The epilogue part one: Gibson throws us a curve ball.

It's Friday night, May 2nd.

The bags and boxes are unpacked. Laundry done and put away. Groceries bought. Thank-you's enthusiastically issued. Car washed, inside and out. Most everything is in it's place.

So why am I here instead of at the Mogwai (who provided this blog's title, btw) show with Scott tonight?

Yes, all was well until about 9:15 this morning when the "teenage boy" (with his sister's help) slammed into a slab of granite and sliced his leg open. After a day a the vet, one very sad and pathetic boy is home with a "collar of shame", a drain in his thigh and quite a few stitches. He's loaded up on pain meds and will be on the doggy version of bed rest until Monday.

Those pathetic eyes!

He'll be fine, but the whimpering sighs are breaking my heart.

Funny side story: the vet's dog did almost the same thing yesterday with the same result. Something going around?

Homehomehomehomehome.

After a too short run on too scary roads with no sidewalks near our too suburban Birmingham hotel, we headed east. Two hours and 32 minutes later.....

WE ARE HOME.

Stay tuned for the next, epilogue post. I promise it'll be full of fun facts.

Swine Dining

After a nice run in downtown Little Rock, we headed to Memphis for lunch. we'd spent some time on Yelp,. Garden & Gun and Eater looking for good hints on the best Memphis BBQ in town. We settled on Cozy Corner "since 1977". Scott had ribs, I settled on a brisket sandwich after learning that their famous cornish hen wasn't available. Stuffed, we navigated our way through south Memphis to the highway and to Birmingham for dinner.

Why the 'ham you ask?

The short story is this. There are 3 well known & respected restaurants in Birmingham that we've had on our radar: Highland Grill, Hot and Hot Fish Club and Chez Fon Fon. We settled on the 3rd as I'd already been to Highland, and something about french food after the earlier BBQ pigout sounded great. Our meal and the service was perfect. Intown Birmingham has lots to offer, and it's worth mentioning that it's a pretty city, with trees like Atlanta but hills like Asheville.

This is our last night on the road. Tomorrow: HOME!!!

It's BIG, It's a Dam, and it's quite a bridge.

After a long drive to Little Rock, including an ugly traffic snarl through the heart of the Mayflower, AR tornado damage, we checked into our hotel downtown. Fifteen minutes later we were on the bikes headed for the Clinton Presidential Center. Oh, no, it's not that we're great fans of slick Willy; we only want the recreational opportunities afforded by his influence on his city!

Keep moving and don't look down.

And what influence it has been. I won't even get into the NGOs, the School of Public Service and all the other goodies that have been showered on Little Rock. Let's talk about green space! Can you think of any other medium-sized city that has 88 miles (!) of continuous trails within their metro area? And it all connects with museums, huge parks, marinas, boat houses, sailing clubs, public art and an entertainment district that was busy even on a Tuesday night.

We rode 18 miles of the trail including the Big Dam Bridge, a bridge over an existing damn on the Arkansas River, built just for cyclists and pedestrians. We were going to pass on it and just loop back the way we came. It's still super-windy and the bridge is 90 feet above the dam. But we may not have another opportunity, right??

You can learn all about it here: http://arkansasrivertrail.org/points-of-interest/bridges/big-dam-bridge/

Wednesday, we're off for Birmingham. To eat. Really.
Home is getting closer!

O-K !!

We awoke in Salina on Monday to find that someone had attempted to remove the bikes from the car-- right outside our door! Even though they weren't successful, it was still disturbing and reinforced our impression of Salina as a kinda sad little town. The bikes will be spending the night indoors from now on.

We arrived in Oklahoma City mid-afternoon and headed straight for the mountain bike trails near Draper Lake. We spent a couple of hours on the singletrack and challenged ourselves with harder courses than we attempted in Moab. The technical aspects of this kind of riding require you to actually think about your next move. It isn't just leisurely, mindless toodling around. A nice change.

We had a great dinner at a Guernsey Park, an asian-fusion tapas spot in the Uptown neighborhood. Tuesday, we head for Little Rock. Too much driving and too little fun is getting old. Let's see if we can change that.

Kansas. Or, Dorothy, you weren't dreaming, you really were blown away

Sunday April 26th

Sunday morning, another fantasy; "let's drive up to Guanella pass and see the the views from 11,600 feet" was squashed when we leaned that it had snowed many inches up there, and the wind chill was -3. Rain and snow were forecast for the front range. Time to go.

If there are 2 sets of permanent hand prints in the steering wheel of our car, it's purely from the drive from Georgetown to Salina KS, our stop for Sunday night.
First: Snow and more crazy wind in the front range.
Second: WILD wind, hail, rainstorms and blowing sand in eastern Colorado and Kansas. Neither of us have ever seen sustained winds like this outside of a hurricane. Gusts to 50? For 400 solid miles. Tumbleweeds the size of Charlie Brown christmas trees were blowing across the road and into the car. (I haven't checked for dents).

We outran the storms!

So what happens when there's fallow farmland and wind like that? Dust & sand. Visibility of maybe a mile? And this isn't rare-- the Salina area is called the smoky hills.

One interesting thing we that saw during this long drive were the wind generators east of Salina (aptly named the Smoky Hills Wind Farm). The structures were quite beautiful in the diffuse light and I'm sorry that I didn't stop for pictures (but I might have been blown away!). Wind provides nearly 20% of Kansas' electrical power. Pretty impressive.

Monday: We're following the yellow brick road ( I-135) to Oklahoma..Yeah, we know; "where the wind comes sweeping down the plain".

It's so Colorado here....

Saturday April 25th

Saturday morning called for crazy high winds (again!) so we were even more motivated to turn toward the east and officially begin the long drive home. I-70, the main highway through Colorado and Kansas would be our home for the next 2 days.

Late morning we arrived in Glenwood Springs, a smallish but busy town near several ski resorts and, importantly, the main road to Apsen. We had this wild fantasy of camping at the trail head to Maroon Bells, hiking out to the lake overlooking the mountains and generally goofing around in the Colorado wilderness.

We are such naive flatlanders!
Point #1: The road doesn't even open until Memorial Day. Why? Because it's at 10,000 feet and snowed in? Oh. Well. Nevermind.
Point #2: Sunday's forecast? Snow. Lows in the teens. Winds in the 30's. Double that nevermind.

So we unloaded the bikes and rode Glenwood Springs' paths, had lunch and decided to continue east. We stopped at Georgetown, a tiny historic, former mining town along 1-70. It's the gateway to several ski and climbing areas about 50 miles west of Denver.

Ski town fence

Through Curbed via Field Trip, we learned of an out of the way bar (not really a descriptive enough term for it) in Silver Plume, just couple miles away. This is easily one of the quirkiest places we've been on this trip. Housed in a spare 1880's bakery building, Dram is only open from 2-9pm on Saturdays and is home to a maker of artisan tonics and syrups. This is their tasting room. Lest you think we'd landed in a episode of Portlandia mixed with Girls, I can assure you this is a real place. When we arrived, the colorful locals you'd expect in an old kinda-ghost mining town were n full swing at the bar.

Then Denver weekenders attacked. Accompanied by a sweet boxer, two tiny babies and a gaggle of hipster ski bums lighting up pipes outside (yes, this IS Colorado!), by 8:30 it was hoppin'. Now we get the 9pm "closing time": the private party begins at 9:01! So us old folks made sure we didn't harsh their mellow and left by 8:45. The cocktails were outstanding but we did have to drive home.