When I was riding through Arkansas last year, I felt somewhat helpless but hopeful. It was Will Rogers’ birthday, and I had run from the eight tornadoes on their way to Oklahoma the night before. The pain in my back was not a great help as I hurried back to Florida to vote.
Knowing I would have been in Austin, Texas when I was, I had requested a mail-in ballot be sent to me, but I used the wrong number as the address. That meant I had to be back from my motorcycle tour 3 days earlier than I’d anticipated. The pain was from a broken rib I gained by falling on a flight of stairs while staying with friends in Fort Worth.
I headed downstairs around midnight for something to drink and my bare feet slipped on the carpeted steps. I couldn’t move without pain the next morning, and it must have taken me a good half hour to get out of bed. But I alternated heat and ice packs for a few hours, and got back on the motorcycle toward Oklahoma.
While I was in Austin, the Will Rogers Museum had contacted me to invite me to ride my motorcycle in the Will Rogers Days parade on his birthday. It was something I certainly was not going to miss, regardless of how much pain I had to endure. Unfortunately, when I arrived the day before, I was informed that the parade was canceled due to the storms.
But I made it back in time to vote, and I edited all of my footage into a documentary. And I’ve also got a lot of cool footage of rides along the way. It seems I wasn’t that helpless after all.
