Dillon is a great traveling partner and the perfect monkey (sidecar passengers are called a monkey). I had no idea how he would do in the hack and I am delighted with how well it is going. After Hamburg we hit it pretty hard to Effingham, IL covering a little over 700 miles in some 90 degree heat.
I took a tiny jog off route so we could go through St. Louis and see the arch. Dillon took three years of American History (and aced em I might add) which is great because I slept through AH. A good part of my current knowledge came from reading markers on the Iron Butt rally; In 07 I strung all sorts of Lewis and Clark sites together so we had some stuff to chat about.
The arch as viewed from the chair.
As we went west from St. Louis we got our first weather event of the trip. The sky started to get very dark and I started explaining the thought process that goes into dealing with storms. Do we stop now and seal up? When we do we'll get all steamy in our gear if we get lucky and miss rain, if we don't we could get totally soaked with can lead to hypothermia, even when it's 80 degrees out.
While I was explaining to Dillon that I might have blown the call we created a hill and I pointed out that what you see up there is a wall of rain, we're going to get very wet unless we make it to that exit before we meet rain.
I was off by about three minutes. We got under cover at a truck stop as it got really hairy, horizontal rain and lightning all around, good times! We literally just made it and I learned how tenuous the ME 880's tires can be in the rain as I broke the back end loose off the exit ramp. A decision was made to enjoy a truck stop lunch of hot soup and a sandwich. Meanwhile we could see the interstate get choked up as there were a few accidents to clean up. We passed on the pies as they were "boxed" i.e. not made on the premises.
In the 05 IBR I had an epic last day, a big part of which was a forced march from St. Louis to Denver on I 70. We stopped at a TA (truck stops of America) which brought back a flood of memories. I had a big fueling problem at the same stop four years ago next week, when the auto shut off on the pump did not work. I had my back turned and discovered this when I heard the hissing of fuel vaporizing as it ran down the tank and onto the motor; my training kicked in and rather than touch the handle I hit the emergency pump stop. Did you know that if you hit that button you stop every pump in the truck stop? Now you do. :)
We continued west to Kansas and the "tour du corn" as we like to call it. Did you know Kansas really is flatter than a pancake?
Entering Kansas (photo by Chacifer)
There's not much to say about Kansas, except to say the Best Western Angus is a wonderful surprise, especially the Angus part as I had a great KC strip for dinner. We said goodbye to Chace and took 159 south, not quite sure what we would find. I had wanted BBQ for lunch. When in New England eat Lobster, when in Missouri, try BBQ. This doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out but our rain delay and truck stop lunch pushed a pulled pork sammich off the menu so to speak but I made up for it with the KC steak.
Now all that stands between us an a night camping in the Rockies is the rest of Kansas and some nasty weather. Our plan was to get up at six, it's now 7:15, it's raining hard and the time between the flash and boom is under six seconds so Dillon is still sleeping and I'm blogging. I'm not opposed to getting wet but hard visibility cutting rain and lighting makes me happy to be in a hotel room vs on the bike.
Once the weather breaks we'll be taking 56 to US 50 and heading to the hills.
Right after I find some pepper spray.
