MACH 14: Day 10 - A Man And His Space

Day 10:  A Man And His Space

Wednesday, May y, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

Next day: to Austin

We are planning to visit some dear friends in Austin today, Jerry and Ava.  Jerry was a kid when his dad and I played in a band, and later, as a young man, he became the best drummer I’ve ever known and we played together as well.  He became a producer and engineer in the music business in Nashville, and moved to Austin with his family some years ago.  We haven’t seen them for quite a few years, and since we’re so close, it’s hard to pass up the opportunity.

I’d planned to get a good start and do some riding in the Hill Country west of Austin before returning there for the afternoon.  But Kitty and Joyce (Kristal’s mother) are having such a good time chatting and reminiscing that I don’t have the heart to tear them apart, so it’s actually about 11:00 AM when we leave and I’ve abandoned the Hill Country ride.  It’s actually only about a two-hour ride to Austin from where we are in College Station.

After a series of Facebook messages with Ava, she would like us to stay with them overnight so eventually cancel the hotel reservation and text back “We’re at your mercy!”

We’d hoped to be in time for the famous Texas wildflowers, but the bluebonnets are long gone and there are only vestiges of the spectacular indian blankets and paintbrush flowers that cover the fields in a magic carpet of color in peak season.

It’s cloudy this morning with a temperature of 79 F as we head west on FM 21 out of College Station, and there is a vicious, gusty wind from the south.  I think of one of our coast-to-coast trips, which I’d named Driving Miss Kitty, during which we endured a quartering Kansas wind for several days.  Up to now, that was the strongest wind I’d experienced on a bike.  Today’s wind exceeds that by a fair margin, and it’s wickedly unpredictable, gusting in various directions and at times whipping my helmeted head sideways with a particularly strong gust.  The speed limit is often 75 mph but I hold to 70 mph because the wind is almost untenable at a faster speed.  I recall Digger at the MACH.14 event saying he battled this same wind all across Texas on his route to Vicksburg.  Wow, this is a day’s work!

The wind noise from Kitty’s microphone is awesome; the passenger always gets more wind that the rider, as the still air pocket created by the big fairing and windshield starts collapsing around the passenger’s shoulders.  Our Wing has an aftermarket J&M passenger controller that offers Kitty the option to control her own headset volume, push-to-talk on CB, and mute her microphone switch.  This morning I ask her to activate the muting switch to reduce fatigue from the wind noise.  This drops the wind noise dramatically and has an immediate calming psychological effect while rushing through a windstorm at 70 mph.

In Bastrop, we witness miles of starkly dead trees where several years ago, forest fires ravaged the area.  New growth always moves in, however, and while the dead trees remind us of what happened, new growth and new homes remind us that life always moves in after a catastrophe.

We see a sign for Lake Bastrop and on a whim, we circle back for a couple miles and take the road to the lake.  We think we might have better luck with the picnic lunch than yesterday at Lake Livingston.  This time we hit pay dirt, finding a nice picnic area without another soul in sight.  There is a small fee and we pay it using the “honor box.”

As we enter the park, we see a sign “Warning - Buzzard population may damage vehicles”, and as we ride slowly into the parking lot there’s a warning sign “CAUTION - Lake ahead.”  Indeed, the parking lot unceremoniously slopes to the lake surface and becomes a boat ramp.

There are indeed lots of vultures, circling close and landing in a social group across the boat ramp from us.  They have a similar behavior similar to what we’ve observed in the turkey vultures that seem to inhabit the trees behind our house during fall migration:  They are extraordinarily social birds, but still seem uneasy together.  When a new bird arrives, there’s an uneasy jostling for position, and for every vulture that alights, another flaps away briefly to find a new landing space, and process continues.  It’s a fascinating bird dynamic.  I think they are black vultures, featuring distinctive pale wingtip patches, and smaller than the more familiar turkey vulture.  They are nevertheless imposing creatures and we watch for a while as they seem to deliberately seem to choose the shoreline where a flock of ducks was peacefully feeding, driving them quickly away and into the wind-driven waters of the lake.

We reach our hosts’ home at a little before 4:00 PM.  I mostly remember Jerry as a teenager, and haven’t had a lot of contact with him in the intervening years.  As he describes his life and what he’s done, it’s gratifying to see his quiet confidence in the music profession he has chosen.  He’s a man of formidable capabilities.  A man in his own space.

We drive together to dinner at Chuy’s, a great Tex-Mex restaurant, and then I go with Jerry to his band rehearsal.  It’s great to sit in a music rehearsal environment, which I haven’t done for some time now after making music most of my life.

It’s good to catch up with our dear friends.