Turkey Day in the Ozarks

A 30 hour road rally last weekend got us out to the parents' place in SW Missouri, from here on known as "Ssura," for the Thanksgiving holiday. Man, it's a big country, and the Basin and Range is still my fav landscape, but the few bits of intact prarie we could see from the highway were beautiful! Flatlands yielded to the hills of the Ozarks, with all kinds of oak trees and cedar (?) replacing the grasses. Time catching up with the parents has been occupied by helping with a construction project on the house, "mowing" the fields...

Amanda was happy to drive the Ford tractor!

"does this tractor make my butt look big?"

as well as walking around in the property's stands of oaks, eating, playing pool, tending fires, eating, drinking, eating, and RIDING! I've gotten in 2 rides on the fixed bike, the bike of choice for this trip, shredding the state highways and dirt back roads all over the place. Yesterday, Ace motor paced me on Harley Davidson MT500, my parent's farm bike. We rode about 20 miles, maybe a 3rd of which was dirt and all of which was Hilly. The remainder was up or down on the asphault state roads... nowhere to hide on the fixed gear! Ace clocked me going over 40mph on a sustained downhill, wheeeew...

"did you hear a banjo?"

Today is the day, lots of cooking to do this morning, then the feast. With any luck, we'll get a kitchen pass to go start flagging trail in the trees behind the house. This place should support a fun cloverleaf trail network, kinda hilly, maybe some logstacles, slippery limestones too. If we can get it marked and start roughing it in, it'll be fun to see how much Mom and Dad accomplish before our next visit.

"All fine here, hope same there"