Weekend outing went out of normal with friends – 01

Hello guys, today I’m here with a story called Weekend outing went out of normal with friends. Story comes in short 6 parts, I guarantee you will like it and no further ado, Let’s begin.

The six of us had been planning on this trip for nearly a month. Three couples, three motorcycles, and a secluded cabin on Lake Texoma.

Elias and Carter had inherited Carter’s family cottage on the lake and had invited the rest of us up to ‘break it in’. We’d been friends a long time, and had taken some weekend jaunts together to San Antonio and Vegas, but this was going to be different – three glorious days of just the six of us.

We were looking forward to getting some fishing in, and lots of sun-bathing, but not much else. Just a long relaxing weekend, and a great way to ring in the summer. Temperatures were supposed to be in the low 90’s that weekend. Warmer than usual, and very welcome.

Everyone met at our house, distributing our gear for the trip. Elias had a nice deuce softail; I had my ‘baby’, the 100th anniversary Fatboy with about $6K of additional work. They were both gorgeous bikes, getting a lot of attention, but somewhat limited in the ‘luggage’ capacity. Elias had just picked up a great looking Biker’s Friend leather saddlebag that strapped onto the back of the passenger sissy bar.

Dylan had a custom Road King he’d recently traded up to, and by keeping our traveling gear to an absolute minimum, we could load most of our stuff in his two saddlebags, and Elias’s new bag. I had a large gym bag strapped to the back of my passenger upright, loaded with libations, and some towels to wrap them up.

With so little storage we were limited to a couple of shorts and t-shirts, a bathing suit, towels, and too much toiletries. We had a good bit of food, a few soft drinks and some more bottles of hard stuff tucked away here and there. We were traveling light, but it should be enough for the short time we’d be away.

The trip was probably only about a hundred miles as the crow flies, but roads were a different matter altogether. We would take the back roads through north Texas, crossing the lake into Oklahoma near Cedar Mills, driving for another hour on paved roads before hitting the gravel, then a dirt road that led to the old family homestead.

Carter’s mother had told us that her father had built the original lake house, a real rustic cabin, in the middle of nowhere. The creation of Lake Texoma by damming the Red River made 120+ acres of inaccessible hillside a valuable commodity 30 years later. Most of the lake development had passed them by, and they still had more than 30 acres of property left, including the cabin, a dock, and a swimming platform. We’d heard about the place for years, but had never been out there.

Of course, I would have jumped at any excuse to see the lovely Aria and stunning Carter in a bikini. I’m sure my comrades were looking forward to an eye full of Nora lusciously filling out her own two-piece.

And yes, Dylan’s wife’s name was Aria. Unfortunate, but none of us was crass enough to ever make light of it.

It was a beautiful day for a road trip, and the weather was supposed to be nice all weekend. There was a slight chance of rain on the first day, but clear skies were predicted from then on out.

We were supposed to leave early, getting away by noon, giving us the whole afternoon to settle in. An urgent call for Elias put us well behind schedule, as we had to wait for him to go into the office and get back. The ladies decided to get a small head start on the drinking, polishing off a blender of Margaritas, but Dylan and I stuck to a single light beer. Riding a motorcycle drunk was not the wisest of moves.

Eventually we got things together and we left our place a little late, but still managed to get on the road by 4:00pm. We would deal with a little traffic, and then should have smooth sailing. We should even be able to stop for dinner. I thought we should have enough daylight, with the sun setting around 8:00 pm.

Emphasis on should.

We were having a great time, and decided to stop to eat at a local diner that was a favorite of Carter’s family, with a good sized crowd. According to Elias, we were less than 10 miles from the turnoff, where our progress would necessarily slow.

We settled in for some good home-cooking, and after polishing off dinner and dessert, figured we had maybe an hour of sunlight left. After paying the ridiculously reasonable bill, and picking up a bag of ice, we headed out to finish our trip. As we climbed onto our rides, I heard Elias scream out “God DAMN it!”

Turning to look at him, it didn’t take 10 seconds to see his problem. His brand new, $250 saddlebag was missing off his bike. Along with it, a third of our gear.

We had a quick huddle, and looked up at the darkening sky. It looked like clouds were rolling in just to make our day that much better. It was decided to quickly head to the cabin, and re-inventory there. We could pop out the next day to replace whatever we’d lost. The missing gear did give us an open place to strap down the ice bag.

