m2h blogs by Marcia Hansen

I’ve been covering a lot of ground, keeping the shiny side up. Here is a picture of my bike all loaded up for the trip.

When planning the trip, I tried to use Google Maps and the Beta Yahoo Maps, but at present, nothing beats the trip planner at RandMcNally.com. If you click through to their site now, their homepage graphic advertises a Harley Davidson atlas with the tagline: “There’s no such thing as a secondary road.” And, that statement expresses why I have such frustration with Yahoo and Google when trying to use their mapping tools. To Yahoo and Google, all main highways are the expected routes and I have to input smaller cities even in a direct route on a “secondary” road to prevent the program from circling around and back on a main highway, and in some cases, the tool will still refuse to use the secondary road as the preferred route even when I say I want directions between two small cities. While I still have to input smaller cities with RandMcNally, it is much less problematic and works the way I think it should while planning a trip.

Here is the approximate route I took:

Day 1
63 South to Jefferson City, MO

54 West to Camdenton

MO 5 South to Lebanon

44 West to Springfield

60 South ** I missed this exit because of the road construction. I just took the next main secondary road south to Monett

37 South to Washburn

90 West to Jane ** This short stretch of road had been recommended to ride on a motorcycle. It was nice and fun to try once, but I wouldn’t detour out of my way next time I come through here. One of the drawbacks of curves in Missouri is that they’re not marked by how slow/fast riders/drivers should take them so it’s harder to judge how fast to enter them when you’re not familiar with the roads.

71 South to Fayetteville **To the person in the black Mercedes: thanks ever so much for not looking over your shoulder and checking your blind spots when entering the highway. Since the left lane was packed with other traffic, I really needed the added excitement of braking really hard to avoid hitting you.

Day 2

62 West to 51 West **Five miles out of Fayetteville, I sat for about 15 minutes in traffic waiting for emergency crews to clear an accident in front of me. The dead Armadillo on the road beside me made for a wonderful view.

51 West to Hulbert, OK

SR 80 to Fort Gibson **This road is really tricky. Lots of different curves with different elevations, including a hairpin turn coming down out of the mountains at the Lake.

62 West to 64 South to Muskogee

Main Street/2/10/64 East to Warner **This road shows up multiple ways on the map and in online directions. Look for Main Street on street sign.

Rt 2 South to Kinta, Wilburton, and Clayton

271 South past Antlers **Lovely road, except watch for deer coming out of the forest. When I stopped in Clayton, the woman at the convenience store, who I asked for directions warned me to be on alert. And, I did see a dead deer by the side of the road.

70 West to Durant

69/75 South to exit 38A to TX-121 S **To the ASS in the red Suburban: fix and *USE* your turn signal! Do you not get that I have zero metal around me to protect me from idiots like you who deliberately pull in front of me and allow almost **zero** room for clearance?!? Do you understand you could kill me by such inconsiderate driving?!? It was ever (not) so much fun to brake really hard to avoid splatting into your rear bumper, and then when that car pulled in front of you and I had to brake even harder it could have turned out so much worse if I was as stressed and as stupid as you to get where I was going! I HATE riding on 75 between Sherman and Plano. Most of you people drive like idiots!! Slow down and show a little compassion please!

Tip: If you’re sitting in a nicely air conditioned car and stopped in bumper-to-bumper traffic and you see a biker exposed to 90+ degree weather, you might not try to pull in front of them on every occsasion you might. A biker deserves as much space as a car people! If you’re really compassionate, you might offer a bottle of water even. Bumper-to-bumper traffic, hot asphalt, running motors, blarring sun–while I try to avoid such situations, sometimes there is quite some distance between safe places to pull over, cool off, and hydrate.

More to come on the Texas biker wedding I attended…