Enough To Make a Mother's Stomach Churn...

Yep...I am the one who introduced Joy to the fun of riding and owning a motorcycle..

..but she took it to a different level. Joy races her bike..Yikes!

..and this last weekend - she went down at the track for the first time....DOUBLE YIKES!Thankfully, she is totally fine. She went down in the grass instead of the pavement...but (GULP) this picture made my stomach flip over a few times!

Joy's New Bike!

After watching us have so much fun with our bikes..
..our youngest daughter Joy, decided she wanted to give this a try too. She enrolled in the class, learned how to ride and last weekend, purchased this Suzuki GXR. It looks a lot like my bike, but is a bit smaller.Here she is getting a feel for her bike on our farm. We will be hitting the pavement this weekend...if it does not rain!

...As for my Bike...

My bike had to be towed to the nearest dealership, which in this case was all the way back to Katy TX. There are no BMW motorcycle dealerships in the Valley, which surprised me. We slipped the tow truck driver an extra $100.00 to take Don's bike too so he did not have to drive back alone. Since I work for an airline, we were able to get to Brownsville, hop on a plane and come home.

I was very disappointed in BMW. They did not want to cover the entire cost of the tow, even though my bike was so new. I thought that under the circumstances, they should have. Thankfully, our motorcycle insurance did cover it 100%. The repairs were covered at no cost to me and today after work, I am going to pick it up so we can ride this weekend.....

...and by the way - did I mention that our youngest daughter Joy just bought her very own bike? A Suzuki GXR!!! She is keeping it at our farm until she gets more experience. I am so excited to ride together as a family soon! Will post a picture as soon as she sends me one.

S. Padre Island - Overview - Part 5

Type of Destination: Beech

Family Friendly - Yes - 100% even if you have really young children.

Hotels: There are many hotels, but none that are top of the line luxury. The nicest hotels were the newer ones, that have not yet been abused by Spring Break College students. We stayed at the La Quinta, which is not normally one of my favorite chains, but this one was an exception. Our room, a suite with a special jacuzzi tub cost $159.00 per night. This particular room can cost as much as $209 per night though...so hotel costs were fairly normal.

Food: We found a good variety of food and ate basic American, Italian and Seafood cuisine. Every meal was delicious and as a nice surprise, discounting alcohol, we averaged about $10.00 per meal each, which we found to be very economical.

Entertainment: There was so much to do here, we could not possibly do everything we wanted to do. Included activities that we missed were, para sailing, renting jet skis, fishing charters, dolphin watching cruises, wind surfing, bunji jumping, and since it is so close to the border, going over to Matamoris, Mexico.

Shopping: There are tons of souvenir shops selling the same type of t-shirts and gag gifts. A few stores were nicer, selling more hand crafted items, like the store selling the hand made wooden pelicans. We bought a wooden sea turtle and 2 very unique 16 legged starfish to hang in our cabana. I also purchased 2 beautiful summer halter dresses that were great bargains @ $32 and $40. We also purchased a towel cover up for our Granddaughter that I could not resist.

Transportation: Excellent!!! Not only was The Wave available, which you can read about in part 2, but Taxi's were a common sight. You could rent Dune Buggies if you so desired and if you chose to walk, there were sidewalks on both sides of the road in most areas. As a bonus, we rode on a nice bus from S.Padre to the Brownsville Airport for $2.00 per person. Okay - so that is about the cost of 1/2 a gallon of gas to go about 30 miles!

Would I go back: In a New York minute..and yes, even though my bike died on me, I would not hesitate to go back with it as my transportation...after all, that was a big part of the adventure!

S. Padre - Catamaran Dinner Cruise ~ Part 4

One of our favorite experiences on this trip was a Catamaran Dinner Cruise. It was well worth the $48.00 per person cost to ride on this beautiful boat!

For 2 hours we trolled up and down the coast line enjoying the beautiful sunset on one side, and the luxury homes on the other. Included with the dinner was all of our non-alcoholic drinks, shrimp-ka-bobs, chicken and beef fajitas followed by a huge assortment of fresh fruit for dessert. All cooked on the grill right on the boat!

If all this was not enough, we even had live entertainment...and this guy was awesome! - Trust me - I am picky too.

Meet Becky, Michelle and Janie...best friend for years, they were staying on the top floor of a condo and excited to get away from their guys for this cruise...

..until they saw what their guys were up to! Yes - this is a sign for them that reads, "Old Tits Rule!" On the way out everyone got a great laugh and the captain even honked the horn to get lots of attention. On the way back, the girls got together and "upped the annie" by semi flashing their husbands (lifting their shirts - but still wearing bras!)

Good food, fun people, beautiful views and a romantic atmosphere led to the best evening of the trip...

..and even now, I long to see the amazing sunsets.

S. Padre Island - The Turtles ~ Part 3

This is the Turtle Rescue Center in South Padre.

It was the dream of Ila Loetscher to get every sea turtle off of the endangered species list and WOW - what a legacy this one woman left behind!

This was first on our list of things to see in Padre!

Inside there were huge tanks...

..each holding a turtle who is in rehabilitation...

..usually from an injury resulting in a damaged leg or shell.

