I managed to swing a 3-day weekend this week which at my job means I worked late on Thursday, brought work home, fielded innumerable blackberry message on Friday and participated in a conference call from my hotel room but I didn’t go into the office which means it was an official ETO day for me!
We headed for Branson mid-morning to attend the Missouri District Rally for GWRRA (Goldwing Road Riders Association) – we hadn’t even gotten as far as a Diet Coke stop when we learned some friends had been involved in a motorcycle accident enroute to the rally so we changed our destination to Skaggs Hospital to check on their condition. Got to the Skaggs ER and learned they had been transferred to Springfield so we knew they had more than scraped knees! Turns out she had a ruptured spleen which was removed during emergency surgery and he has a broken collarbone but overall they are doing well and word is that their GoldWing is actually rideable! They were certainly fortunate to have such a good outcome.
The rally was held at the Welk Resort and we got to see lots of friends from former rallies as well as members of our own chapter. It’s interesting that there were 4 members of my high school graduating class there – out of a class of 126 people I think that’s rather cool. 2 guys and 2 gals – and I daresay that the other female (Donna) and I could probably have had notations under our senior photos that said “least likely to be seen on the back of a motorcycle in 40+ years” – which just goes to show, you never know! I did poll my other 3 classmates and they too were clueless as to their homeroom teachers their senior year (see blog entry of May 2nd) so it was refreshing to know I’m not the only one with a dim memory of that experience.
We headed home today about mid-day – got unpacked and I took Mulligan on his rounds. Then after a stop at the hospital to check on our friends, we drove back to Branson to meet friends for dinner – they are a couple whom we fixed up several weeks ago and we’ve been trying to get together for dinner. Had a great meal at the Plaza View Restaurant on the 9th floor of the Grand Plaza Hotel. They had asked us to join them for a show but we opted to skip the Baldknobbers and were in the process of driving through one of the outlet malls when we connected via cellphone with some fellow motorcyclists who were still in Branson and were at the Segway Park. Naturally we had to check it out!
I’ve seen the Segways but have never tried one so of course we had to take a spin. We started on flat surface and once I got the hang of the whole thing – backward, forward, stop, right turn, left turn – it was time to try the track. That’s when panic set in because the first obstacle was to maneuver down a hill to the track! Reminded me of my experience on snow skis on the bunny slope – my mind could not conceive that I was going to get down this very short, not-too-steep hill without killing myself (yes, I was wearing a helmet – they are required to rent a Segway!). Fortunately I was not the first wuss of the day and one of the able assistants walked in front of me and guided me down and then I was off – the track resembled a go-cart track and according to info found on the Internet this track is the world’s first Segway track! We had a blast for 20 minutes – especially after I figured out I could actually relax on it and my prospects of crashing were minimal. Add that to my list – a new adventure I didn’t even realize I wanted! We shall return for more!
