Camping is fun. Camping in LaPine is more fun. Camping in LaPine on the motorcycles with 16 of your most entertaining friends is the mostest fun. That's what I did over Memorial Day weekend. We took off Friday morning 'round 10-ish after loading up the bikes in JW's front yard, and it was a mustache kind of morning. My gloriously, ridiculously mustachioed man woke me by pouncing on the bed on all fours, like a kid at Christmas. Do all men do that? We managed to get packed up with nary a fight - extremely unusual in high-pressure-time situations - and on our way.
I got about 114 miles into the trip before things started to feel not so great - you take a sunburn on the face, and then blow dust, rocks and bugs into it at 70 mph. It's involuntary dermabrasion. Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have another rider to take over for me the rest of the way to the camp site, and I cooled off in the car with my friend A.
We'd been worried while riding into town - there were SO many cars - we were thinking the campsite would be packed, but we completely lucked out and found enough space for everyone to be together. I would NOT say that was lucky for anyone camping probably within a 50-mile radius of us... yes, we're grownups, but we're loud. Some of us burp, others swear, and all of us laugh, LOUDLY... and what can I say? Except sorry, folks, who came out there for peace and quiet and nature over the long weekend... I want you to know I felt guilty, but not enough to stop having a blast. Really especially sorry about that day we all roared off on the bikes at 2 in the afternoon, lulled you all into a false sense of serenity, then blasted back into camp around 2 in the morning just as raucous as ever... yeah, my apologies.
Anyhoo, camping involved a rousting game of Apples to Apples - poor Tongo for having brought it, being teased mercilessly about having brought a "board game" to camp... "Aw what the hell Tongo? Board games? That's so stupid..." et cetera, et cetera... few dozen beers later... "This game is SO COOL..." Breakfast at the truck stop, where our waitress was great, but all the rest of the locals (?) looked at us as if we were ... well dirty bikers dressed in black and leather... which we were, but still, we're harmless! And quite nice. We rode into town to take over the local Karaoke bar where we sang rousting renditions of such classics as "Push It," "Ice Ice Baby," "Islands In the Stream," "Looks like we made it," and many, many more. On the way, M ran into some relatively fresh roadkill and arrived at the bar with (seriously) meat on his face. His poor wife's pantleg was covered with what used to be deer. And his bike fared even worse, as we discovered in the morning when we picked it up. There's actual deer jerky in that picture there. Poor thing.

We went to dinner at this great old-fashioned honest-to-god cowboy ranch called the Cowboy Dinner Tree. It's a big sit-down few-course meal consisting of salad, homemade biscuits, giant glasses of either iced tea or pink lemonade, either steak - and I mean STEAK - or a chicken, yes an entire chicken, dessert and the best cup of coffee I've ever had in my life - just so happens they boil it in a never-washed-out copper pot that's been aged for about 40 years or so. The cream actually mooed at me. Note to self: I simply must start aging a copper pot. And get a cow.


We left dinner, and got a little ways down the road before one of our bikes inevitably ran out of gas. Ask the two wives and one girlfriend sitting on the side of the road here, which one of them asked which one of the men at the gas station if they needed gas. Now try to figure out which one of the men said "Oh of course not, I'm fine on gas." Then ask yourself, how many men does it take to figure out how to siphon gas from one motorcycle into another?
And one more adventure on the way home with a very angry old man in a white van, deadlocked traffic and motorcycles - my gallant friends took off after this uber-pissed old man swerving around in a white van who cut them off and swiped a fellow motorcyclist's bike, then refused to pull over and exchange information. The van took off through a parking lot going about 25 mph - a CROWDED parking lot, trying to get away from the bikes, but the bikes kept up and stopped him in a dead end. The boys "gently" albiet loudly and forcefully emphasized that he'd hit this man's bike, and he needed to exchange information. And he did. And away they went. We arrived home dirty, dusty and tired on Monday night - and after sleeping on the ground for four days, wouldn't you know I couldn't sleep a wink in that comfy bed? Oh and a side note, JW and I can't sing duets. But it never keeps us from doing it.