MACH.14: Day 5 - Mudbugs

Day 5: Mudbugs

Friday May 2, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

Yesterday and today are rewards for enduring the vicious onslaughts of severe storms and threats of tornadoes earlier in the week.  It’s hard to believe that this crystal clear and cool weather could occur so close in time to the monster storms that terrorized much of the country.

At breakfast in the hotel, we learn that there is an impromptu ride for today, loosely organized by the Missouri Gold Wing chapter whose members have showed up in force for the MACH.14 event.  So precisely at 10:00 AM, it’s kickstands-up and we are off, forming a long line of bikes where Kitty and I are #9 in line, and thus riding the left track.  CB chatter is professional and ride-related, not a lot of extraneous chatter this morning.  Picky is our leader and Dean is our tail gunner as we take the exit off I-20 west to US 61 south and an eventual right turn on Hwy 462 to Grand Gulf Military Park, where we take some group photos and kick around the place for the better part of an hour.

From there it’s off to a Sonic drive-in restaurant in Port Gibson for a quick lunch, and back to the hotel, except for some who wanted to collect Louisiana as a visited state, performing a little detour across the Mississippi River and back.

The afternoon is spent at the hotel, chatting and lounging around on folding picnic chairs that magically appear from the various trailers that folks have towed behind their motorcycles.

At 6:00 PM it’s off to Toney’s for the main eating event:  Crawfish!  (http://www.toneysrestaurant.com)  I don’t do a head count but I’m guessing about 40 people show up in Toney’s back dining room for all-you-can eat spiced steamed crawfish.  Four heaping plates and one not-heaping plate, supplemented by delicious new potatoes and sweet corn on the cob is all I can eat.  Kitty does a fine job on her own share of mudbugs.  I dare not ask how many heaping plates full of crawfish she herself consumed.

Afterwards, someone says “We’re going for ice cream.”  I ask Kitty as we climb on the bike if she wants to go back to the hotel or go for ice cream.  “Ice cream sounds pretty good to me,” she replies.  So we head out of the parking lot with with only the instructions to “turn right and it’s on the corner just up the road.”  I see no ice cream place and almost ride through the intersection, but then notice a bunch of bikes in the parking lot of… MacDonald’s!  Well, I guess they do have ice cream even though I wouldn’t have thought of that as an ice cream destination.  So about 8 or 10 of us sit around eating MacDonald’s ice cream, regaled by stories “Fearless” tells of his experiences as a one-time security guard at a large hospital in Atlanta.

I’d unhooked my trailer from the bike this morning for the ride (it’s a lot easier in tight quarters with lots of bikes to be without a trailer), so back at the hotel I reconnect and check the lights and connections.  Looks good for tomorrow, and we spend another hour or more chatting before packing up our own chairs in the trailer and saying good-night.

Tomorrow there’s a more formal group ride; rumor has it we’ll be riding south to Natchez, then coming back north on the Natchez Trace to Lorman and lunch at The Old Country Store that has become a group favorite over the years.