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The email said,

“I don’t know where, but come August I’m taking a motorcycle trip somewhere. Whether anyone else goes with me or not. I have to get away and just ride.”

It was from my younger brother, Mike, and it came just a few weeks after I purchased my Triumph Rocket III Classic. I was eager to take a road trip, despite loved ones’ concerns that I hadn’t ridden regularly in over 15 years. I agreed with my brother’s sentiment whole-heartedly. After aching for a motorcycle trip for more than a decade it seemed that a few hundred miles on the bikes would be just the thing to counter years of stress and worry.

We spent a couple of weeks tossing suggestions on where to go to each other. As the week of the trip approached and we’d settled on the Talimena Scenic Drive (I actually gave in, my first choice had been a much longer trek up scenic seven through Arkansas), the weather forecast turned against us.

Frantic reshuffling of plans landed us with an alternate path to the Davis Mountains in Texas, but two days before the trip the northern forecast was revised and we reverted to our original goal.

Talimena was firmly in our sites.

I was beyond ecstatic as I dreamed of leaning the giant 2300cc Triumph into the curves; running away from my astounded brother as he plugged along on his large Yamaha V-twin. I recalled the glory days nearly twenty years prior when I conquered the twisties on my old Yamaha XS1100, a legendary bike that had grown to supernatural size and power in my colorful memory.

Bursting with anticipation, I bounced from sporting goods store to motorcycle shop to camping store like an island hopping egret.

My wife sometimes tagged along, reminding me that our household income had just suffered a significant decrease due to a salary cut occurring, as luck would have it, a week after we’d purchased my beautiful new Triumph.

The big day finally arrived. I’d spent the week before working myself into a frenzy and bragging to the world about my new bike and the upcoming trip, and I’d promised old friends from my home town that I’d stop by Greenville to visit on the way to Mike’s house in Tyler.

Wednesday morning I awoke at 4:55, five minutes before the alarm was set to detonate. I showered and kissed Robin goodbye. We’re empty nester’s, both the kids are living elsewhere these days, but I still had to spend a little time promising my three dogs that I would be back soon. With a pat on the head for Moses and Kolby, and the customary open palm pounding on the ribs which was our 140 lb American Mastiff’s favorite form of physical affection, I screwed on my Caberg helmet, swung my leg over the Triumph, and began my journey into the Texas August heat.

The Rocket III blasted me through the metroplex and down to I-30 in what seemed like moments. I was halfway to Greenville before traffic had even started to build for the morning rush hour in Dallas.

What used to be a vast open series of pasture and cotton fields between Caddo Mills and Greenville was now a series of commercial buildings, restaurants, and gas stations. I was shocked at the changes in real estate as I turned off on State Highway 34 and headed toward the police station at the north end of town.Having spent eight years as a police officer in Greenville, it wouldn’t do for me to pass through and not pause to say ‘hi’ to my former brothers in blue.

Mike met me an hour later and we had breakfast at Ruby’s Cafe down town with the assistant chief of police, a fellow who’d been a patrol sergeant back when I worked with him. We then stopped by our childhood homestead, both of us remarking on how much smaller it seemed now, and then headed back into town for lunch with another of my old workmates.

By 1 PM we were on our bikes and headed to my brother’s home in Tyler, from which we would launch ourselves northward the following day.

Wednesday night after finally laying down on the couch in Mike’s living room with his St. Bernard sitting in front of me patiently begging to be petted, I drifted off to sleep with visions of twisting ribbons of mountainous roads devoid of trucks dancing in my head. The next morning I woke early without the benefit of an alarm once again. As I made a last minute check of the bungee cords holding my luggage to the pinion on the Triumph I thought about how much fun the fairly straight run from Greenville to Tyler had been riding with my brother.

Mike is a gentle giant, a few inches taller than I with arms that he used to routinely use for carrying Chevy V8 engine blocks and heads around a machine shop. His St. Bernard looks more like a Shelty when when you catch them together in the same picture frame. His hair is long and typically banded in a pony tail that hangs out of his half helmet. Add in the beard and moustache, and his appearance broadcasts big, bad-ass biker dude to any stranger who sees him.

Mike is a nice guy and wouldn’t hurt anyone, but it sure is fun to watch people avoid him when he gets in a hurry. I was glad I had that big Triumph with its imposing engine and pipes to compliment the effect of my biker brother and his massive V-twin Yamaha which was nailing the classic “potato-potato” Harley Davidson sound as we waited at the first red light. What I was lacking in size and personal style my bike made up for. More than made up for, as we would discover as the trip progressed.

Except for one fuel station we rode non-stop to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, arriving almost two hours before check-in time at the Whip-Poor-Will cabin we’d reserved.

During lunch at the local Subway sandwich shop, we had a moment of panic when a large dually pickup pulled into the space next to our bikes and came within inches of hitting Mike’s Yamaha. The driver managed to back out, straighten up, and pull back in leaving a more reasonable gap. He entered the restaurant and gave us a somewhat sheepish and apologetic glance when he saw the helmets on our table. We spent the rest of the meal talking about our kids and speculating about whether the weather would hold for our entire trip.

