The Wacky Adventures of Patrick

[Patrick]

The weather was perfect for riding today. After waiting for a handy man to come over and paint the kicthen cabnets, Val came home so I could head out for a ride. It was now her turn to wait for him, much to her displeasure. Anyway I headed over the American Legion Post 379 to pick up Dennis for a ride and they were having a Chili Cook off. Dennis just bought himself a new bike 05' Susuki 1500. Nice ride for sure.

Here is a shot of the Chili cook site.



Here is a shot of the awards presentation



So after the awards presentation and the Pie tasteing it was time to ride. Here is a picture of Dennis and his ride.



So Anna, Dennis and I decide to take a short ride down to River Legacy Park while we wait on John. You have seen those two before and will again.

Here is Anna and Dennis at River Legacy Park



Here is a shot with the bikes.



We then decide to go back to the post and get John and try to call Philip but he was busy so now the four of us head down back to the river bottoms. There are pictures of some of the roads in a prior posting. We did find the River Bottoms Pub however and stopped their. Man that place is cool. It has a great big back yard area for horseshoes, volley ball and other fun stuff.

Us out front of the pub.



Here is proof with the sign.



The back yard of the Pub with some folks playing horseshoes.



Well we rap it up and decide to take Randmill Road to the east, I have never been that way and we ended up very quickly down at Hwy 30. I asked John to take the lead as he knows where he is and I do not at first. So we ride for awhile and end up back on Green Oaks BLVD and head to 157 north and then to a cool little pub called the Flame Steakhouse. They are very well known for their steaks. Anyway while there an older lady walks up to us and tells us some funny jokes that I cannot repeat here. I call Philip and no answer, man am I surprised. NOT!

Out front at the Flame



I ask them before we leave if we are going to do more riding and everyone had something to do so we took off and I peeled off at one point to head home. It was a great day for riding. I hope to do the same tomorrow (Sunday) and Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday before Thanksgiving it sounds like it is going to get cold so I will wait and see on Wednesday.

Anna took the camera and shot this one.

[BooBoo]

It was a great day. Wish my bike was working. Looks like you had a very relaxing day.

[Patrick]

It was a great day. Wish my bike was working. Looks like you had a very relaxing day.

Man it was a great day. If you want to ride tomorrow I bet Philip would let you ride one of his. We at this time plan on going to North of Lake Grapevine and check things out.



Patrick

[BooBoo]

That sounds awfully tempting, but alas we must prepare for Thanksgiving. The house is in turmoil and we need a lot of groceries. Give me a call though and I will let you know how the day is going

Rather than jack your thread anymore with my bike updates I built a blog of my own. Got the first set of repairs done. You can check it out at

http://web.mac.com/brettly/Brett_&_Ryan ... _Blog.html

[Patrick]

I did go to your blog, looks cool not sure how to post anything there. What is RSS subsribe and what does it give me?

Patrick

[BooBoo]

I fixed the comment section this morning. The template had it turned off by default.

RSS - stands for really simple syndication. Lets you pick up headlines from news and blog sites without getting the whole article. Typically you can then click on the headlines of those that interest you and get the entire article to read.

[Patrick]

More Fantastic Riding Weather in November (11-18-07)

The weather has been unbelievably great the last few days. So Philip, Paul, Val, and myself decide to take a ride around Lake Grapevine. We have not done that trip by auto before, have done it by boat. So we take off up Hwy 121 to Business 114 to Hwy 26 then on to the back road across the Dam. Do not remember the name of that Road. It was a great ride all the way up to Twin Coves Marina on the North Side of the lake. We run across an old friend Don. Here is a picture of those two. Of course with bikes in back.



I then take a shot at the Marina looking out towards the Lake.



Then one with Philip, Paul, and Val towards the ship stores.


And of course one of us getting ready to leave on the bikes.




We then continue as planned to go completely around the lake and as we are about to take a right hand turn on Flower Mound Road to head back to 2499 I stop and ask Philip and Paul if we can go straight. They said yes and man it was a great idea. We bypassed some of the 2499 traffic and took a very nice scenic route up to 1171. We then headed West on 1171 and Val saw a dead dear on the side of the road. 1171 was a fantastic riding road. Some hills and nice curves. It was country like road. We then found 377 and took it south where with the Cowboys/Redskins game about to stop Val and I pull into Chili’s in Roanoke. Philip and Paul have to work Monday so they decided to head on home. Val and I have a beer watch some of the game and head out. On the way home she asked if we could stop at the Post and we did. We found Howard my pool shooting buddy, he is the one in the picture below with me. It turned out to be a great day. I plan to go back to 1171 tomorrow 111907 and take more pictures and do a little exploring. I will enter what I find soon.

