.

I don’t always get as much exercise as I would like when I’m on the road, what with pie stops and long hours in the saddle, but today was an exception.  Before the flat, windy plains of Kansas got too hot (95° this afternoon), I walked 2.5 miles with my sister-in-law, Ulla.  That wouldn’t be too remarkable except that Ulla is currently finishing six months of cancer chemotherapy.  We walked at a fairly brisk pace and chatted the whole way.  I was pleased and impressed.  So was she.  It was a great way for both of us to start the morning.

Jon’s Firepit

Brother Jon usually has half a dozen house repair/remodeling-related projects underway at any give time–painting, plumbing, building a room in the basement, laying paver stones for a fire pit, buying and repairing a cement mixer–you get the idea.  This morning’s task involved laying flagstones at the foot of the deck he built next to the swimming pool.  And he graciously said I could help!

My first assignment was to bring several wheelbarrows of crushed rock from the pile in the front of the house to the backyard to serve as the leveling base for the flagstones. That, of course, meant shoveling the crushed rock from the pile into the wheelbarrow; it doesn’t just get there by itself, you know.  OK.  Load the wheelbarrow, wheel it through the grass to the backyard, dump it and smooth it out.

Finished Flagstone Project

Then lay down the flagstones.  Not once, but several times, because flagstones don’t have even edges and you have to figure out the best pattern to keep the joints between the stones as small as possible.  So bend over and lay ’em down, bend over and pick ’em up, bend over and lay ’em down again.  Apparently moving stones adds to their weight because they got heavier each time we realigned them.  But finally, they were all laid.  Done?  Nope.  Then I had to get more crushed rock to fill in the cracks and even the edges.  And then it was done.  And so was I.  But, my kid brother (65) and I rocked.

I think I’m going to cut back on all this physical labor when I turn 70.  So, if anybody has any work for me to do, you better get your requests in during the next two months.

Having completed the morning’s chore, we took the afternoon off and went man-shopping at Menard’s for paint and hardware, walking reverently through aisles of tantalizing tools, alluring lumber and fabulous fixtures.  That completed, we took a mid-afternoon break for tiramisu and coffee at the Metro Cafe.  It wasn’t pie, but it was good.

Tomorrow it’s OTRA (on the road again) and kick stand up at 7 a.m. to begin a five-hour ride across eastern Kansas to Rogers, Arkansas, home of the Walmart Waltons, but more importantly home to good friends Mike and Diane from Tennessee days.  It will be great to see them again and to spend a couple hours catching up before I finish the day’s warm, windy fall ride to Russellville in the middle of the state.

After brother Kent deposited Mary Rose back at their house last night following 11 hours of adventure park fun, he joined me in the lobby of my hotel for coffee and conversation.  It’s always nice to have one-on-one time to catch up on family news.  But in addition to talking about our families, Kent and I also explored my plans for future rides, including the “Lewis and Clark Trail” ride I hope to make in 2019.  Properly done, that ride should take me from Pittsburg, Pa., to the Oregon coast.  And part of that ride would take me into Nebraska where the expedition stopped several times on their trip up the Missouri River.  Kent told me about a Lewis and Clark visitor’s center very near where I was going to be riding today, so I made a slight detour to check it out.   The modern center was not open when I stopped by early Sunday morning, but they did have one exhibit outside that was worth the short visit.  It was a replica of the keel boat built in Pittsburg under Lewis’s direction and which went up the Missouri River for several hundred miles before being sent back to St. Louis with scientific specimens.  I mention all of this because it’s chance happenings such as this that help maintain my enthusiasm for future trips.  I’m really looking forward to a six-week, 8,000 mile history trip following the route taken by the Corps of Discovery in 1804.

Replica of Lewis and Clark’s keelboat located in Nebraska City.

A good part of the day was spent in Topeka, the town where I grew up, with one of the people I grew up with.  Jaylene and I first met in the third grade and stayed in the same schools together until graduation from high school a decade later in 1965.   During our high school years we even worked at the same drug store.  Today we reminisced about grade school teachers, high school friends, and the trials and tribulations of growing up in Topeka.  After lunch at her favorite Italian restaurant, we toured our old neighborhood and drove by each of our respective houses, neither of which now looked very much like the houses we lived in then.  Much has changed, but, fortunately, the bonds of friendship formed in grade school stayed solid even after 60 years.  The few hours I spent with Jaylene today made for an enjoyable trip down memory lane with my one remaining link to my Topeka childhood.

