All of us must do that… or at least we should… at different points in our lives. No one of us is immune or exempt; however, sometimes we come up short and don’t do the right thing. I wanted y’all to know that I confronted a situation sort of like that today, but I did what had to be done… I took one for the team…

It all started as I was sitting out on the front porch this morning just as dawn was breaking… I was in between my first and second cup of elixir, that magical fluid that pulls us out of our sluggishness first thing upon awakening and nudges us towards full consciousness… I was no longer in the ‘Beta state’, but I wasn’t quite fully awake either… but almost.

ALI, always sensitive to my mental state, knew the time would be right to hit me with a proposition… She really wanted to get out from under her cover and go stretch her… limbs, I guess… Anyway, she threw out an all too familiar plea, really, but it was couched more as a thoughtful, insightful, logical idea…

“You haven’t shown any interest for several days in going for a spin,” she clearly and unemotionally posited. “You haven’t even seemed inclined to show any mercy or consideration towards me…” Then she hit me with the gut punch she knew would set me into motion… “But, what about all your pals who can’t ride this day? What about them? Shouldn’t we do this for them?” She had me, and she knew it!

I wrapped up my caffeine intake, jumped in the shower, even shaved off some two day old whiskers, then found a clean pair of boot socks… you know, the usual drill… Once outside I removed her cover, and I swear I heard her sigh… Next it was time to warm her up, and no surprise to anyone who knows her, she roared to life (I had topped off her tank before parking her last time…)

It wasn’t until I’d turned onto the road after pulling out of the driveway that I began to think about where we might go… Hmmm, breakfast sounds good… but where? Ummmm, BBQ sounds good too…

I’ve already had BBQ two times in the last week, but hey… I was fortunate enough to have been borne into an infidel family, and that should be exploited to the max! Right? I mean, pig parts prepared in that special way are oh so good, and it’s perfectly OK for me to dine on that without fear of clerical scolding or reprisal.

I mean no offense to anyone who may not share my good fortune… I hope my intent and motivation today will carry more weight in your assessment of my actions than will that particular aspect of the deed itself… Anyway, I decided to go for some ‘Q’, and that’s just the truth of the matter in plain words…

So, since I’ve spent most of my life in ‘heaven’s waiting room’, I am familiar with many, many fabulous purveyors of palate-pleasing pig parts thusly prepared, and any one of them would be a good choice. I surprisingly quickly got a hunch BBQ Bills in Chiefland would offer several advantages… besides the obvious one, of course, of them serving some pretty doggone good fare…

I could ride some of the back roads I used to ride once upon a time, and the distance would be a good stretch for ‘all concerned’… Our girl seemed to agree I was on to something here… By the time I’d made that call, however, I’d already gone far enough to preclude several options for heading that way, but no matter… There were still plenty of others…

I made the turn onto a familiar road on my north westerly trek, and just as I was feeling ALI become upright again, I heard some guy yell, “Hey old man!” I looked over and spotted Eddie, TropicTraveler, grinning from ear to ear and waving, just as he was pulling onto this same road in a pick-up truck going the other way… I waved back at him… He kept going, so I did too…

Once out of the hustle and bustle of urban driving, I turned onto a road that is still one of the few remaining ‘tunnels’ through giant oak trees that grow together from each side and join branches over the road itself. There used to be many roads and lanes like that around here, but ‘progress’ has taken its toll on most of them… I’d actually forgotten about this particular road, but happily I wound up on it anyway… ‘Our bike’ likes nostalgia stuff too, so she just purred right along…

Each time I approached an intersection, I vaguely remembered it and where the choices would lead, but I couldn’t recall the majority of the road numbers or designations… No matter, we were just out being noble, so as long as we made it back in one piece, it would be OK…

BBQ Bills didn’t have a full parking lot yet, so we happily pulled in and found a convenient space near the entrance… Looking good, I thought to myself… ALI just sighed again… She doesn’t mind a bit when I stop like this, because she knows we aren’t where we’re going to eventually land, so more riding will soon be in store… It’s all good to her.

The food was just as good as I remembered it being, and the portions were more than ample. Since mom passed-on a couple of decades ago, I’ve allowed myself to worry a lot less about the starving kids in other parts of the world, so I typically don’t clean my plate anymore… I just eat ‘til I’m sated, then I stop… Oh well…

Back on the road again, and more back roads not ridden in a very long time… Dang! ALI girl sure had a marvelous idea this day!!! The ride home was nearly three times as long as the ride over, so my fanny was starting to send signals that one tank of gas would be enough for this outing…

We traveled 204 miles of blissful, easy riding through some very nice, rolling countryside, and we never ran into a single hick-up or boo-boo anywhere along the way. Even the few school buses we saw were going the other way, and none stopped in front us… Karma was most definitely giving a ‘thumbs-up’ to this venture!

So, there you have it my friends… For all of you who wanted to ride today but couldn’t, this scoot was for you… I hope you enjoyed it… ALI and I sure did!!!