NatchezBall Run I

The Prelude

I’ve told many motorcycle tales in this blog. Here is another one.

I went on a one-day jaunt last spring with a group of riders that drove the first 50 miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway. That day's drive sparked the idea of touring the entire parkway. Months later, the tattered National Park Service info pamphlet was still in my tank bag. It further stoked my interest in driving the entire journey with this money shot: “444 miles through three states and 10,000 years of history.” The trip idea thus became a must-do.

From that kernel I badgered and cajoled two of my coworkers into freeing up a weekend in July for the trip. Truthfully, Steve Yarsynski (Stevie Y.) and Will Matusiak (a.k.a. WMD, Weapon of creative Mass Destruction) are the real heroes of this tale of tenacity and the joys of two-wheeled travel. In sum: two days, three guys, eight wheels, 888+ miles round trip, and unlimited fun. How to figure out that math? Read on.

The Main Dish

The weekend prior to the NatchezBall Run, WM and I were fueling up with coffee at an IHOP before a 300-mile shakeout tour to Kentucky. We had a friendly conversation with a couple who were interested in our motorcycles and tour plan. They viewed my bike with bemused interest and soon christened my tarted-up 1986 ZL600 Kawasaki Eliminator “the Barcalounger.” I had attached a wire mesh frame from the Dollar Tree  to strap down my knapsack and other travel gear. This obviated the extra cost of buying saddlebags. It also provided lower lumbar support. Win-win, right? The strange apparatus drew inquisitive looks. My “classic” 1986 Barcalounger was in complete contrast to the sleek and sexy new BMW owned by my riding partner. Even so, the Kentucky trip was a great time and we felt ready for the coming challenge.

To kick off the Natchez Parkway trip we opted for breakfast at the Loveless Café, a renowned Nashville area eatery. We were in high spirits. With one look at the loaded down Eliminator, Stevie Y. and WMD renamed it “Hobo Bike.” These were prophetic words.

The parkway is 444-miles long and commemorates the Old Natchez Trace that connected portions of the Mississippi River to salt licks in central Tennessee in bygone days. The highway surface is pristine. The legal speed limit is max 60 mph, commercial vehicles are banned from using the road, and stoplights and entrance/exit ramps are few. It’s a gorgeous scenic ride along a historic trail with memorable landscapes. We all filled our gas tanks and departed. 

At mile 13 from the northern terminus, my Hobo Bike blew its bevel cap right off the crankcase and the bike hemorrhaged oil all over the highway. SHIT! We three went into crisis mode. WM tried to find the bevel cap for 30 minutes with no luck. Stevie Y. bought duct tape and replacement motorcycle oil. I MacGyvered up the bevel cap area so the motorcycle’s engine would keep some oil inside and not seize up. 
The final diagnosis: I was fucked. I could not proceed. 

I felt this trip was suddenly like the Apollo 13 space mission. So I switched to Plan B. I called a tow truck to haul my motorcycle to a holding lot. I removed Hobo Bike’s accessories and its spare gas, then ubered to the nearest enterprise rent-a-car. I rented a white Nissan Frontier quarter-ton truck and sped to rendezvous with the boys near Tupelo, Mississippi.

Did this trip become a tale of woe? One of oh no?  No go? No way. Adapt and overcome…

For the birds

In June, the Rising Family™ flew to Japan for our summer vacation. These holidays usually involve going back to Hiroshima. We catch up with old friends and spend time with grandad (Ji-chan) and granny (Ba-chan) at their home in the countryside. We also habitually take a few days for travel in the Chugoku region. This time our mini-trip was far from normal. In fact, it was rooster-iffic and hen-tastic! Here’s why: we had a brood of crazed chickens nearly attack us in a quest for food.  We had a Lord of the Chickens experience.

Let me explain.

We rented a car in Hiroshima and during our mini-tour drove out to the Miroku no Sato amusement park. It’s situated up in the green hills southwest of Fukuyama in Hiroshima prefecture. “Miroku no Sato” means something like “Village of the Future.” The Rising Family first visited Miroku no Sato almost ten years ago (M. wasn’t born yet). It was in August 2009, the hottest and most humid time of the year. We went to escape the heat in the cool, toddler-friendly pools. I have fond, but dim, memories of that visit.

