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The Arkansas-Oklahoma forecast hadn’t lied—crosswinds were already flexing by the time I rolled out of Mena, Arkansas. I kept my expectations low: make decent miles, stay upright, and find fuel and food where I could.

I started the morning with the second two.

The Ozark Inn didn’t offer breakfast, which was fine by me. I’d had enough powdered eggs from hotel buffets already. A quick search pointed me toward Bledsoe’s Diner, two hours west in Atoka, a town within the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. I was craving a counter stool, a realtor-sponsored mug, and real butter.

Bledsoe’s was weathering the perfect storm: big Sunday crowd, short staff, and a loud argument over whether the busser should scrape plates before handing them off to the dishwasher. The busser quit—mid-shift, mid-volume—and walked out the front door.

The head waitress didn’t flinch. She didn’t run after the recalcitrant employee, didn’t make a show of it. She just walked over to my table, met my eyes, and said she’d get to me as soon as she could. I would walk through fire for a woman like that. Waiting for breakfast was nothing.

B-Trains in the Wind

The passing lanes in Texas stretch for miles, providing a longer runway for the semi-trucks pulling two cargo trailers, officially referred to as a "B-train.” I mistrust those setups in even the best conditions, but the thought of two trailers doing “the wobble” like a sidewinder is the stuff of nightmares.

The winds picked up hard when I crossed into the plains, just as the forecast warned. LED signs blinked HIGH FIRE DANGER in urgent orange. They didn’t spell it out, but I could feel it: heat in the nineties, gusts topping forty.

Here’s the math: at 75 mph, a 50-mph crosswind doesn’t just buffet your helmet—it can shove 700 pounds of bike and rider off course.

Riding in these conditions isn’t about bravery; it’s about not tempting physics. I had to ride consciously, max out at fifty-five, resist white-line fever. Adjust lean angle, keep both hands firm, cut the daydreaming. And watch the fuel.

I hit a fuel catch-22: not enough gas to return to the town behind, not quite enough to guarantee the next one ahead. Then the bike’s computer told me I had about forty miles left. With Google Maps I found a middle-of-nowhere station, but to get there I had to ration the throttle—no coasting in that kind of wind.

Yes, I made it, but with only nine miles to spare. What a rookie mistake.

Runnin’ on Empty

Running out of gas has its own legacy in my life. Entering my senior year, I finally got permission to drive myself the seven or eight miles to school in the family’s 1973 baby blue Super Beetle. That car taught me to drive a stick shift—a skill that later made motorcycling second nature. It also introduced me to the quirks of a faulty gas gauge. More than once I coasted to the shoulder on fumes. No, I’m not saying the Bug’s fuel gauge was broken; it simply didn’t register the final third of a tank.

Much to Mom’s chagrin, that car taught me Dad’s "beat the gas" game. She never trusted a car with less than half a tank, and Dad never brought his home with more than that. He wasn’t so much a gambler as absent-minded, and he never seemed to leave enough time in his schedule to fill up.

Then again, those were the days of gas rationing, when your license plate determined which day you could fill up. If you were in line on the wrong day, someone might drag you out of your car. People were desperate, and everyone had a hair trigger (some of them literal, but guns weren’t so prevalent then). Sometimes you’d wait in line for twenty minutes only to see the car in front of you buy the last drop. Pull away, find another line, and wait.

Even after gas supply stabilized, Dad and I were still the ones stretching the tank and betting we’d make it.

Psychologists wouldn’t be surprised I married someone with Mom’s wiring. Matt loves a reliable plan, plenty of gas in the tank, and a known rhythm. I get it. And thankfully he provides it. But part of me still runs with Stagecoach, figuring the solution will reveal itself just in time, and that the best stories live a little beyond the edge of the plan.

I’ll admit: I am not easy to make a life with.

Sequins and Scrutiny

The Texas plains weren’t giving up much in the way of visual poetry. Mesquite trees dotted the landscape—scraggly, uneven, a little desperate-looking. At first, I thought they were wild, but they kept appearing in such regular patterns—rows, even spacing—that they felt planted. Not quite like a farm, but not untended either. I later learned this wasn’t uncommon in West Texas: mesquite has spread so prolifically across the plains that it often takes on the look of intention. It’s often labeled ugly—short, thorny, scrubby. Landowners call them “trash trees” or “devil trees,” and have spent decades trying to wipe them out. Even when it’s unwanted, it keeps showing up—rooting deep, fixing nitrogen, feeding wildlife, sheltering the land. It survives by being useful, not pretty.

