DrBart2
Super Member
I had a great ride yesterday! It was my Dad's 75th birthday and all he wanted was someone to go riding with. So, me, my wife, my son, my sister and her husband, headed south to ride with my Dad. We rode in the country near Crawford, Texas which is where President Bush's ranch is located. West from there are some great country roads. Not as many twisties as I like, but the country is great. For the most part we had the roads to ourselves and the road surfaces were good. I was elected to lead the group and kept our pace at a moderate rate. All riders were experienced except for my son who was riding his Ninja 250. He has alot of natural talent and from my observation is a smart rider. He could have handled the curves a bit faster than the pace I set but I decided to make this a relaxing ride rather than a challenging one. Everyone enjoyed themselves and were thoroughly exhausted when we got home. I did come on one hazard that I would like to share. Most of the turns were clean with no gravel, but I spotted (luckily) what could have been a disaster. In this part of the country you normally don't have blind curves and can safely go through them without effort at ten mph over the recommend curve limit. But approaching this curve I could not see the road or around the curve. I could also see some unusual dust lifting above the trees by the curve. So, from learned experience, red flags popped up in my head and I slowed almost to a crawl moving into the turn. What I found was a fellow mowing the ditch on the outside of the turn (where we were riding) and our lane was completely (and I mean completely!) covered with wet grass! I brought the group down to a crawl and carefully avoided the grass by riding in the oncoming lane. Checking for traffic of course. If I hadn't listened to my gut and used caution, the group agreed that we would have been a piled heap on top of that guys tractor. I now wish I would have stopped and taken a picture of the hazard so I could have shared it here. Anyway we all ended up having a great ride!