Day 10: Hoss’ doppelganger and where are the cowboys?

The picture of my bike is what it looks like  ten hours in to a twelve and a half hour ride day. The GS looks none the worse for wear but I certainly do. I covered 595 miles today and regrettably about 200 of it was interstate and during Little Rock rush hour as well! You would think such a long day in the saddle would leave little time for meeting people along the way but actually it was one of my more memorable days on this trip.

I left Seymour Texas at 7:15 this morning. The skies looked like rain was possible but none came. When I went out to load my bike the parking lot of the motel was alive with the activity  of work crews loading their trucks for the day. All were young men except for one middle aged fellow who was clearly the foreman. We were all busy to be somewhere else so no small talk. Just men getting ready to go. I was away and gone before they left. As I rode through Texas I passed by who knows how many hundreds of thousands of acres of rangeland. I saw very few cattle and more than a few ranches for sale. I never did see anyone working cattle although I did see a few stock trailers being hauled around by pickup trucks. These appeared to be horse haulers. What I did see in abundance were oil wells and fracking sites galore. When I drove through Artesia , NM yesterday I came upon a fracking field that easily covered 10 square miles. It went on for at least that many miles along the highway and the pumps stretched to the horizon.

So, where are the cowboys? My strong suspicion is they work for much better pay for these fracking companies. The workers’ trucks parked at the motel had the name of a “Ranch” painted on each door. I looked in the beds of the trucks and did not see livestock tools. What I did see was a lot of equipment to work on other equipment and all of it emitted the smell of grease and oil. Fracking has become a real flashpoint topic in the west and those who oppose it have become militant in their opposition. I suspect the fracking company uses the word “ranch” in it’s public name in order to protect their workers from some anti-fracking zealot. Those who used to be cowboys now work upon the same ranch but it’s a different enterprise altogether.

“Maybe there just aren’t any cowboys left anymore” , I thought as I rode. Around mid-afternoon I stopped around Texarkana, Texas to get a soft drink. A UPS truck pulled into the gas station and parked beside me. In a few moments the truck’s door slid open and there stood Hoss Cartwright’s doppelganger or at least an east Texas 2/3 scale version with a mustache and wearing brown short pants. Turns out he was really in to enduro riding and Honda bikes. So, we did what I have done so many times on this trip – have one of those totally unexpected but very fun and entertaining conversations between strangers about a shared interest.

Mini-Hoss as I call him, was passionate about the new Africa Twin that is supposed to be the GS killer. I told Mini-Hoss I was very interested in the Twin  but I was happy with my GS. He wanted to know if I did the valve work on the GS myself. I told him “No” and that I lacked the tools and the expertise to undertake such a project. He nodded his Hoss head in agreement and then out of nowhere he said:
Hoss:  “You ride a lot of miles?”
Me: “Well, I am on this trip.”
Hoss: “You ever get the old ass ache? All of us enduro guys get it. You get it? You get ass ache on that BMW?”

There are times when the truth hurts and then there are times like today when hurting is the truth.

Me: “Yes. On this trip I sure have from all the miles.”

Hoss, smiling as he heads inside the gas station, “Well, that’s something you and me got in common. We both got ass ache.”

And people think traveling solo is a silent undertaking.

I stopped in Jonesboro, Arkansas for the night and went to an Applebee’s that was adjacent to the hotel. I sat at the bar and had a salad and a beer while watching the Cardinals and the Royals play. I was about half way through my salad when four guys came in wearing their work clothes. They had been in the sun all day and had the dirt on their clothes to  give evidence of hard work done. They were large crane operators. Turns out they were from Kentucky. I was wearing a UK shirt and that got us started talking. When I told them I was a lawyer (don’t blame me. They asked and I wasn’t about to lie.) it almost killed the conversation but as soon as I told them I was on a motorcycle trip the entire conversation became one of each of us sharing with the others where our journeys have taken us recently. We passed the time there as fellow travelers defined not by our occupations but by our desire to go and see and do things that take us away from the familiar comforts of home. I left the boys there while they were eating stacks of hot wings, their versions of a late night meal. It felt good to have spent those minutes talking with them just as I had done with the Brits a few days earlier.

Tomorrow I will be back in Kentucky and may make it home if the weather and I hold out. As I ride I’m sure I’ll be thinking of Mini-Hoss and the crane operators. That is, until I meet the next interesting person on the road tomorrow.

Be safe and bess you all,
Brian