Now, this is how my mind works: one minute I’m taking in the twisted limbs of a mesquite tree, and the next I’m thinking about girlhood—mine, and the world that shaped it. A world where the girls who sparkled got the attention, while the rest of us learned to measure our value in quieter ways. Like mesquite, we rooted deep and endured—useful more than pretty.

I took dance lessons—tap, jazz, a little ballet—so I knew what it meant to be dressed up for someone else’s idea of girlhood. I liked the movement, the challenge. But the recitals? The itchy sequins, the lacquered hair, the woman-child makeup? That felt like wearing someone else’s skin. I couldn’t name it then, but I knew the mismatch. I wasn’t there to be a showgirl; I was a sharp little girl who happened to be good at things. But “good” wasn’t enough. You had to beam on command.

Part of that pressure came from home, but not in the way you might imagine. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, a woman without credentials or a family pedigree had few sanctioned ways to feel accomplished. A well-turned-out child was one. Mom pushed for the leotards, lessons, and recitals so she and Dad could prove they’d raised a daughter who embodied middle-class girlhood.

I sensed the sacrifice and wanted to please them, even when part of me just wanted to learn the moves and skip the sparkle. I couldn’t have named it then, but the performance wasn’t really mine. It was theirs—an investment in how I reflected back on them. That truth didn’t land until I was grown.

Tiers of Girls

I was never an “it girl.” I didn’t dazzle. But I wasn’t invisible either. Like my mother, I had charm, wit, and a precocious knack for adult conversation. That landed me in the second tier of girlhood. The first belonged to those who sparkled on sight. I was the clever one. The competent one. The girl who could hold her own in a grown-up room but didn’t turn heads in the hallway.

I was a B+ student without much effort. I could have pushed for A’s, but other things called to me more than grades—my horse, the books I chose for myself, and a free spirit that needed room to breathe. I was smart enough for the fields open to girls then, but not wired for teaching, nursing, or clerical work. Restless, impatient, I liked knowing lots of things—not keeping up with them.

Now I see something shifting. Women my sons’ age—and their daughters—are being raised for strength, purpose, agency. Maybe that’s the long tail of Title IX. Maybe that’s why the backlash is so fierce. I came from the generation just before, that taught a girl’s greatest asset was a pretty face and a pleasing personality—pleasing to others, often at our own expense. Being liked was the highest form of currency, at least for a white, Midwestern, middle-class girl like me.

And it always—always—came at a cost.

I’ve since come to value depth over dazzle. Utility over ornament. Which is why mesquite made sense to me: quietly doing its job.

What the Wind Blew In

After checking into my Lubbock hotel, I kicked off my boots and slumped in front of the evening news. My body needed a moment to register the day. After a shower and dinner, I stretched out on the bed and opened my laptop.

There was an email from one of my memoir clients—a woman I’ll call Stephanie. A pioneer for women in broadcast journalism, she went on to reinvent herself several times after leaving the daily grind. Her manuscript traced that arc but also circled back to her girlhood. She’d been a tier-one girl—baton twirler, stage presence from an early age—and believed it was part of becoming someone: competing, winning, taking up space. She doesn’t claim a direct line from the dance studio to the anchor desk, but the throughline is there.

Her take is a valid counterpoint. But I never felt that way. I leaned into the things I loved—horses, words, figuring things out—and found my spotlight elsewhere.

Early in her career, just as she was gaining regional prominence, Stephanie was mocked in print as a “baton-twirling beauty queen.” I saw the cruelty in that: for some, beauty and presence are a stage; for others, a bullseye.

As I helped her shape her story, mine was nudging forward too—through phone calls, memories, and miles.

After about an hour at the keyboard, I talked to JJ. Mom and Dad were open to touring a Sun City–style community with us the following week. Dad was all for it, apparently—the first I’d heard of him saying so. Maybe it was practicality. Maybe he was just tired. Or maybe—like me—he’d been on the road long enough to know when it’s time to take a turn.

I tucked that news into the panniers of my mind. I had miles to go—and, hopefully, a few answers waiting down the line.

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