Day 2b - Parting of the Storms

The Great Adventure - Day 2

Flying down the trails along the vineyards and through the woods, thrilled with the rooster tails my bike is throwing, there is a sense of exhilaration from the freedom that this bike offers! Running my bike just as hard as she'll go, it's all I can do just to keep up with Dick and the other guys. But that doesn't seem to matter cause we are out doing guy stuff! You know, getting wet and muddy, pushing each other to the limit, taking risks and testing our skills at every turn!

I remember riding back then and deciding that I would never get one of those posh living room chairs on wheels - you know the big touring bikes that are made for old farts! Hahaha! One must watch what they say because we tend to end up eating those words we speak.

After finishing day two of our Great Adventure, we're really glad we have this old fart's bike. I didn't pay attention to the mileage as we went through the day because we were just enjoying some sightseeing along the way. More on that in a minute, but when we stopped this evening we were stunned to find that we had put in 345 miles today! Both of us were planning to go on for another hour, but I was really hungry... [more on that later too]. So, in two days, we have a grand total of 741 miles under our wheels and we are feeling great. [Of course, Dawn is so excited that she fell asleep before 10pm, but hey, she almost made 10:00, and for her, that is really good!]

As we pulled out this morning we planned on some sightseeing and decided that the Colt's football stadium and the Indianapolis Motor speedway would be first on the list. Dawn talked me into playing football in front of the stadium - like, it was soooo embarrassing! The traffic was driving by looking at us like we were crazy! Then at the speedway, we got to hear [couldn't get inside] an Indy car doing time trials and man, was it fast! It was screaming around that 2.5 mile track like it was little Raceway 7 (a small dirt track in Ohio). Oh, I wanted to drive out there but I couldn't get Dawn to part with the big bucks to let me! [just kiddin' Honey, just kiddin'!]

From there we found our way out of town and pointed toward St. Louis, Mo. The sky looked rather menacing but we seemed to stay under a little seam in the clouds - we kid you not, it looked like the Lord was parting the clouds for us. About an hour later, after I thought we had made it through the weather front, we ran into our first real rainfall of the trip so we pulled into a gas station to fill up and don our rain gear.

The rain gear actually worked out very well. We bought some silver rain gear figuring that it would provide both good protection from the rain and it would increase our visibility. It worked like a charm in both arenas because it blew up to three times its original size when we were running down the road! That's right we looked like two giant silver Pillsbury Dough Boys! That didn't really bother me too much until a guy passed us, smiled and gave us a thumb's up - didn't know quite how to take that [he's either thinking our Great Adventure is awesome or he thought he was part of the filming of a new Pillsbury commercial!]

We cleared the rain in about 30 minutes, then ran another 30 minutes or so to get out of all the road mist and dry the suits. We then decided to spend some time running a two lane, Route 40 was the choice. As we pulled off the road to take our rain gear off and grab a drink of water, we found that rural America provides both water for a drink and five star restroom facilities for travelers convenience! Can you believe that? I wanted Dawn to stand in front of the restrooms for the photo op, but she flat out drew the line at that one - wouldn't even do a Vanna White! [She can really be a party pooper sometimes! (no pun intended - haha)

By the way Will, that is where we found this piece of equipment behind Dawn... Look familiar?

Now you might find this next bit of info hard to believe, but we found the best motorcycle road in Indiana! It had trees, hills, valleys and five curves covering two miles! Unbelievable! After that it turned into a perfectly straight line (except for the two curves 30 miles down the road that they put in to cross I-70!). But oh, did Black Beauty ever demonstrate immense power as she pulled the massive hills... That's right, hills! They rose a whopping 5 feet over a mile stretch! Whew, doggy! The trees started to fade away as they turned into giant wind-blown fields. Did I mention, WIND?! We were rolling along at 60mph when an 18 wheeler passed us going the opposite direction and almost put us over the handlebars! [perhaps a slight exaggeration]

We were actually making pretty good time on Route 40 and decided to stop into a McDonald's for lunch and a potty break. Dawn let me be a big spender - two Southern brewed iced teas and a large order of fries! [Man, she squeaks when she walks!] After all, I got bread for breakfast and two apples with water during a couple of our stops - ooohhhhhh, generous! haha.

We jump back on I-70 and cruise into St. Louis, Mo., with the plans of visiting the Gateway To The West, the arch. It stands right next to the great Mississippi River. It was very impressive [but the riverwalk left a lot to be desired]. As we were taking pictures, we noticed a terrible storm to the southeast that was flashing lightning left and right. When we got to our hotel room, we found out that the storm had spawned several tornado's that did some pretty extensive damage not far from some of the areas we had ridden through earlier in the day! You can see the storm in the background of some of the pictures. There is a fun video I took of the two of us at the arch, but they take forever to load, so you will have to wait till we get home to see the rest. I certainly did not mean to make light of the tornado's in my "Captain's Log," but we didn't know all of the details until we got back to our room and watched the news [my sincere apologies to those communities!].

Did I mention that cheapskate Dawn wasn't planning to eat supper either! It's like I'm in prison or something! She stuck some popcorn in our bags before we left and that is what she was going to eat for supper - that and some water! I'm tellin' you, I put my foot down right there and told her I was going to eat at least one meal each day [and bread and apples do not count for a meal!] so we went out for some fine cuisine - Denny's! That's right baby, I put my foot down!

Tomorrow it is off to Kansas City and Lawrence, Kansas! Can't wait for all the adventure that is in store for us! I'm tellin' you, God is good!