This is the one permanent turtle resident. Three times they tried to release him and 3 times he washed back up on shore. Yep - after 15 years of living there, he has still not figured out that he cannot eat the lettuce through the glass!

We were so blessed to be able to witness the release of the baby turtles Thursday morning. Here are the volunteers coming to rope off an area of the beech.

Here come the workers with the newly hatched turtles. Yes - they are inside those coolers.

Look how tiny they are..

.. They hatched the night before and everyone of them survived..

..all 160 of them!

They are ready to get out of there.

The workers carefully place the babies on the beech facing the surf.

At first they are quiet and don't move much..

..but once they relax..

..and start to hear the waves..

their natural instinct kicks in and they take off.This for me was one of those once in a lifetime experiences. Sadly only 1 out of 300 turtles released will make it to breeding age. But, on the up side, one of the workers told us that if the numbers continue to climb as they are the first of several types of endangered Sea Turtles will be off of the endangered list by 2118. It is slow progress...but none the less, it is progress!

S. Padre Island - The Wave ~ Part 2

Here comes The Wave!

The Wave saved us. It is the free mode of transportation for the residents and visitors of South Padre Island. Since my bike was now out of commission, this bus service gave us access to the entire island and even to the other side of the bridge. Did I mention it was totally free? Here I am flagging down the bus.

This is one of the friendly drivers. He told us about the best restaurants and places to see.

Sometimes we arrived at the bus stop only to see this.. :0( In fact, one evening we ended up walking back to the hotel from our night out because we missed every bus! I felt so guilty when I dashed into a store to use the bathroom, only to come out seeing this exact sight....the bus was leaving and we were not on it! Uggghhh. My feet hurt that night!

Here are a few of the places we visited.

These are locally made pelicans carved with a chain saw. I really wanted one of these, but I did not have the room to take it back with us..either on bike or plane!

This is a nature center under construction. In January a huge assortment of birds come to the island and it is a bird watchers paradise here.

This is a real plane hanging from the ceiling of a fun shop.

If you go to Padre, you just have to go into this store. Who would not want to walk in and out of a sharks mouth?

When the day is over, again the Wave delivers you back to your hotel. Here we are sitting on the balcony...

...with our feet up...(please note - these are NOT my feet!)...

watching the sun set....to be continued...

S. Padre Island - The Road Trip ~ Part 1

Here's the plan:
Ride our motorcycles from our farm to South Padre Island. Stay for 3 nights and 4 days and then ride back home...simple huh?...NOT! If we were to ride straight through, and we had no intention of doing this, it would take 7 hours.

Here I am right before I geared up to leave. I wanted to leave at 4AM and Don wanted to leave at 10...so we compromised and aimed for 6. We actually left the driveway at 6:30AM.

This was our first long motorcycle trip, so we thought we would start some fun rituals...like giving each other temporary tattoos! Here is my 'bracelet'!

This is Don's arm star...

...and his long horn that I put on the back of his hand.

The first leg of our journey took us to Bellville after riding through Hempstead. This was an easy ride, but we did have to stop to find an unmarked road that headed towards Cat Springs..(which was a very beautiful hilly place with lots of pretty farms!) Next we rode on I-10 all the way to Schulenburg. Here we stopped for gas and got our first scare. My bike did not want to restart! We went into a 60's style family owned restaurant and ate a nice breakfast, deciding that if my bike would not start, we would have to go to plan B. You always have to have a plan B when you use your bike as vacation transportation!

Out we came and I jumped onto my bike, whispering a prayer...and YEAH!! it did start. All my gauges were showing normal, so on we went. We rode for 2 hours straight without a break. I did not want to stop unless we absolutely had to..just in case. As we rode, I thought that maybe my bike was not starting up right away because it needed to cool off. We kept this in mind when we had to stop for gas the next time. Again, after fueling up, my bike refused to start. I could not leave it running as we gassed up either, because I had to use the ignition key to open the gas tank. We rolled the bike out of the way and took a break at the local Dairy Queen. Yep! My 'diet' went right out the window there...and through out our entire vacation!

Thirty minutes later, the bike was cool and it started right up. It was getting hot outside(100+)...and I mean REALLY HOT! So hot...that I am sure the entrance to hell is somewhere in between the arrows I have marked out below! We actually saw a sign that said; "No Gas For 65 Miles!" YIKERS!!!



TEN hours later..yes, I said 10, we approached the entrance to heaven...well in this case it was the La Quinta Hotel. This is what it looked like from the street.

I reserved a suite and we were not disappointed either. Here you can see the king size bed and the sitting room. There was a small back porch from the back door.

Here is the super huge Jacuzzi tub. There was also a separate shower.

As you walked down the main hallway, passed through double glass doors, you came to the pool and cabana area. To the left was a pool house where you could buy drinks and snacks.

This is the beech which is right down the stairs from the pool area.

...and here is Don who is standing kind of funny because his butt kept falling asleep on our trip. Don't worry Honey, we will get you a gel seat before our next long trip!

...and here I am - just happy to finally be there.This concludes day 1 of our trip. On day 3, we got on our bikes to go to a special place on the beech..only to find out my bike had died - only this time it was for good!
...to be continued...