Martinis at 8

Well I guess some trips are just different, eh? These three sisters, oh my! I guess if I am included, then technically it’s ménage a quatre and not a ménage a trois

These ladies were long, cool, curvaceous and treacherous. One of them tried to kill me at the end of our tryst. As we say in Spanish, La Perfidia de tu Amor. I hurriedly fled to the border and escaped into Mexico.

I met up with these three ladies just west of San Antonio, but before I start posting the adventure and the pictures, I should start my story at the beginning with my departure from Houston on a routine business trip to San Antonio, a professional seminar at the Hill Country Hyatt Regency Resort.

Shall I continue?

M8

Mynameismud

whatever the number of people in your ménage i would be glad to read some more...

Martinis at 8

I spend an enormous amount of time on airplanes traveling around the world doing my 1-man international consulting business. In fact right now I am in Africa posting this trip report. Why not try something different this trip instead of flying?

For the trip to San Antonio I decided to ride my motorcycle. I figured I could ride to San Antonio on a leisurely Sunday and do the seminar Mon-Tue. Since I had the rest of the week free, I could to do some riding in the Texas Hill Country after the seminar and then perhaps ride on to Mexico.

So the trip starts on Sunday morning Feb 15, 2009. The first leg of this ride would be from Houston to San Antonio. It was raining that morning, but had stopped just before my departure time. Rain would not have been a deterrent to my start time unless it was a torrential downpour.

In the picture below I have the bike kitted up with my standard load. I have my rain covers on my saddle bags and on my roll bag just in case the rain comes back. The small orange device seen on the very top of the tail rack is a personal satellite tracker. The device is known as 'SPOT' and it pings a satellite and reports my position to a website that I can make public or private. In this regard, friends and family can track me on my ride. The device is used by a variety of adventure travelers for rescue, body recovery, etc. I use it for peace of mind for family. The device is not a GPS navigation device. For navigation I use the more traditional maps and tracing paper.

Motorcyclists typically name their motorcycles. My motorcycle is named Lady in Red. For short I refer to her as Lady. She is a 250cc Honda Nighthawk. This is an old technology bike in that it has tube tires, a carburetor, a cable choke, is air-cooled, and has drum brakes. I can repair just about everything on this bike for the most common of road repairs. However, a good preventive maintenance program generally keeps me from breaking down. Some of my friends are stunned at the long distances I can put on this bike with the belief that one must have a large displacement engine bike in order to do any long distance riding.



More to follow, but please be patient as the broadband here in Africa is limited and slow.

Martinis at 8

The first leg of this ride is about 250 miles from my residence in Houston to the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort, which is in west San Antonio. I do not like to ride on Interstates unless necessary. So, for this ride I will use a combination of US90, US90A and some back country roads. This allows me to take in more scenery as I ride to San Antonio. Things like pastures, livestock, and the small towns in between the two cities. I have always found livestock grazing on pastures to be a tranquil viewing experience and often stop just to take a relaxing look. Note how the skies have cleared up since the morning rain. I am sure that if I had not put the rain covers on my luggage it would have been pouring down.

Cattle and horses. How very Texas.

Gaucho100K

Wirelessly posted (Palm TX: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/Palm-D050; Blazer/4.3) 16;320x448)

keep it coming.....

Martinis at 8

To literally get around San Antonio I would normally take the Anderson Loop (FM1604) to the south of the city which would bring me around to the west and hence to the Hyatt. This is a good way to avoid traffic during the week. However, on Sundays the traffic is generally low, so one can use a combination of Houston and Commerce streets to cut directly through San Antonio. I wanted to stop at the Alamo, so I cut through town and snapped a few photos at the Alamo.



I was not allowed to park Lady in front of the Alamo for a picture on this day, so here is one of Lady next to some Harleys. The stone wall behind the stop sign is part of the Alamo grounds. Lots of people asked me about the bike.



After the Alamo visit I proceeded on over to the Hyatt for the seminar. The 2-day seminar was only slightly interesting. Not to bore you with details of the workshop, it ends Tue 17 Feb at close of business. The next morning, Wed 18 Feb, I am off to ride.

Martinis at 8

It has been raining the past two days in San Antonio and I spent most of those two days indoors. The seminar is over and it is time to leave. The morning is hazy with a slight drizzle. The roads are wet.

The Hyatt resort is okay, but not in the great category. The first leg of the ride is complete. Here are my SPOT tracks from Houston to the Hyatt. SPOT sends the pings to the internet where friends and family can track me.



I checked out from the hotel early that morning. It is still dark when I check out. At the check-out counter was another Lady in Red. A real one - blond and wearing a red pants suit. For a minute I thought it was my wife. A pretty good-looking lady! We greet each other and she walks with me out to the bike. I bid her, "Have a nice day!" She smiles and says, "you too!" I sit on the bike waiting for daybreak and then roll out of the Hyatt at first light and head west.

I will link up with those three sisters in the town of Medina. So, do you think maybe they look like this?



Hah! The sisters I link up with in Medina look even better, plus I will have them all to myself! I’m getting excited again just telling the story to y’all. But I am getting ahead of myself…ahem. Before we get to the three vixens let’s cover some of the ground on the way to Medina.