After a two-hour ride southwest on the Kansas Turnpike, which my dad helped engineer in the 1950s, I rolled into brother Jon’s driveway in Andover, just east of Wichita.  Over a great steak and a beer, we began to catch up on our lives since I rode through here last year on the motorcycle ride to Alaska with Mark.   For a few days this week, the mini Kansas family reunion will continue.

I’ve revised my opinion of Anamosa after visiting the National Motorcycle Museum for 2 1/2 hours this morning.  From the outside, the Museum looks like a remodeled K-Mart store (because I think that’s what it is), but once you pass through the front door, a professional, well-stocked, impressive motorcycle museum awaits.  I’ve been in bigger motorcycle museums, but this one is as good as any I’ve seen.

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I also learned some of the history of the museum, which was the brainchild and pet project of the “J” in J&P Cycles, John Parham, before he died last spring at age 62 following an extended illness.  Despite the death of the museum’s founder, president and driving force, the museum will continue under the direction of Parham’s wife and a board of directors committed to its future.

Like many museums, you can spend two hours or two weeks going through it and still miss some of the details and some of the nuances.  But that just means you should return to it if you can.  I know I will if I’m in the area again.

While there are plenty of Harley-Davidsons in the 450 bike collection, I think nearly every bike ever manufactured is represented at least once.  Indians, Excelsiors, Flying Merkels, and scores of other early 20th century bikes are on display, as are many classic European bikes from the 1920s and 1930s.  Many of the bikes took me back to my early days of motorcycle cravings:  Nortons, Triumphs, and BSAs, as well as the first new bike I every owned, a Honda 350.

In addition to the bikes themselves, the museum displays included old photographs, military motorcycles, dirt track racing, speed records, hill climbing, motorcycle-themed vintage movies (e.g Easy Rider), Evel Kneival, clothing, badges, custom parts, a board track recreation and even an entire shell gas station from the 1930s.  In short, the museum visit was easily worth the $10 admission fee.  If you’re going through Iowa and you get bored with mile after mile of corn fields, stop by Anamosa for a few hours.

After the museum visit, I had a 340 mile ride, almost all of which occurred on the Interstate or other four-lane highways.  Not terribly exciting, but I covered the miles fairly quickly and made it to Lincoln, Nebraska, to spend a few hours with brother Kent and his 9-year old daughter Mary Rose.  Scattered rain across Iowa meant an unscheduled stop to suit up and for two hours I rode in and out of rain which rarely lasted more than 10 or 15 minutes but which would have soaked me without the rain gear.  As soon as I cleared the last rain shower, the temperature dropped about 15 degrees into the mid-60s and the rain gear stayed on for a little extra warmth.

Today was Father-Daughter day for Kent and Mary Rose, so I joined them at an adventure center that had it all:  go-carts, mini-golf; bowling, batting cages, and dozens of games of chance for the kids.  They had been there since 10 a.m. and I left them still riding go-carts at 7 p.m. so I could check in at my motel, write a quick blog entry, and get ready for a trip tomorrow to the town where I grew up–Topeka–and then on to Wichita to see brother Jon for a couple days.

So far, the F&F tour is giving me exactly what I wanted.

Just to prove, if proof be needed, that this F&F tour really is about F&F, here are a couple of pictures of some F&F.

This 14-year old cutie is granddaughter Lucy

This 48-year-old cutie is #1 daughter Heather.  48???  Holy crap!  That makes me………..old.

This purple-haired passion flower is 22-year old granddaughter Hanna.

This blast from the past is Ann S, a colleague from the dark days of the Jacksonville Parks Department.  In the background is the Wisconsin State Capitol.

As long as I’m posting pictures, I’ll add one more for readers who only follow the blog to see if I’m still eating pie.  Yes.   Yes I am.  For breakfast today I had big slice of delicious apple-berry made by the best pie maker in all of Lake Geneva.

