We is kind. We is beautiful. We is smart. For the Road Trip on Saturday, May 20th, we were especially smart. You see, back in April at the Burrton ride, Kathryn approached me and said, “You know there can be up to a five hour wait for lunch at the Pioneer Women Mercantile, right?” I replied, “Are you flipping kidding me?” We can’t wait five hours to eat lunch!” “Precisely.” Kathryn responded. “I would suggest you ride to Ponca City and eat there and then ride to Pawhuska and avoid that whole line around the building thing.” Following Kathryn’s advice, that’s exactly what we did.
Nellie, Maureen and I selected The Ground Round for our eatin’ spot and once again, we proved how smart we is. First of all, as Dawn led us all into the restaurant parking lot, our Oklahoma Kitty, Sherri aka Hard Core Kitty, was just getting off her bike. That, my dear Feline Friends, is what you call perfect timing. Secondly, this parking lot was my absolute very favorite kind – wide open with not. one. single. car in it. Ain’t no five hour wait in this joint, no sirree! In lickety split time, we were all seated in a long stretch of tables and shedding layers and eyeballing menus. While we waited for our food orders to arrive, I passed out the AWESOME member patches. We all chit chatted through our meals and Dawn expressed her displeasure with those who don’t pay their taxes and then get to settle a $50,000 debt with the IRS for like 80 bucks. How in the world did that come up in conversation, you ask? Well, Sherri is a tax attorney; you can probably figure it out from there. “How is that fair??” Right, Dawn? And then it was time for the most important part of the lunch – the 50/50 drawing! There was a total of $45.00 in the flamed bag so that meant someone (not me) was going home with $23.00! We gave our friendly and very helpful waitress the honors of drawing the ticket and ……. Sherri was the winner! Ironically, Sherri had just thrown all kinds of money at me to pay for a shirt, Kitty Kap, patches and a spot pin. Now, I was throwing it right back to her. I’m now thinking maybe we might ought to change her nickname to Shrewd Sherri!
After our friendly and helpful waitress took a group picture and commented (or was it more like me saying?) how bad ass we were, we all filed outside and biked up for the long 44-mile journey to Pawhuska with Dawn in the lead. Next stop – shopping!!
It didn’t take a Lewis and Clark expedition to figure out where the Pioneer Woman Mercantile was in Pawhuska. Just look for a line of people wrapped around a building. We is SO smart for avoiding all that standing and waiting by eating a tasty and quick meal in Ponca City! Thank you Kathryn! We masterfully pulled nine bikes into like three parking stalls and bypassed all those suckers (uh, I mean poor souls) to walk right into the Mercantile. We all split up and agreed to meet back at the front door in one hour.
I was committed to finding a pig for Suz and recruited all Kitties to cover every inch of the place and report back. Their marching orders – FIND ME A PIG!! Here’s what we came up with – one small plain white piggy bank, which didn’t even have the Mercantile logo on it; small pink pig mugs; and little bowls with pigs on them. What the heck?? Wouldn’t you think at a place called “Mercantile” there would be pigs? There were plenty of cows, horses, chickens and every other barnyard animal, but no PIGS! What do these people have against pork?? Well, in the end, I opted for the bowls but it was truly a very disappointing experience. (Sad emoji face.) After I recovered from the pig debacle, I wandered around the store and covertly took pictures of the Kitties shopping and caught Shelley in both her Ladylike and Sexylike poses. We commandeered a young man to take our group picture in front of the store with our bags of goodies and then walked to the bikes to pack them all up and get ready for the trip home.
Dawn found a beautiful little road to begin our trip home which reminded me of Thunder Road out of Augusta with lots of turns and some hills. Everything was a brilliant green what with all the cool and wet weather we’ve been having and it was a very relaxing and serene ride. That is until the pothole from hell that several of the Kitties fell into. I was right behind Christine when all of a sudden, she bounced like she was on a trampoline! I swear I thought she was going to come clear off her bike! Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something fly off her bike and as I was zooming past at about 70 miles per hour, I thought, “Huh, that looked like a key on a key ring.” But knowing there’s no way a key was going to come out of an ignition like that, I didn’t give it too much thought. Until…..we stopped in Winfield for gas. Christine pulled in line behind some other Kitties and switched off her bike to wait her turn. When she went to turn it back on, all she got was a whole lot of nothing. You see, these newfangled bikes have a Fob that has to be near the bike in order for it to start. Turns out that Fob was nowhere near the bike and somewhere near that pothole from hell. Guess my quick assessment of a key on a key ring flying by me was spot on. Linda came to the rescue and said, “I know how to start it. All you have to have is your code.” “Code? I don’t know my code,” replied Christine. “Here, let me get my phone and call my husband, Dorrin, to give it to me. Oh wait, my phone is in my saddle bags and I can’t open my saddle bags without the key.” We all started throwing phones at her and she got hold of Dorrin. Dorrin asked silly questions like how did your Fob fly out of your pocket and if it wasn’t in your pocket, how did your Fob fly out of your windshield pouch? Christine decided this wasn’t the time to get into the fact that her key wasn’t securely tucked away in her pocket or windshield pouch, but rather laying in a cubby hole on her dash. Some things are better left unsaid, right Christine? Dorrin provided the code and after quite a few minutes of Linda and Christine hovering over her bike, we finally heard it fire up! In unison, we all said, DO NOT SHUT THAT OFF UNTIL YOU’RE IN YOUR GARAGE! While we were patiently waiting for Christine and Linda to break into her ignition system, a grumpy Winfieldite told us we needed to get our bikes out away from the gas pumps, despite the fact that there were many other pumps to choose from. Our Enforcer Maureen, said “Since you asked us so meanly, we’re going to move them but we ain’t gonna be quick about it!” This guy must not have realized what a rough and tumble biker gang we are – he’s lucky we didn’t get our lipsticks out and defame his car!
Now fast forward to the next day and Dorrin is determined to find that key Fob so he packed up his biker gang member Christine and headed off to retrace our steps of the day before. Christine and I exchanged several texts that Sunday morning trying to determine where I saw it fly by me and I made a comment something along the lines of a needle in a haystack. What I was silently thinking was, “There’s a snowball’s chance in Hell she’s going to find that.” Well, Hell froze over on Sunday, May 21st, when I got a text from Christine saying “We found it!!” Feeling quite confident she was fibbing to me, I demanded pictures to prove it. And then she sent pictures! I’ll be damned if they didn’t find that key Fob, along with about a dozen sticks of Trident gum that also flew off her bike, laying alongside the road. The Fob is a little worse for wear and it’s anybody’s guess as to whether it’ll actually ever work again, but the Eagle Eye Allsmans proved me wrong. If you’re ever actually looking for a needle in a haystack, might I suggest you contact Christine and Dorrin? I just have one question….how is that they could find a Fob in the middle of nowhere and I couldn’t find one darn pig in a country store?? To quote Dawn, how is that fair?!
And so it goes for the second Road Trip of the 2017 season. Thank you, Dawn, for leading us to and fro without one turnaround and thank you Nellie and Maureen for planning a fun day of riding, eating and shopping. Those on board for the “P” is for Ponca City, Pawhuska and Pig Road Trip were Janice, Sherri, Melaina, Maureen, Nellie, Linda, Dawn, Shelley and Eagle Eye Christine.
Janice, KKMC Founder