This year we chose to visit again with the Rising Daughters duo. Naomi and I correctly thought the waiting times for the rides would be shorter if we went on a weekday when most Japanese kids were still in school. As it turned out, lines were non-existent. Still, the place was still populated with staff who provided the excellent service and hospitality for which Japan is so well known. We took many roller coaster and other rides. 

We toured the “Showa Town” retro-themed area. It’s a throwback to life in postwar Japan during the 1950s-1970s. Like Happy Days, except it’s in southwestern Japan.

Next to this Showa retro-zone there is an enormous chicken coop, basically a fenced feeding area. Both Lady E. and M. love animals so we ambled over to a thatched hut where visitors can buy cups of feed and distribute them to the chickens. You use a specially cut bamboo feeder, filled with food pellets, and insert it through the wire fence so the fowl can eat. There were no park attendants here—buying the 100 yen feedbags was all on the honor system. Oddly, we never saw anyone else there that day even though we visited the chicken coop area twice out of sheer fascination tinged mixed with a dash of morbid humor. 

Just…read on.

We arrived at the feeding spot and four or five chickens were milling around outside the wire fence. They’d managed to escape and were rummaging for food. Marina started chasing them around. Law and order guy that I am, I thought we could have some fun. I thought, let’s teach Marina how to catch them and drop them back into the fenced area. 

Truth be told, Marina soon gave up, but I entertained myself by tracking down the errant hens and lobbing them back over the fence where they belonged. 

We soon realized that there were no attendants coming anytime soon. We had the place to ourselves. And these chickens were HUNGRY. So I purchased several of the feed pellet pouches. As soon as the girls starting dropping the pellets via the bamboo feeders, roosters and hens rapidly streamed in from all angles, piling on top of each other—hacking, kicking and fighting their way to the food. 

The melee that ensued was remarkable due to its sheer volume of squawks, thrashing, and blur of white and brown feathers.

Elena and Marina….well…they broke the rules by going into the compound. But their intent was noble. They wanted to stop the bullying roosters from monopolizing the food and make sure the weaker hens and chicks got some, too. But the crazed birds soon enveloped my daughters whenever they tried to feed them. Naomi went in to help, Elena came scrambling out. Birds were jumping on their shoulders and arms, pecking at the feed bags. It was nuts. The massed group of birds stacked almost a foot high blocked the entrance door. This became my excuse to throw some decoy food, deke out the straggler hens, and enter the fowl zone.

I was trying to be brave and get my womenfolk out of there. Damned if Naomi and M. didn’t double-down by spraying more feed pellets at the confused and traumatized lower rank of that vicious chicken society. More carnage ensued. 

The three of us walked up a trail inside the wire-enclosed area and I noticed a gaggle of several bigger birds surrounding and pecking what appeared to be a still-living chicken. But it would not be living for much longer. They were eating it alive! It was an outbreak of cannibalism.

I wasn’t sure how this jarring scene this would affect Marina. She went away to calmly feed a small subtribe of chicks and misfit poultry who were keeping away from the fray. As we walked down the trail back to the entrance, she pointed out the now-dead, mutilated chicken. I saw another chicken crime scene. It smelled awful. Time to go! We exited and flipped over a few more hundred yen of pellets over the wire. Next, we rounded up a couple more jail breaker roosters and deposited them back in the ongoing skirmish on the other side of the fence. Then we got the hell out of there.

It was a funny and shocking experience for us city slickers. Intriguing, even. We trekked to the leafy Dinosaur Park. Also boarded the roller coaster and defied gravity in the pirate ship. Overall, the Village of the Future makes for a good family outing at comparatively cheap prices. After a few more attraction rides and walking around the park, we went back to the chicken area later that afternoon to see if anything had changed or park attendants had come to deliver food. The same survival of the fittest scene awaited us. We located several more pecked and stripped-of-flesh carcasses. Blurrg.

It’s fair to say Miroku no Sato is a retro amusement park that has plenty of older rides, nice staff and a pleasant whiff of seen-better-days. Yet the most memorable part was the Hens from Hell. That episode provided life lessons for sheltered kids like our Rising Daughters. Especially witnessing the bloodshed inherent to the food chain and natural order when poultry society breaks down. Hellish and hilarious at the same time!