Upon exiting the sandwich shop we still had an hour to burn before check-in time. We considered killing a little time in the local gambling hall, but since we both had Kimber .45s and couldn’t tote them in a casino we discarded the idea rapidly. Besides which, we were both on tight budgets.

We figured we’d head on over to the cabin and see if we could check in early. A half mile from the sandwich shop it became apparent that the weather wasn’t going to cooperate. With a black wall cloud looming ahead we pulled into the bay of a car wash and waited it out. The storm hit and passed quickly, and in 45 minutes we were back on our way, arriving at our cabin just a few minutes past our three o’clock check-in time.

The lady at the desk looked askance at us at first, but within a few minutes our Texas good-ol’ boy attitudes and verbal expertise at sprinkling liberal amounts of “yes ma’am” and “thank you ma’am”s into our conversation had her satisfied that we weren’t the “Sons of Anarchy” come to take over Broken Bow like Good Fellas on Wheels.

She handed over a pair of keys and we rumbled off into the woods to find our tiny one-room cabin.

After unpacking our meager supplies we headed out to do some shopping at the local WalMart and a motorcycle shop in hopes of replacing the lens on one of Mike’s lights, having just discovered it had caught a rock somewhere along the way. I suspected it might have happened at one point between Tyler and Broken Bow when I decided to pass him for fun at warp speed. I remember the silver Yamaha quickly dwindling to a speck behind me right after I cruised by him with the throttle opened all the way on the Rocket III. I’d glanced at the speedometer at that point and saw that I was 5 mph below where the rev limiter was supposed to kick in: 140 mph. It takes longer to slow a Triumph Rocket III down from 135 to 60 than it takes to speed up from 60 to 135, I discovered.

Mike took out a microfibre cloth and busied himself with polishing the chrome on his ultra clean, sparkling Road Star.

When we finally broke away from the group, including the dealer who had walked out just in time to hear me telling one of his patrons, “You’d be surprised, this big Triumph actually costs less than a lot of the bikes in this shop…” Mike was ready to find some dinner. He wasn’t showing any signs of envy, but something just made me think maybe he was getting tired of me saying “it’s the largest proprietary motorcycle engine on the planet” every time someone asked me what size it was. We made a run through Beaver’s Bend State park for a few photos of us leaning our bikes a bit at extra-legal velocity in a 25mph zone just across the dam, ostensibly so I’d have some cool pictures for the blog article I planned to write about our trip.

A few minutes later we stopped at a convenience store to top off our tanks. After paying for a few supplies inside we walked out to find two more locals hovering around the bikes. One of the overall clad men said, “Man, I didn’t even know Triumph was still in bidnis. They still made here in the states?”

As I began to explain that they’ve always been made in Great Britain, and the discussion turned into a comparison of the R3 and a Valkyrie that the local man purported to have at home, Mike dug out the microfibre cloth and began to polish the already self-luminating chrome on the gleaming Yamaha Road Star once again. As the fellow I was talking to finally ran out of steam and turned to walk away, he looked back over his shoulder at Mike and said, “Of course, that ‘un there ain’t no slouch, either.” Mike chuckled and said “Thanks,” but I’m sure inside he was less than satisfied with the leftover compliment.

We went to dinner, a nice mom-and-pop restaurant. Over steaks that might have been choice or select grade we talked more about our jobs and families, then moved into stories about motorcycle trips.

Mine were considerably more ancient, but Mike had fresher fare, including the last run he’d made on the Talimena drive with our older brother, Steve. Mike had over-shot a curve on that one and tagged a guardrail, coming within inches of going home on his shield. We chuckled about how Steve had only an hour before warned Mike not to try to keep up with him. Steve didn’t ride a cruiser, instead opting for a more affordable (some people spend their new bike funds on their kids’ college tuition – screwed up priorities, ya know?) used Suzuki GS1000 which he rode like a super-bike with the concentration of a pit bull staring at a steak on the other side of a chain link fence. Mike had tried to keep up. I thought it was an intriguing story, and I promised Mike I wouldn’t push my limits. He informed me that multiple people (including Steve) had requested he make sure I stay behind him on this trip.

They don’t have membership cards yet, but Robin & Co. have already established the “Keep Tim Frazier Alive” association with her as president. I think Steve and Mike are high-ranking officers in the organization as well, judging by the lectures they give me about how I should never ride the way I used to in my younger days.

The stories of my previous six motorcycle crashes in those years and miraculous survivals in spite of stupidity are the stuff of legend and even used by anti-Darwinians in debates across the country.

We both expressed appropriate grief that Steve couldn’t be there. Just a few weeks prior he had been the victim of a hapless Honda Civic driver who plowed into him at the entrance to the O’reily’s auto parts store he worked at part time in Greenville. His bike was a total loss and he was still mending a cracked pelvic bone.

Seems it’s always the best high speed riders who get tagged at 3mph in parking lots by blue-haired ladies.