In addition to saying goodbye and seeing F&F today, I routed this trip to be sure I went to Anamosa, Iowa, where I currently sit at my keyboard typing away with the aid of my buddy Jack.  Even as you read this I can see the skeptical raised eyebrows and the look of utter astonishment as you ask, “Anamosa?  What the hell is in Anamosa, Iowa.”  Well, Anamosa just happens to be the home of J&P Cycles, the “World’s Largest Aftermarket Motorcycle Parts and Accessories Superstore.”  Having been to their huge store in Ormond Beach, Florida, I just had to go to this one.  Quelle déception (How disappointing.)  Anamosa is the site of J&P’s first store, but clearly not the biggest.  They apparently have an enormous warehouse carefully camouflaged somewhere in an Iowa cornfield from which they sell most of their parts and accessories online.  I walked dejectedly around Anamosa’s disappointingly small establishment, exploring shiny chrome options, unnecessary leather things, and sparkly rhinestone jewelry, decided I needed none of these motorsickle geegaws to make my utilitarian bike any better and, with a long face, straddled my woefully unaccessorized ride and rode off.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to visit Anamosa’s “National Motorcycle Museum” which boldly promises more than 400 two-wheeled mechanized contraptions.  We’ll see.  I’m beginning to think Anamosa is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.  No, wait.  That’s something else.  Anyway, I’ll check the museum out tomorrow morning, but having been to the Harley-Davidson museum in Milwaukee and the Wheels Through Time Musuem in Maggie Valley, I’m afraid my high expectations are about to be dashed on Anamosa’s cruel corn stubble.

I must, however, having slighted Anamosa’s motorcycle offerings, commend a hidden gustatory gem I found just a mere half block off Main Street, across from the local eight-lane bowling alley and next to the Ford Tractor dealership.  Daly’s Winery and Bistro, despite its unassuming façade, offered a weary traveler a tightly tannined Cabernet Sauvignon with a peppery blackberry flavor.  That lucisous dark wine paired nicely with a prodigious slice of spicy Tuscan meatloaf, slightly grilled after slicing, resting on a bed of garlic-and-thyme mashed potatoes, with freshly sautéed green beans added for color.  All of this in Anamosa, Iowa. Color me impressed.

I came for the motorcycles;  I stayed for the dinner.  Serendipitous surprises seem to be the norm on the road.

What I write as I move around the country and the world is, by definition, a travel blog.  I write about interesting scenes, beautiful places, and fascinating people.  While on my current tour,  I’m also reading a history book of sorts, The Greater Journey (2011) by Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough, in which the author discusses scores of American artists, writers, inventors and statesmen who traveled to Paris in the mid to late 19th century and whose time abroad had an inordinate impact on their lives and, hence, on the cultural and social history of the United States.

Their travels, of course, influenced them and American history much more than my own peripatetic motorcycle meanderings will influence me.  Nevertheless, I, and many others on anonymous journeys, have something in common with those 19th century wanderers:  a desire for expanded boundaries; a need to go beyond existing horizons; a drive to explore different cultures, to learn about other places, and to experience the extraordinary that often lies just beyond the ordinary.

I didn’t travel much in my youth, only the annual station wagon family vacations and obligatory summertime extended family visitations with grandparents, aunts, uncles and a few cousins.  As high school ended, I knew I wanted to leave the midwestern town I grew up in and I joined the Navy to see the world.  Except I found myself stationed near Memphis, Tennessee, and I wasn’t seeing much of the world.  So I asked the Navy to send me somewhere else, anywhere else, fully expecting to see the jungles of Southeast Asia.  But, as luck would have it, the Navy sent me to a ship that spent six months plying the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and stopping in exotic ports.  At least they were exotic to an 18-year old from Topeka, Kansas.

Although the stays in our ship’s ports of call were never long, I sampled and savored a world beyond that in which I grew up.  Those foreign visits changed the trajectory of my life, even if only slightly.  New tastes, smells and sounds flooded my senses; ancient and historic sites piqued my interests; glimpses of classic art opened doors to cultural evolution; a hint of outdoor adventure excited my spirit; a swirl of languages and cultures mixed with the strands of my midwestern life.  I experienced the extraordinary that lies just beyond the ordinary.

Travel still enables me to have that experience.  That explains, I think, why my passion for two-wheeled adventures have taken me to 49 of 50 states, Mexico, all the Canadian provinces and one Canadian territory.  The thirst for travel has taken me three times to Europe, including a trip this year that took me sailing through the heart of Europe along the Rhine, the Main and the Danube rivers.

There is no greater teacher than travel.  Most people, myself included, live lives that often mitigate against roaming freely beyond one’s neighborhood.   Job, family, mortgage–a broad range of adult responsibilities limit life-expanding journeys.  Now that my circumstances permit, I’m committed to traveling as much as I can.  And I encourage others–young and old–to hit the road, sail the seas, take to the friendly skies.  Go somewhere new.  See something new.   And learn.  Expand your cultural horizons.  Learn new points of view.  Experience the wide world that’s waiting for you.