Fall "Lack" of Colors Ride.

Each year Jamie and I attend a fall colors ride with one of the local groups that we ride with. last year we went with the Lone Star BMW club to Mountain View. So this year we decided to join up with the LoneStar Riders group. This year has been very strange from a weather stand point. Dallas set an all time high for the month of October with an average temp of almost 77 degrees. Jamie would not be able to attend as our daughter had homecoming on that Saturday. Megan is a junior at Plano Senior High School and there was no way that Jamie would be missing out on that. Both her and Megan gave me the green light to attend the ride. 

Since it would only be myself and the weather was amazing, a few of us thought about one last camping trip. Unfortunately a lot of people had the same thought. The camp grounds at Petit Jean State Park were completely booked, so I just kept my room at the Mather Lodge. David Jackson would be joining me in my room, using a sleeping bag as he did not reserve a room. We decided to head out early Friday morning. The gang all arrived and we had a cup of coffee before heading out. Rob, Mark and David joined me for a great day of riding.

We did the slab thing up to Nancy’s Cafe in Paris Texas for a quick breakfast, before heading to the fun part of the route. It was a beautiful morning and the temps started out in the low 60’s. We had a great morning of riding. We rode the Talimena Scenic Drive and took a break in Mena to fuel up, before heading the last 200 miles to the lodge. We ran into the rest of the gang as they rolled into Mena as we were preparing to leave. 

We encountered a little issue when Mark’s TPS monitor said he was losing air pressure in his rear tire. We pulled over and found that Mark had a good sized nail that decided to make a home in his rear tire. We got out the tire plugging kit and repaired the flat. Mark has recently had back surgery so it was fortunate that we were all there to help him out. We do not want him to have anymore issues. This is one reason I love riding with this group. They are all about the ride and helping each other out no matter what the circumstance. The bad news is we had to plug it multiple times and then we found another hole. Mark made it to Ola Arkansas before giving in and calling another friend at the lodge who had a trailer.