Evening Ride

When I left work at 6:30 tonight, I fully intended to go home, have dinner with my family, and attack the R1200ST with a hose and bucket of warm soapy water.

When I was about halfway home, I realized that the evening was just too beautiful to waste. I decided that I would gear up and head into the city for the bike night at Ming’s Cafe.

Riding out of my neighborhood, seeing the sun still relatively high in the sky and enjoying the mild evening breeze flowing over me, I somehow found myself turning west on the highway instead of east into downtown.

I raced daylight up to Waller and FM362 where I followed a fellow motorcyclist off the highway. I passed him after a few turns and settled into the business of leaning my motorcycle. It took a few turns to warm up, but I quickly settled into the wonderful feel of setting up for a curve and then accelerating smoothly out.

By the time I hit my favorite close-to-home road, FM2979, I was feeling good. I slammed down the road in 3rd gear, the ST raging out of the corners. The road was lined with yellow and orange flowers, with the occasional stray bluebonnet. The pine trees along the road were casting lengthening shadows when I turned around to do a repeat heading east, away from the setting sun.

I try not to ride backroads at night, so my fun was essentially over at this point. I debated what to do next. I was too far from Montgomery to crash the meet there and too far from the city to have time to talk to people before needing to head home again.

I idly explored east on FM1488, rolling through Magnolia, TX before heading south on 249 to Tomball. Feeling hungry, I stopped at a chain restaurant in Tomball and enjoyed a strawberry lemonade and dinner accompanied by a book that I keep in my sidecase for times like this.

It’s been a long time since I’ve made time for an after-work ride like tonight’s. I can partly blame it on my overriding (pessimistic?) feeling that there isn’t anything close to my house that is truly worth a quickie ride...but the smile that I can’t seem to wipe off my face tonight emphatically says otherwise.