Touring Texas - The Flight Of The Vampire

Motorcycling is a fun bit of controlled madness. No other human activity allows us to experience life quite so viscerally. Of course if you're not quite human, the experience reaches a whole other level.

Some time ago, as I sipped my bedtime glass of absinthe, an irreligious idea crawled into my head. The nocturnal vision instructed me to create an unholy being made of iron and oil and a few leftover bits of my soul. I would huddle with the brilliant engineering minds at Victory Motorcycles to give weight and shape to the image. Then I would pilot the finished product-a long-haul steel steed dubbed the Vampire-into the depths of the American heartland. There seemed to be no better place to release this unhallowed creation than the giant state of Texas. Think big, build big, ride big.

The Victory Vampire was born out of a brainy short circuit and a collection of mad minds, so a maiden jaunt to the eerie corners of the Lone Star State seemed utterly appropriate. Since Texas could swallow up several states and still have room left for a few Caribbean islands, making miles was the mantra for this trip. The scoot was scheduled for some 1800 miles, from Houston to Sedona, Arizona, trailing the blue highways and staying off I-10's hot and nasty superslab. At least that was the plan . . .

It appears that of all 50 states the one that leads the nation in natural catastrophes is the Lone Star State, and I was riding smack into apocalypse season. Dawn came uneventfully that fateful day, or so I'm told-I slept through it. Rolling out of Houston around the crack of noon, I soon found myself on I-10 west, making a straight shot to San Antonio.

There's not much distinguishing I-10 on this featureless, steamy 200-mile stretch except maybe the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, a few clucks south of the highway some 70 miles west of Houston. San Antonio, on the other hand, is a town of 1.3 million, and it seemed the whole population was all smushed into the River Walk, that montage of boutiques, trinket shops and restaurants clustered around the San Antonio River in the downtown area. The walk is a story below street level, and it felt like most of the city's life had been sucked into this nether region, leaving almost empty streets above (except for an unusual number of homeless people).

Founded by Spanish missionaries (who else?) in 1718 and site of the famous battle against Mexico and its big meanie emperor Santa Ana in 1836, San Antonio has been a fun place ever since. There isn't much left to the Alamo-not that it was much to begin with. It was a mission, not a fort, and really (despite what Hollywood would have you believe) impossible to defend against a full-on army. But the likes of knife fighter Jim Bowie (who lay sick in bed for the entire battle), William Travis and Davy Crockett fought their way into history. They were an interesting bunch of guys. Travis abandoned his wife and family to seek fortune and power, surrendering to his own Napoleonic issues; Bowie was a real estate con artist; and Crockett was a failed statesman who rode west as a way of sticking it to The Man and his disloyal constituency. They were the hard-core bikers of their day and became martyrs for hopeless causes or, to put it another way, heroic struggles against impossible odds. Sort of like an old-school motorcycle gang.

I rolled the big chopper onto Route 90 West. Even with 12-inch-over forks and the stretched neck, the Vampire tracked beautifully. That was, after all, the mandate. Make it cool, make it handle, make it go like hell. Kent Weeks, chief demon at Lucky Devil Metal Works and impious architect of the Vampire, did a masterful job.

So there I was, chopping down 90, pointing the long forks of the Vampire to the border town of Del Rio. I had seen little of Texas before and was surprised at how pretty the countryside is in the south central part of the state. Rolling green hills, an unanticipated number of creeks and rivers, small towns and the occasional Old West-style building created an unexpected landscape. I was also surprised by how uncomfortable my seat was. The Victory catalog offered a saddle that looked similar to a stocker but was a little slicker and apparently a lot thinner. This was the seat I was perched on, and it was in serious violation of the Vampire's decree to roll cool and comfortable. It felt like I was sitting on a church pew.

I needed some kind of pad, but choices were scarce out here in the middle of nowhere, so I turned to my infallible sense of ingenuity. I figured a bicycle gel pad should comfort my nether region, so I taped the glute-shaped seat to my saddle and rode happily off. But that proved to be just a temporary respite, so I swapped the gel seat for a pillow (alas, they only had pink in my size). A little more tape, some careful adjustment for proper anatomical position, and the pillow turned out to work out pretty darn well.

Some 35 miles east of Del Rio I rolled into Brackettville, near something called the Alamo Village. The 1880s re-creation was the site of some 1950s Westerns. Being an aficionado of things old and cornball, I got excited about stepping into the Wild West for an hour or two. But I was uncertain if the place would be open since it was late in the day and operating hours were vague. My call was answered by an elderly-sounding woman with a thick Southern drawl.

"Are you open, ma'am?"

"Well, ah course we're open, son, can't ya hear me talkin' to ya?

"Yes, but when do you close?"

"I don't understand yur question, son. You ain't from around here, are youuu?"

Using the universal translation technique, I spoke slower and louder:

"ARE . . . YOU . . . STILL . . . OPEN?"

"You have a mighty strange way of talkin', so I'll speak real slow and loud so you can understand me, understand? WE . . . ARE . . . OPEN . . . YEAR . . . ROUND. Now I'm busy and you're bothering me; what else do yer want to know?"

"Nothing, ma'am. I'll be right there."

"No, no, no, that's what I been trying to tell yer, yer darn fool, you can't. We're closed."