Martinis at 8

From the Hyatt Hill Country Resort I took a street route to Bandera Road. This road winds its way up into the Texas Hill Country and ends at the town of Bandera. Most of the morning is at the dew point. There is a mist in the air and an occasional slight rain. As I ride towards Bandera I see a cross off to my right. This was the first of two that I spied during the ride. I have heard there are religious retreats in the area, so I am guessing that this is one of the locations for such.



Bandera styles itself as the "Cowboy Capital of the World". It indeed may be. There are plenty of cowboy looking themes in Bandera as I enter ranch country. Rodeo people also train in the ranches around here.



Nice veterans' monumnet in front of the old courthouse. I am tempted to loiter in Bandera, but I need to get to Medina to meet the sisters, so I bypass the opportunity. I gas up and move along heading towards Medina.

Martinis at 8

I am now in the town of Medina. Another rustic ranch town in Texas. Gotta get a snapshot of Lady at the post office, then I stop at the Old Timer convenience store to get my bearings before meeting the sisters. While I am there I run into a real-life old timer. He’s riding a Honda 750cc Shadow. I asked him if he knows the sisters. He says, “Oh yeah, be careful with the ladies youngster (I am 51 years old), but you will find them better than anything you can find in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” He has replaced the muffler on his bike with a straight pipe and as he zips away he yells, “I am 72-yrs old and I want some noise!”



Next post coming up -a picture of the sisters laid out in their splendor. They have some really exotic names too. I’m getting all excited. Aren’t you? Schwing!

l etoile

Some of us know you to be a tease ... Sisters, huh? http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2007/06/0...ing-nuns-beer/

Martinis at 8

The Three Sisters also known as The Twisted Sisters is one of Texas’ better motorcycle rides. It is a technical motorcycle ride that should be done carefully and only by experienced riders. It is not a ride that should be attempted with any speed. The sisters are loaded with very short, blind radius curves and hilly gradients with ondulations and other unexpected twists. This would be my first time doing the sisters, and I chose to do so on a weekday when I would have them all to myself

The sisters are ranch roads 337, 335, and 336. Examine the map below starting from your right (East) and locate the town of Medina. This is where 337 starts (at the Old Timer) and continues on to Camp Wood all the way to the west. This is the longest of the three sisters. I found the stretch of 337 from Medina to Leakey to be the most technical of the three. At Camp Wood I turned north and rode 335, across on 41, and then jumped on 336 back down to Leaky. The loop itself is about 100 miles. At Leaky, again on 337 towards Camp Wood and then to the South on 55 on my way to the Mexican border.

You can see from the map that there are other interesting stops like Lost Maples Park, Lone Star Motorcycle Museum, etc.



I would bypass these attractions, do the sisters, and then proceed on to the border so I could get to Del Rio by nightfall and cross into Mexico the next morning.

More detail and photos of the sisters, the border, and Mexico coming up…

Martinis at 8

Consider your ears pulled and your hand slapped with a ruler for showing that link!

Martinis at 8

She starts at Medina right at the Old Timer convenience store. All three sisters are camera shy, so you won’t be seeing a lot of photos of them. Stopping on the side of the road to take panorama photos is dangerous because there is little to no shoulder, so these photos will be brief. They were taken at safe stops (don’t worry the photos get much better on the Mexico portion of the adventure).



The below photo is where 337 starts out. Note the radius and the Falling Rock sign. This is actually one of the milder curves.



The Falling Rock sign is a warning because the sisters cut through rock hills. Here is an example of a canyon that was cut for this road.



The above are some of the few places where I had shoulders to pull over and take photos. That’s my windshield in the lower part of the photos.

Martinis at 8

335

Making my way to Camp Wood I then enter 335. This road not only has curves, it has many ondulations. Think of wave swells on an ocean, that’s what ‘ondulation’ means. 335 is the most scenic of the sisters IMO. Lots of river panoramas too. Unfortunately, one can’t look at the panoramas much as one has to concentrate on the ride and not the views. I would really like to buy some land in this area.



There are camels out here. This one seems to be smiling for the camera.



336



336 is an open range road. Livestock can roam freely across this ranch road. However, ranchers have started putting up fences because even way out here in this rural area traffic has begun to increase. If one is on a motorcycle, one has to exercise extra caution due to the cattle guards that are embedded in the roads. For those of you who don't know, "cattle guards" are rails that are laid into the asphalt of roads. Hooved animals do not like to walk on these, so these cattle guards serve in a way to keep the animals from wandering down the roads. In the photo below, you can tell that the rancher has put up a temporary fence.

Martinis at 8

Once 336 ended I got back on 337 and headed west to catch my route to Del Rio (shown below). Coming out of Leakey I was on a 337 curve riding way to the inside of my lane. Coming in the opposite direction was small pick-up truck that was hot-dogging the curves. He was over the double-yellow line, in my lane, and headed straight at me. I got ready to slam the bike into the side of the hill as opposed to having a head-on collision with him. He swerved at the last second so I aborted the evasive maneuver. I overcame the need to chase down the pick-up and drag him out of his cab. It took me a few minutes to shake off the incident as I made my way to the Mexican border. Never underestimate these ladies, 337 almost laid me out, literally.

Here is my route to Del Rio. Keep this Google map in mind and focus on points B to G (Bracketville), as we will talk about it in a later post. While heading down this road I notice a few pick-up trucks with ranch workers in the back – Latino looking workers. The trucks are heading east as I head west. They wave to me as they pass by. At point G there is another Alamo. This is the Alamo that was used in the John Wayne movie as a prop.



Here are my spot tracks.