30 September Ride to
Bandera & Lunch at Duke & Chela's!
Chapter U
had a great opportunity to experience some special Hill Country
FUN
up in Bandera on Saturday, August 30. Bandera
on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend hosts the “Bandera Festival” and Duke
and Chela Thompson offered to have the Chapter over for a picnic after we
enjoyed the festival. Mike Mills put
it on the schedule, and we all started hoping for the temperature to not be too
hot, and for needed rain to wait until after got home!
Charlie
and Candy Brown volunteered to lead the ride, and we set off from YOSA at
8 am
after a rider’s briefing. Charlie decided we needed to practice our arm and
hand signals on a ride so he selected this ride to do so…five bikes and a
trike set off winding our way towards Bandera practicing arm and hand signals.
I wonder what the traffic around us thought…surely they could figure
out arm and hand signals for left and right turns but what about the booted feet
stuck out as bikes swerved around pieces of turf that were in our lane on 281?
We wound our
way through the Hill Country and managed to meet up with blue GoldWing riders,
Bert and Linda Navin. Fortunately we
managed to scoot through Boerne as the police were closing the main roads for
their Labor Day parade. Perhaps
we’ll visit there next year!
Charlie
had pre-ridden the route and we avoided all the main streets and traffic in
Bandera, pulling into a free and convenient public parking lot just a block off
the Main Street parade route and the public bathrooms.
Yes, this rider didn’t hear Charlie’s offer of a pit stop in Boerne
but I wasn’t the only one interested in heading towards the bathrooms…and
the fair set up around the Bandera courthouse.
Just arrived in
Bandera.
Nice seats by the court house!
Leaving some of the guys to hold some seats
on the wall to use to watch the parade, the rest of us wandered through the
craft fair. Oh, yes, a chance
this early to start on Christmas shopping.
I think I’ll have mine done before the beginning of October.
There was lots to see and I think a few people are driving back up on
Sunday to do shopping that won’t fit on a GoldWing!
Parade is
starting...
And here come the longhorns!
Regular longhorn so they
say!
That is a big longhorn!!
Lots of
cowboys!
And cowgirls!
Even the Buffalo Soldiers were
there!
Now those are longhorns!
The parade was truly
Texas
. I grew up in a commuter suburb
outside of
Texas
and we had parades but the parades
in
Texas
are both big
AND
long. Surely everyone reading
this knows this but did you know that the parade in Bandera starts with
longhorn cattle being herded down
Main Street
in commemoration of the years of long-distance cattle drives in the West?
The wranglers had their hands full keeping all the cattle in an
orderly manner (have to ask someone who was there as this is a
family-oriented article!). There
were beauty and rodeo queens, Red Hat ladies, real cowboys and indians,
people riding fire trucks, longhorns and pure breed horses.
There were Model T’s, GoldWings (
K2
from
Kerrville
) and a ’57 Chevy. There were
exchange students, public servants, and several Calamity Janes!
My favorite had to be the San Antonio Community Band…everyone was
over 40 and many well over 40! I
love living here as if you want to be part of something, obviously you can!
Lots of parking at Duke & Chela's!
By the end of the parade, we
were ready for
FOOD
so we headed over to our convenient parking lot and made our way with very
little delay out to Duke and Chela’s house.
They didn’t look too surprised we showed up 30 minutes early and before
Duke had cooked the hamburgers. We
all picked up some tea and found a spot under their lovely live oaks to carry on
our talking!
Before I knew it, Duke had
cooked those hamburgers and they had everything well organized down to
table-cloth covered tables under some great umbrellas on their new deck.
Hamburgers, fresh tomatoes, pickles and onions, condiments, chips,
beans…everyone quickly helped themselves and we settled down to lots of fun
conversation. I didn’t even have
to rearrange the tables!
The “piece de
resistance” was a big tub of Neapolitan ice cream.
Add some nuts, caramel and chocolate sauce and some sweets sent out by
Connie Jordan. Thanks Connie for
sending dessert even if you and Ken couldn’t make it!
Lots of great stuff on
the food
line!
Colorful umbrellas!
After finishing up MOST of
the food and dessert, we squeezed into their living room to watch a
DVD
clip of Duke’s retirement speech at the annual Methodist Conference.
I think we were all pleased to see that Duke wove his love for Chela and
motorcycling into his ministry “good-bye” and we sure are glad Duke and
Chela have chosen to continue riding with Chapter U despite moving full-time out
to Bandera. Our luck for sure!
Bert & Linda found their
spot!
The ice was great!
We eventually said our good-byes
and loaded up to head home. As we
headed down Duke and Chela’s little driveway and through their gate, we
counted our lucky stars that we had decided to come out and be part of such a
neat
Texas
tradition as a small-town Labor Day festival.
Special thanks to Duke and Chela for being our special restaurant with
great food, fast service and super ambience!
We were grateful for fairly traffic free roads, Charlie leading the ride,
and the heat not being too bad and the rain holding off.
As far as the arm and hand signals, we will have to keep working on them
a bit. We have the left turn, right
turn, and road debris hand and foot point down, but what is the arm and hand
signal for “Great ride and we had a lot of
FUN
?”
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