Bill writes from the East Coast:

July 11, 2006
Day three has proven to be....interesting. We started out in Carlyle, IL. and finished in Lawrence KS. I've lost track of the mileage. Somewhereover 300 or so.

First off I want to apologize for the good people of western Illinois andMissouri, but there just isn't much in the way of scenery. Corn and soybean fields with the occasional suburban sprawl tossed in. So I have no landscape pictures for you today. But we did have some rain.

We started the day off in the rain. Then, about 40 miles down the road, at a gas stop, Cris developed a problem with his electrical system. So we waited under a gas station canopy for about a half hour until he got the problem sorted out. When he was ready to go the heavy rain had already passed over us and before too long we were out of the rain altogether. So, thanks to Cris we stayed considerably drier than we would have otherwise. At the next gas stop Greg also developed an electrical problem. Fortunately, it was just a loose battery connection and easily fixed. The fact the Adam has a meter with him certainly helped resolve this one quickly.

The next stop was Sedalia, MO. This is Moe & Christine's old stomping ground and the arranged another barbecue at the bike shop where they used to buy their bikes. The folks at Yaeger Bikes put on a nice grill for us. And we met up with Frank Stewart. He'll be riding with us to Rapid City. So now we're eleven bikes again. Greg bought a nifty knew windshield at the bike shop. It's tinted and everything.

The run to Lawrence was mostly uneventful. There was this one nice lady in a convenience store that referred to us as 'that motorcycle gang'. She got a full explanation and a kazoo. She went away smiling. The kazoo's by the way, are a big hit everywhere we go. Moe gave one to this young woman at a gas stop. She had silver sparkly shoes that caught our attention and Moe thought a pink kazoo would go well with the ensemble. As it turns out pink was her favorite color. She went away happy also.

We meet such great people on this ride. On the first day's ride David and Henry left their digital camera at a gas stop in Aurora, West Virginia. Well, the folks there found the camera and managed to track me down through the credit card receipt to let me know they had it and how could they get it back to David. So how cool was that!? The camera and David are well on their way to being reunited. Many thanks to Skyler Freeman and her family for being so nice.

Lawrence is a nice college town. It also happens to be where my daughter lives. We met up with her and her husband Dave for dinner at the Old Chicago Pizza restaurant. We were joined by Cris' parents, who are two of our most loyal supporters, Bob and Karen Dopher. After that it was off to my most favorite ice cream shop in the USA. Sylas and Maddie's Ice cream is in downtown Lawrence. It's on Massachusetts Ave between 10th & 11th streets. They make the best triple fudge and chocolate fudge brownie ice cream. If you find yourself in eastern Kansas you should definitely drop in. The place is named, by the way, for the owner's two cats.

The weather report for the rest of the trip has only three words in it...really darn hot. Dodge City is looking at 100 tomorrow and it'll just get hotter as we get closer to Rapid City. So we'll get a taste of what the western group has had to deal with for the last few days.

That's all for now.
Be well
Bill

Greg writes from the East Coast:

Tuesday, July 11th
Question: What begins with water, ends with water, and has plenty of electricity and pressure in between? How about our day from Carlyle Illinois to Lawrence Kansas?

The water at the beginning was provided from the sky. We started in the rain from the Super 8 motel, and that lasted until about 10:30. Fortunately, (or unfortunately), we missed a good deal of that rain because exactly 9.1 miles into the morning, Cris' bike Roxie decided to flex her ride-stopping muscles and exhibit some of those well-documented electrical "issues" for which she is (in)famous.

After a few starts and stops along the interstate, