Improv at the Hookah bar

It was another lovely Sunday afternoon. A Sunday afternoon which was made for lounging in the sun with a mason jar full of ice tea and a good book. At least that's what I was thinking as I was power scrubbing on my hands and knees. Who talked me into this rip off? What kind of sales pitch was so powerful as to get me to trade in my tea, book, and helmet in order to spend my time on hands and knees chasing evil dirt spots across the floor with a mop? My memory fails me. I guess it doesn't really matter which lies the pitch held since that Sunday is long gone. 

As I was scrubbing though, I received an offer to represent Ahava belly dance troupe at the local Hookah cafe. Hookah in Lawton? That's mighty progressive for these parts. It would be just me since other people seem to have lives on Memorial Day weekend. That's cool, I'm just over here scrubbing floors. I start rallying the troops via social networks to come support their crazy belly dancing friend (some may deny a relationship). The question of music had to be addressed. I would be in charge. Ohhh yeah! A CD? A thumb drive? How many songs should I take? A CD would require burning songs and the actual CD. That's beyond my simple computing abilities. My thumb drive is currently AWOL so that left the option of dragging along the laptop. Ah, my poor, sick laptop. Besides the fact that its dependency on electricity is unhealthy, and it can't go a millisecond without juice before turning off, it's making noises on par with screaming banshees. If that weren't enough, the screen is also decorated by six...or ten lines. I mean, screen dividers. But, like a true zombie, my laptop just keeps going and going and goi...no, wait that was a battery, wasn't it? Batteries die whereas my laptop keeps living the zombie life. I'm probably to blame. I mean, a laptop can only handle so much abuse. Two coffee spillages, one water flood swishing through the keyboard's streets, 9 crashes (and counting), it was only a matter of time until it turned over to the dark side.

After retiring my mop for the day, and getting my costume on, I stepped outside into the humid heat of Georgia...in Oklahoma. I don't really know what's been going on with this odd weather, but me thinks this humidity is not for me. Instead of dancing outside where there's always hope for a nice humid breeze, a tent had been set up decorated with veils and hookah pipes. My support team was early. Well, they were actually on time, but if I had been the support team I would have been late which makes them early. As I'm breaking out in sweat digging out my abused laptop, I really began to wish I weren't the only belly dancer dancing. Barbara Eden must have heard me because another dancer appeared right at that moment. Boy, was I relieved. With the sticky sauna effect Oklahoma has going on, I think I would have collapsed in the middle of the tent in the hazy smoke of various tobacco flavors had I danced those 3.5 hours by myself. I did, however, have the first half an hour all to my solo-self. Note to future self: 3 minutes of tent dancing in 98% humidity in 95 degrees is enough to shed 5lbs of water so bring extra H2O.

Picture by local photographer, Mrs. Evelyne Walls.

Improvisation belly dance gigs are the best. It's all about the music and the moment. There are no moves that "go together" or were put together by someone else. It's all about me. And, I like that. A lot. Plus, you can't mess up. It's dummy proof. And, I like that a lot, too. The songs I have are normal length 5-6 minutes. They're not unusually long (13 minutes), but if you're not used to dancing that long it can be a little challenging to keep improvising or keep going. The other dancer just looked at me and asked if the song would ever end. Then the thought came to her that all my songs may be the original length. Yup. No break for you. 

Picture by local photographer, Mrs. Evelyne Walls

Had the pleasure of meeting an interesting group of guys who were enjoying the hookah cafe. They'd been given a doumbek to enjoy for the duration of their stay by an employee. I've never been given a doumbek to play with at any establishment. It might have something to do with the fact that my eyelash batting looks a little like "the look" so feared in Home Improvement. These guys travel with guitars, apparently, and before the evening was over there was in improvised jam session with a singer, doumbek, beer cup drums, and all. That made all the sweat from dancing in the hot, breeze-less tent worth it. How many people get to be part of such randomness? It was definitely an evening to remember and it all started with the scrubbing of floors.
This blog is brought to you by the lovely (biased opinion, we know) Stone Turtle – Lodging, a small family owned and operated hotel / lodging business near Lawton, Oklahoma, Fort Sill,  the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, Meers and Medicine Park. Yeah, that’s right we’re a small lodging business close to all the awesomeness Oklahoma has to offer!!

Another wonderful weekend gone by

Ah, April is passing me by way too fast. In between colds, paper stress, and odd weather, April hasn't seen a lot of riding. The weather gods were on my side a couple of weekends ago as I was able to ride over to Lake Lugert...or Lake Altus as I tend to call it. Yes, I will rename things, places, and people. I was also able to bless the Wichita Mountains with my presence. If that's not the recipe for an awesome weekend, then I don't know what is. 

On Saturday, a rider from OKC was planning on coming down to ride through the Wichita Mountains before heading to the Quartz Mountains. Perfect opportunity, I thought, to get my newbie rider, who bought the Harley a little while ago, an opportunity to feel what it really means to ride. This ties in with my strong belief that anything under 50 miles is not a ride. Granted, lately my rides are in the 50-70 mile range. Somewhat depressing, I agree. The meetup time was flexible and the location was set for Mt. Scott. My friend got off to a little later start in OKC. I found it a little tricky trying to figure out when to leave or tell the Lawton rider to meet-up since I didn't really know a time. When in doubt, just bombard; I played massive text message notification specialist keeping the Lawton rider up to date. After which I was told I did a better job on status update than Dallas/Fort Worth airport. Not sure if that was a compliment... When in doubt, always accept such comments as compliments. 

The weather report stated something about temperatures in the upper 70s and lower 80s. I don't know why I'm still persuaded by such lies; nevertheless, I wore light layers and my summer Icon jacket with the lining. I did regret this choice once I realized that even lower 70s was not going to happen. I left a little earlier so I could continue my boycott of a specific gas station. Lawton rider pulled in to the parking lot shortly after I did. Sometimes life just works out that way when one doesn't stress over things. As we chatted and got ready to leave, the OKC Buell cruises by us. Perfect, I'm not going to be late for one. I figured we'd meet in the parking lot on Mount Scott, which is why I was surprised to find OKC digging through his millions of saddlebags right at the base and in a turn. After the surprise diminished and bugged-out eye to brake-hand reaction was implemented, full brakes were applied...and all went well. I do have a way with brakes.

To make the weather situation a tad bit worse, the wind picked up. I don't know what happened to my layering skills, but they seem to have done gone and left. OKC had his breakfast sitting on top of Mount Scott in good company might I add. I thought of doing the same; however, that seemed like a lot of unnecessary extra work. Laziness, eh? From Mount Scott we made out way to Roosevelt, OK (see Cold Springs...sort of). We took a short break to fuel up and have some coffee. Meanwhile the battery of the Buell was being sucked dry, lawnmowers were driven to the gas station to be fueled, and an Indian (the country) bus with tourists pulled in. All in a short  of time in a small Oklahoma town. I never expect small towns with nothing (no Main Street, or town square) to be so full of interesting things.Who would have thunk that one could hear four languages (German, Indian, English, and Oklahoman) in such a God forsaken town? Ah, to be proven wrong on a frequent basis...

Yup, all the juice was gone. There was none left to be had. How a battery can be so sick of life (or us), I do not know. How to rectify the situation? Brainstorming time. The guys thought while I watched. My forecast for thinking was mostly cloudy with 5% of brainstorming success, so I let it be. Two solutions presented themselves. We could try push starting the Buell or we could jump-start the Buell. I certainly didn't have any cables, and OKC with all his saddlebags, backpacks, and tank-packs didn't have any either. I guess he's not Mary Poppins after all. That was quite a shock to find out; I might need therapy. 

Push starting it was! Lawton and I watched once as OKC tried it himself. Maybe that was a little cruel (there's that hindsight again), but it was worth the amusement. We then decided to help. I didn't bother taking off any gear because I thought the benefit of the doubt might play in my favor. In all my blueness (blue helmet, blue jacket, blue jeans) and pink laces, OKC and I pushed and chased after the Buell in the gas station parking lot. We ran from one end to the other with little success and an out-of-breath blogger. As I was gasping for air, we opted to try once more. We pulled the Buell back to the other end of the parking lot for another try. OKC sitting on his dead steed, and Lawton and I fully clad in armor began the journey to the other end. Lawton has way longer legs than I do, and it was like an ant trying to keep up with a giant while trying to hold on to the Buell to avoid a face-pavement boxing match. My dragging along behind the machine probably didn't help. Then again, my deadweight dragging along couldn't have been worse than the saddlebags...the saddlebags! We should have unloaded the pack mule! I would have been a good sport and offered to try once more (that must be the stubbornness people keep referring to...), but the others saw no use. 

Plan B. It's always good to have back-up plans. Since none of us actually had jumper cables, we began asking everyone who came to the gas station for a set. It's either very shocking how no one carries a set of jumper cables (in a farm town, really?) or how unwilling small town folks are to help. Which was it? I don't know. It looked like more brainstorming was needed. I sat this one out, too. Turns out physical exertion decreases brainstorming success, so I stuck to watching all the pretty cars drive by. The guys went into the gas station and asked the clerk if she happened to have any jumper cables. They were back out so fast that I didn't need to ask what happened. She did, however, mention that we could buy a set. After 10 minutes of contemplating and not wanting to buy, our German Lawton rider disappeared back into the gas station. Five minutes later, the clerk came out of the glassy doors where she probably amusingly watched us desperately run from one end of the parking lot to the other closely followed by a grinning German. I don't know how he did it nor do I think I want to know (ignorance is bliss), but he managed to charm the clerk to check in her car to see if she did have her set of jumper cables with her. Something she hadn't been willing to do 5 minutes earlier... How d...Nope, don't wanna know. I have no idea how he did it, but can I get me some of that? As our luck would have it, she didn't have any jumper cables. Charmer that he is, he bought the jumper cables, we jumped the Buell off of Blueberry, and then he returned the cables. Those Germans do have some skills and Roosevelt was left with another unique impression (German charm) for the books.

We cruised through Blair on our way to the Quartz Mountains which is where we went our separate ways. Lawton and I checked out the beach and the resort. I was ecstatic to find a marble in the sand among the millions of rocks, bottle caps, and weird things close to the water. Since water levels have receded so much and with the thought 'who plays marbles these days?,' I've convinced myself that the marble dates back to the range of 1900s-1950s. The fact that the marble also looks much like the marbles we found on the farm dating from that time, only seals the deal. What does it mean when you find your marbles instead of losing them?

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