On Saturday, 9-10-11, I went to go trade in my Suzuki S-50 for a 2010 Triumph Bonneville.
The ride up started at 5am and was cold even with my fullface helmet and mesh jacket and gloves on. Until I got to Houston, then it was like driving through a warm air bubble so I thought, okay, I'll be okay, then I left the Houston area and was freezing again, so cold that I was shivering on the bike, my hands were fine with the gloves so that was a blessing. I finally got to College Station area and pulled off at a Whataburger for breakfast where I actually ordered coffee, I hate coffee, but I was so cold! After I ate, I walked over to the Wal-greens right beside the Whataburger and saw that they had Texas A&M t-shirts for sale, had to buy something to put on over my t-shirt just to do anything to help layer my clothing up a bit, and for $5 why not. that's pretty much the only thing that happened on the way up.
After an half hour or so more my back started to ache, then my neck really started to hurt, at the next gas stop I got some motrin IB and that helped my neck a lot, back still kinda ached but not terrible.
Rode into Ft. Worth, found the Eurosport Cycle place really easy, and by then I'd warmed up so I felt pretty good. Went in, did the trade got the new Bonneville and left, everything was so simple. There was a guy getting his Scrambler serviced and we talked a bit, he was really chatting the place up good, so if you are in the Ft. Worth Area, this is apparently the shop to deal with.
They had every model of Triumph and Ducati, they had 2 Bimotas, very pretty bikes, they didn't have any Moto Guzi's in there showroom, but had a used one for sale outside.
anyway, so I picked up my Bonneville and transferred all my stuff from my saddle bags to my back pack and started the ride home.
rode about 10 miles stopped and ate lunch. then rode another 10 miles or so and stopped and got gas, and at the gas station an older gentleman walked over and started talking about triumph's, and showed me an old picture of his dad with a scrambler looking triumph (I was told this would happen, old guys talking about their old triumphs and their experiences with it) it was cool, I love history so this is all good to me.
Then rode another idk, 20-30 miles and pulled over into a rest stop area where I took this picture.

okay, so it's a thistle or something kinda like that, Thistles are my favorite kind of flower, and purple was my mom's favorite color and yellow is my favorite color. So that struck me as something cool then.
The next picture I took was of the bike:

better photo of the flower:

after that stop, away I went again, trying to be careful with breaking in my new bike but also trying not to get run over, used a lot of feeder roads, as much as I could. found out after about 50 miles that the stock seat is not meant for such long rides.
other side of the bike:
Also, my sense of humor, waco wrecking, I was worried the whole time that I'd be wrecking my new bike by riding it 300+miles in one day. on freeways, well not really freeways but no one was going less than 70mph on them but I did vary my speed a lot and stopped about 10-15 times (man that seat was hard!)

FIRE! well, at one time there was one here. with all the wildfires in Texas I took this route to go around them, it was a good choice, there were a bunch of spots like this on the route, one was even in the median between the lanes.
Also, the train tracks link to my father who has a good set of model train stuff and was always one of his never finished projects. . .

on getting the picture of the burnt patch I had to walk through some pretty tall dried out weeds and grass hoppers were jumping all around, I used to catch grasshoppers a lot as a kid in our back yard and all over.

stopped in Calvert, Texas for these pics:
My best friend has a current project of a '53 chevy truck, no where near this though

and
My brother in law is a huge bicyclist fan so had to take a photo of:

So in 300 miles theres a connection.