We were about 5 minutes down the gravel road when the skies opened up. Soon we were all soaked, but there was no place reasonable to stop, and with just a few miles left, we decided to gut it out. We continued through the darkening evening, and hit the dirt road, with only about 2 miles to go.

Of course, God in his infinite good humor thought it would be funny to hit us with one of those real downpours, until we were crawling along at about 10 miles an hour, slipping and sliding through the mud and slick grass, branches reaching out to swat us from the side, and making our little journey Hell on Earth.

We were slowly advancing with Elias in the front, since he was most familiar with the unmarked road, followed by Dylan, with Nora and me in the rear getting splattered with their mud.

It was great to see the cabin show up in Elias’s headlights. It had gotten as dark as midnight, with the setting sun and pounding storm. We quickly parked in the carport, and stripped our gear off the bikes. Elias wandered behind the building and managed to get the Honda generator running, giving us lights.

The doors were padlocked and windows shuttered to keep out intruders. While Elias was unlocking the side door, we were all complaining about our rotten luck.

“There’s not a lot of space inside, and we haven’t been here since last year, after Mom passed.” Carter informed us. “We have bed linens, towels, fishing gear, swimming gear, and some dried and canned foods. How about if I get some towels for us and we get rid of our wet clothing out here and dry off, so we don’t soak the place?”

She had barely gotten the words out of her mouth before we heard Elias bellowing “God Damn it to HELL! SHIT! DAMN! FUCK!”

Now, Elias’s a little guy, about 5’4, and pretty quiet most of the time. He’d shaved his head to look a little older, which made him look like a short bald 8th grader. He almost never cursed, but he was certainly making up for it on this trip.

Looking past Carter, which was easy enough – she didn’t even come up to my chest; I could see the source of his ire. Someone had been in their cabin, and hadn’t left it in as good a shape as they’d found it. Only one light bulb in the kitchen was working but we all filed in behind Carter to see the disaster. Our wetness and muddiness wasn’t going to make a lick of difference.

Vandals had broken in through a window on the far side of the cabin. There were beer cans all over the place, piled up dirty bed sheets on the two beds, and water was pouring in through the broken window. Critters had been in the house, and a dead bird was in a corner, with feathers all around.

Animal feces were scattered all around the kitchen area. Couches were overturned in the sitting area, their pillows scattered. I watched Dylan turn and head back outside, and a few seconds later he had re-closed the shutters, somehow jimmying them shut, stopping the worst of the rain.

You could feel the atmosphere of the place just sinking. The mood was as dark as the sky. Our hopes for a fabulous weekend getaway were getting washed away with the torrential rain.

I walked over to one of the two storage closets that had been looted and found a box of four 17 watt fluorescent light bulbs on the top shelf. I walked around and replaced the lights in two lamps, but it didn’t make the place look any better. We were all behaving sort of lost when Aria started cleaning up. “Liam, any towels left in that closet?”

There were some indeterminate cloth objects on the middle shelf. Garbage bags, paper towels, plastic utensils and toilet paper were on the bottom shelf, with some cleaning supplies on the floor along with a bucket, a broom and a mop. I dragged the main cleaning supplies out, setting them to the side and then I started pulling out the contents of what appeared to be the towel shelf, and found we had at least 8 towels.

They were mostly pretty threadbare beach towels, with a few hand towels thrown in. I unfolded and snapped each one open, checking for anything living in them. On this one thing we lucked out. They were all in pretty good shape. On the next shelf up I found replacement basic white bed linens. There were some critter droppings on the shelf, but the sheets themselves didn’t seem to have been bothered. I passed those out as well.

Everyone pitched in, sweeping, picking up trash, straightening out furniture, mopping up excess water and mud, and anything else that needed doing. Once the worst of it was taken care of, we noticed that we were making less progress as we tracked our own mud and water all over the place. Nobody had wanted to walk around the wooden floors in the shape they were in when we got there, but after an hour or so of teamwork, the worst had been taken care of.

After that, the guys were ushered outside to remove our wet things and dry off, while the girls did the same inside. The place was a one room cabin, with a small basic bathroom added on as an afterthought. This was really roughing it.

I took a seat and scraped the worst of the mud off my boots with a stick while waiting. They had said they’d just be a second, but this wasn’t my first rodeo.

The girls kept us outside a good bit longer as they did another floor mopping and passed their wet clothing outside to us. As I saw the ladies soaked undergarments make their way out the door, I started getting naughty thoughts. I’m sure I wasn’t alone.

Weekend outing went out of normal with friends – 01 will continue in the next page.