A nerd out of his element just manages to find ways to bring his element with him.  Me, checking my e-mail in the parking lot of some store in Palistine, Texas.



Mmmm, power tools.  Northeast Texas has a lot of open-pit mines, which are full of these awesomely huge machines.  I want one for my birthday.



Um, what?  Pretty sure that's a kit conversion, as the build quality didn't look that fantastic.  I didn't take that close of a look, but damn that looked out of place.



This was parked outside a gas station that I refueled at.  A '76 Shovelhead, I think.  I love rattlecan-black paint jobs.

The majority of Southern Missori and Northern Arkansas is filled with warning signs like this:



And then, the best sign of all:



These roads were just a ton of fun.  And these were a few days ago, before I lowsided the bike, so I had (probably a little bit too much) confidence and was attacking them with a little bit of aggressiveness.  Man, they were a blast.





Very twisty but well-maintained roads that didn't have much traffic on them at all.  What more could a guy on two wheels want?

Eventually, the mountains gave way to more farm country, but the road remained awesome.  I shot this video of a particularly fun streach, and before people yell at me for taking blind hills and corners too fast, I'd actually ridden back and forth on this bit a few times, so I had some idea what was coming up.  And I was only just touching the speed limit.  As usual, it's absurdly shakey.  I need to figure out a more stable way of mounting the camera to the handlebars.  But at least you should be able to get some idea of what I've been playing around on.

I'll be rolling out of Austin later today.  I don't expect there to be much interesting in the next few days, East Texas looks pretty dull and flat, but I'll update when I can.