Texas Ural Rally Days.......

Let me start off this post by saying that I am a dork. A really, really big dork. We capped off the weekend at the local KOA for some butt parkin around the campfire. Come time to leave about midnight, put on my jacket, and the inside of my jacket was cold. Hmmmm.......I was really warm a few minutes ago......did we just drop 20 degrees in 2 min? No kidding, move away from the fire, it is cold. Only about 50 degrees. Start coming down the highway and I notice that I am getting a bad shimmy from my front end. That was when it dawned on me that it was DAMN COLD!!!!!!!! Uncontrollable shivering does bad things to the handling on motorcycles. The next thing we see is Dave rolling down the access road access road heading for the truck stop to buy a sweatshirt. That way I can hit the highway and get to the hotel. Turns out the the truck stop is one exit before the hotel. Now that I have feeling back in my hands, I can actually post.....

Started out the day with breakfast at the Czech Stop in West, TX. Had some kolaches. If you have never actually been inside it, it is a gas station with a bakery inside. There are even tables......3 of them. We end up sitting out with the bikes and eating breakfast. If you think having one Ural is a conversation starter, try sitting in a group of 7. After breakfast, its time to head for the Texas Ranger Museum in Waco. We pull in at Wal Mart for something or other, and one of the bikes is running a bit funny. Turns out that the right carb is loose.....way loose....like, about to fall off the bike loose. On most bikes this would just be funny, but on a boxer twin, it would be pretty freaking hilarious.....followed by biblically tragic. With the cylinders poking our the sides of the bike (over your feet), and the carbs hanging on the back of the of the cylinders next to your shins. If one of those falls off while you are riding, it will take an act of god to get you unscrewed. The only thing holding the carb up at that point is the throttle cable and the fuel line, and the fuel line is a lot shorter and something has to give...... Fortunately we caught it before it dropped. I know we always joke about parts falling off of Urals, but I have never heard about anything that important trying to eject......

After the repairs, we made it to the museum. For those who don't know...the Texas Ranger Museum has nothing to do with baseball. It is actually a pretty neat place. 80% of the exhibits are guns......"Here are the guns used by each ranger through history", "Here are the guns recovered from Bonnie and Clyde".......Here are the historical guns of the earliest rangers. After the museum, we went to eat at this place called Crickets. Food wasn't bad, service was survivable. After food it is back to the hotel to get a bit of rest and then head out to the campground to hang out around the campfire, and setup the circumstances for the opening of this post.


Dave