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Originally Posted by Big Joe  Bamabikeguy
I really enjoy your posts. I used to read them at the "other place". Very seldom go there anymore. This is much friendlier. I will come to see you one of these days.
Joe |
Thanks Joe,
I quit posting there last October, apparently missed all the drama (thankfully) & July 4 is a good day to mention what an independent bunch of nuts we are anyway. Those that know my rambling style understand that I don't start at Day One or Point A, just jump in with an episode that mostly has a "happy ever after" conclusion. "Little did I know" is a well earned theme throughout.
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I know what you're thinking, what about those "Ominous Pike's Peaks Storm Clouds"?!?, I'll get back to those one day soon.)
This will be the first one I try using pictures, and since there is a 5 pic limit, and it will take 10 to tell the tale, this will also be a "two parter", starting with my personal interest in that
Prairie Wind I called "Dammit", ending with the
ABSOLUTE SHORTEST ONE WAY TRIP THRU TEXAS, what I consider a Worlds Record for a sprint through a pretty large state.
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Let's load up some pix, see if my dial-up holds)
Day 2 out of Denver, going south out of Lamar toward Springfield, CO, I saw my very first wind farm. I was twenty miles away when I first spotted them standing in the distance. So my interest was really intense because it took so long to actually arrive on the bluff where 80 of them stood on both sides of the highway, with an abandoned school house situated on the next lot.
Standing over 75 feet in the air, it was hard to gauge the size of the turbines from the ground.
Little did I know, I would get my answer as to the size in less than 24 hours.
About a half hour past the wind farm, I saw this neat looking place on the left, the sign said "C'mon In", so I did, and there I met a noted cowboy artist, poet, preacher,
Bill Bunting We spent about an hour jawing about just about anything, especially seeing his craftwork, (way out of my $10 a day budget). So we swapped, he gave me a book of his poems, and he got the best postcard I had, the one of Chief Red Cloud.
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Bill Bunting was born and raised in the canyon lands of southeastern Colorado on the ranch his grandfather filed claim on in the early 1900's. Always a cowboy, Bill has always had a strong interest in the history of Native Americans and the west. Much of his art work and many of his knives portray his own interpretation of past eras.
A self taught bladesmith, Bill uses many of the techniques of the old time blacksmith. It was not until the summer of 1996, after going through some devastating trials, that Bill totally gave his life to the Lord. It was after hitting rock bottom-and crying out to the Lord that the poetry started flowing.
For the past several years, Bill has traveled the western United States entertaining and preaching at cowboy poetry gatherings, bluegrass festivals, western music festivals, cowboy camp meetings, church revivals, etc. Bill is truely a unique individual, a cowboy, an artist, a knifemaker, an entertainer, a poet, a preacher, and a man truly gifted by God.
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Here's his website:
Three Feathers Art | Original Western Art & Poetry
Anyway, he called the newspaper in Springfield to arrange an interview, recommended "the best steakhouse in town". Little did I know after I left, he also called the steakhouse, and when I finished a nice T-bone and all the fixins' lunch , the owner asked if I was the Alabama guy on the red bike, then he said "
your steak was bought by good old Bill". Yep, he's a good'un.
(Oh, and btw, a simple "
I'm a backpew catholic" keeps me out of religious discussions, leave a lot more time to talk about interesting stuff)...
In another thread, a guy from Denver wants some advise (which I'm going to give A LOT LESS OF, I'm avoiding that whole tech/mech mess this time around)....And in the Springfield paper,
The Baca Weekly, we went with that Don Quixote theme.
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And when you get running, go see the Deadhead owner of Sancho's Broken Arrow over on Colfax Ave, and the guys at the Oriental Theater, tell them the "idiot on the red bike from Alabama" sent you.
I think there are three brothers involved in three bars with the Cervantes theme, but the Sancho's owner "took the shirt off his back", gave me this nice long sleeve "Steal Your Face" logo WITH handy pocket.
He's the one who named my bike "Rocinante", "the Noble Nag" ridden by Don Quixote.
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Now we have to skip ahead to late morning
Day 3, because the Ominous Cloud Story really begins after the newspaper interview, on the outskirts of town.......
You can't really see what I did on the map in the middle, so I blew up that little corner of Texas. When I got to
Slapout, OK, at the very end of the panhandle, I got a cuppacoffee, jawed with the customers, (what we call "bullshooting", they call "jawing") then headed out, just a few minutes till I reached the Texas border.
According to my calculations, I rode south 5 miles, then east for 8, NOT EVEN STOPPING AT THE INTERSECTION,
13 miles total,
WOT the whole way. Unless someone shows me a different route , this is the shortest one-way trip through Texas possible.
Scratched it completely off "states visited list" in less than twenty minutes.
Little did I know....I was about to fall into No Man's Land !! (stay tuned for part II)