We exited the restaurant and I’m pretty sure I saw Mike roll his eyes as we spotted a man and woman admiring the Triumph.

It was a short conversation, because by now even I was tired of hearing myself explain that it was a piece of overkill engineering from Great Britain and had not been built by NASA with secret Area 51 technology. I politely cut the conversation short and we headed off to the cabin for some sleep before the mildly challenging Talimena Scenic Drive in the morning.

The following morning I awoke in eager anticipation of riding the famous Talimena Scenic Drive. I thought we’d be hitting the twisties immediately after breakfast, but I should have known better. Mike is one of those strange people who believes that chrome should always sparkle, paint should always be maintained at a mirror polish and waxed sheen, and there is no excuse for driving past a car wash. We stopped to ensure his bike had not a single speck of dust upon it prior to the day’s ride, which would obviously include photos.

As Mike was drying off the Road Star a passerby approached. He made small talk with me and mentioned,

“I’ve always wanted a big V-twin Yamaha like your buddy has over there. That bike of yours is nice and all, but to me a real motorcycle looks and sounds like that silver one.”

When Mike fired his machine up the stranger said, “Yup, now that’s what a motorcycle is supposed to sound like.”

He moved off and Mike pulled up beside me and asked, “What did that guy want? Was he begging for change or something?”

“Nope,” I replied, “He was just admiring my Triumph, like everybody else.”

“Oh,” Mike said, and we headed for the entrance to the Talimena Drive.

At the first scenic turnout Mike pulled in. I eased up beside him and cut the engine off. “Okay,” he said, “From here on out it gets a little dangerous. When the signs say 20 mile per hour curve, they MEAN 20 mile per hour curve. Don’t go tagging the guardrail like I did last time.”

“No problem,” I lied, “I’ve grown up since the old days. I won’t be hot-dogging it.”

With that, Mike revived the engine on his bike and took off with me trailing. We went round the first several curves without incident, but I was itching to push it just a little. I stayed well behind Mike until he was sufficiently taken in by my show of false sanity. He finally slowed down and waved, offering for me to take the lead if I wanted.

Leaping at the opportunity, I zoomed past and pushed into the next 30mph curve at about 50. Easily navigating that, I took the next a bit faster. Mike began to lag a little further behind as I up’d the ante on each subsequent curve and switchback.

Then came a big s-curve sign with 15 mph posted below it. I hit it at 40, the floorboard scraped a little and I felt pride in knowing the lean limits on my bike. As I leaned the bike to the opposite side for the next section of the s-curve I caught a glimpse of Mike rounding the bend in my rear view mirrors. He had apparently sensed something good was about to happen and wanted a closer look.

The floorboard on the opposite side scraped gently along the pavement and then I was leaning hard back to the right again for the final section of curve. That’s when a big drift of brownish orange pine needles lying across the road caught my eye.

With sparks already flying from the floorboard I made the rookie mistake of closing the throttle. The bike stood up out of its lean and started to head straight for the guardrail. Time slowed to a crawl as I forced my brain to function again and against my insticts rolled the throttle back on. The bike leaned hard, traversed over the edge of the pine needle drift, and powered out of the curve without going into a catastrophic slide.

Trembling, I eased the throttle down to sane limits and waved Mike back into the lead. He pulled in at the next scenic turn out.

Before he could say “I told you so” I admitted my stupidity and promised I wouldn’t be pushing my limits the rest of the trip…or ever.

Mike just looked at me and said, “You know, you were down to your last 3 inches of pavement back there?”

I got off the bike to verify my undergarments were still dry then took a few pictures. It was at least gratifying to get a shot of my back tire, which would be undeniable proof that there were no “chicken strips” left on it. For those not familiar with Squidly motorcycle jargon, “Chicken strips” are the section of rubber on either side of the back tire that have never touched the road. Some motorcyclists consider the width of “chickenstrips” to be an indicator of the rider’s bravery, skill, and/or cowardice. The lack of any “chicken strip” at all on mine was proof of my stupidity level.

At least I got it over with early, and without injury to myself or the bike. A good scare on a motorcycle tends to shock you back into maturity and sanity for quite a while.

When we finished our intermission, we continued at a reasonable challenging yet sane pace. The portion of the Ouachita National Forest that the Talimena Scenic Drive traverses is beautiful. No trucks allowed, it was sparsely populated with a few other motorcycles, passenger cars, and pickup trucks. The temperature was perfect, the sun was shining, and rolling through the hills and curves was the closet thing to flying there is without being in an aircraft.

I especially enjoyed it when Mike and I were riding close enough together that I could hear the rumble of the V-twin. The quiet growl of the Triumph Rocket 3 with the sewing machine whir undertone just isn’t as harmonically satisfying as the thunder of a V-twin, and the custom pipes along with the tuning Mike has implemented on his bike are enviable.

We stopped at the Queen Wilhelmina lodge to look out on Arkansas and Oklahoma from the saddles of our iron horses…two men elevated to god like status with the help of modern engineering.