[Patrick]

The return to 1171 North of Lake Gapevine (11-19-07)

I get a late start leaving the house at about 1030 AM needed to check the air in the tires, get gas, cash, and our trailer license plates. At about 1130 I was free as a bird and now a bit hungry so after leaving SouthLake Town Center to get the plates I headed for Roanoke to have lunch at Chilies. The weather was cooler then I had expected and still mostly over cast. I had a tee shirt on with a flannel in my storage pack. I was going to put it on after lunch but it was getting a little warmer so I choose not to. I struck up a discussion while eating at the bar with a lady who was from up north and she gave me some good riding tips. I decided to go with the original plan of exploring the side roads off of 1171 since it was so cool of a ride yesterday. But I have stored what she said in my memory banks for a future ride. After lunch I hit 377 and then went East on 1171 and started just taking turn offs on the roads off of 1171 and man it was quite the sight. Nice ranches and such, very narrow roads with no outlet’s. Here is a road that I took that seemed to go on for ever and I did eventually turn around and headed back in the direction wench I came. I could have ended up in AK if I was not too careful. That would be a great road if I had several hours and no need to be back the same day as it could have gone on forever or it may have ended someplace. You never know on roads like that.

Here is some shots from that road.

This one is with Black Angus cows behind my motor cycle.


This is one of just the sure openness of the place.


Here is one with horses different angle.


Here is one looking up a gravel Ranch road.


Here is one looking at a pond on the ranch property.


I then got back on 1171 to find another road to head down. This road I found dead ended near the lake with a drive way as the dead end. I took some shots of this driveway since it was so unique. I hope the pictures do it justice.

Notice the vegetation.



In the back ground the lake


A shot of the road heading away from the driveway.


It was getting about 230PM so I decided to slowly head back to 1171 and then head south on 377 but I found this interesting road just East of 377 again off of 1171, just 20 feet from the intersection so I thought heck why now. I was stuck waiting on the light to turn onto 377 so I headed down this interesting road. Name once again escapes me. Man am I glad I took it. I found the Texas Youth Commission which must be for troubled kids or something like that. It had all kinds of sports like areas for kids. I took no pictures of it but across the street from it where the road dead ended I found this cool looking cemetery. The next picture it is hard to make it out a little.


Here is a zoom in on the cemetery.


Here is a picture of the road, of course with the bike in it. The road was so quite I even left it parked in the middle of the street. Just 20 yards behind me was the dead end.


Now this next one, if you can look close enough you should see the big ole cow or bull. Man it was big. It was head to hoof as tall has me and I stand 5’11’’.


I then took off for home with intentions of stopping for a cool one, but since it was now getting time for schools to let out and such I romped it on home. Just in time for the school buses and stuff to be on the streets but early enough the traffic had not got to bad when I hit town.

I decide to go out back and reflect on what a great day it was and for some reason I had my camera in hand, I guess I meant to bring it in the house and when I went to the back yard I said what the heck so I took some pictures of what I think is my cool back yard with my redneck deck and such. Here are those pictures as a bonus to me.

[BooBoo]

Wish I could have gone with you today. I love old cemeteries.

[Patrick]

An day with a different turn in plans and weather

Me John, pictured in prior rides were planning on meeting down south of DFW someplace to cruise the area more near to his house in Ennis TX. Well we were sending emails and having phone calls early in the morning deciding if it should be a go. It was windy and cloudy out but the weather men were forecasting a warm and sunny day. Philip called and told me he saw some dark clouds to the southwest of his location in Fort Worth and I looked at WFAA maps and found no rain in the area. So me and John decide to start riding towards each other and call from time to time on the conditions. Well I only got as far as hwy 360 and Division and I started feeling the drizzle. The clouds did not look like a down pour so I turned off on Division and decided to ride a little while to see if this was a short term thing. Well things got worse and the roads got slippery with the light drizzle and oil mixture, it has not rained here for quite some time and the roads get very slick when rain or drizzle first falls. So I pull over and call John to say I am aborting my ride south. He being a little hardier then myself still proceeds north for some time then he calls me and states that he too is getting into rain. We decide to cool it until the weather gets better if it ever does. So I turn my bike back north towards home and we have a handyman over painting our kitchen cabinets so I thought better of heading home directly so I went to the American Legion Post for a cold beer. By now it is 10 AM and yes it is early, but heck I had a whole day planned for riding now the weather is crud so why not have a beer.

Then a guy at the bar I will not use his name, smoking cigars goes to the head and passes out. So we call 911 and they take him away but I think he will be ok. After all of that excitement Denis calls me and he is up for a ride so I tell him to meet me at the post. He said to call John, but when I looked outside it still did not look good enough for John to try to run 60+ miles up to our location just to go further north. I did not feel it would be fair and the weather did not look predictable yet.

So me and Dennis take off for over the dam at Lake Grapevine. We went to the Rock Ledge Park, (there are prior pictures) but his time we took a left at the entrance instead of heading right.

Val took a picture of me getting ready to head down to meet John.


Here is some shots of the lake from the new vantage point. The pictures do not do the windy conditions justice. We also found a cool pavilion to rent for parties if we ever desire. I did not take pictures of it but I should have.

Here is a picture of Denis and our bikes in the parking lot.


Here is a picture from the back side of the pavilion looking down some stairs to the lake. It does have kind of a beach.


Here is a shot half way down the stairs at the lake.


Here is another shot of the lake


And yet another shot of the lake


We then left the park and took 1171 to Roanoke to have a beer the Chilies and Denis wanted to go down to see his property. He has 4 mobile home lots with 1 rental, 1 vacant, 2 with mobile homes with not rentals so I am racking my brains to see what we can do with that land. Anyway we headed home without incident which is good. It was a good day over all. I wish the weather would have worked out better.