Advertisement
Published: November 9th 2009
11-07-09
A good night sleep was traded for Christmas money. I was called into work off duty the night before the RTE that I was hosting in my hometown. Friday was scheduled so I could be a good host on Saturday, but as fate would have it my schedule changed. On Friday I ended up working at my landscape business from 10:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. having just enough time to get home and jump into the shower to do police work from 7:00 p.m. until 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning. I was in bed by 7:30 in the morning and three hours later I was on the Shadow headed to Bunky’s Market. I must say I was dog tired.
Before I go any further with my latest BLOG adventure I must take a second to answer a question that several of my readers have emailed me. Believe it or not there are a number of people out there that still do not know what an RTE is, RTE stands for “Ride To Eat”. You would be surprised how far people will ride for some good cooking and fellowship with other motorcycle enthusiast.
Tire kicking was scheduled to start
at 11:00 a.m. and I was feeling good because I was going to be fifteen minutes early. But as I pulled into the dirt parking lot, I noticed that I was the forth bike to make it to MY RTE. Within thirty minutes there were twenty-three motorcycles parked on the west side of Bunky’s and some serious tire kicking was under way. I was really surprised by the large turnout although it was a beautiful day for a ride. As I looked around the parking lot I saw that riders had come from as far as Tennessee, Maryland, North Carolina and Kentucky. Most of the riders were from South Carolina but I was excited to see how far some had ridden for some good southern cooking.
From talking to most of the my new friends I found out that the vast majority of the riders were from the
Motorcycle Tourer’s Forum and the rest were LD riders that I had meet from the
Iron Butt Association. Both groups are full of friendly and helpful riders. I have linked to both in this BLOG and encourage you to visit their sites and get involved. There is a place for all types of riders at
MTF and for those long distance riders the IBA is a must. I was a little disappointed to see that there were no riders from the
Shadow Owners Forum.
Lucky for us the helpful staff, Larry and friends, had reserved the back section of the restaurant for us and we filled it up. The food was great! I even took the day off from my diet (by the way I have lost 15 pounds) and ordered a double cheese burger, raw fries, sweet tea and for desert some homemade banana pudding. I am not sure what all the others ate but I can tell you that the entire tray of home baked cakes was consumed in its entirety. Everyone left smiling and rubbing their tummies. Most everyone I talked to was intrigued by Bunky’s. It is a hardware store, meat market, grocery store, tack shop, feed shop and gas station all rolled into one. A regular red neck Wal-Mart!
About 1:45 p.m. everybody started suiting up for their rides home. I was glad to see that everyone was wearing ATGATT (All The Gear All The Time)! I had planned on taking a group of the riders over to the Congaree National
Forest. But I was tired and was not up to the 60 mile round trip ride or the 2 ½ mile walk around the park. Everyone seemed to understand. I offered to take anyone that wanted to go back to my farm and introduce them to my fainting goats and our horse named Becky. My family and I live on a five acre hobby farm named
Branch Creek Farms. It is a nice little place located on an 18 acre pond just outside of town.
I had about 10 riders follow me home and we spent a good hour and half chasing the goats and talking. I was able to get two goats to faint and everyone one was impressed. I even fainted while I was out in the fields chasing my buck named Teddy. Ok, I did not faint but I did trip in a hole and bust my A$$ one good time. Everyone laughed; I was no worse for the wear. It seemed that the farm was a hit and the kids (human kind not the baby goats) enjoyed meeting my friends.
By 3:30 everyone had left, the Shadow was parked in the hay barn and I was
fast asleep, dreaming of rides to come.
I want to thank everyone for coming to Eastover. I think while they were here we doubled the population. I sure hope everyone is up to joining me again next year. I promise a ride to the Congaree National Forest next time.
Total miles ridden = 11
Advertisement
Tot: 0.315s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 19; qc: 129; dbt: 0.1309s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
Cindy Dietz
non-member comment
Congrats!
Congrats on a successful RTE! Looked like it was a good one. Do you have the GPS coordinates of Bunkys?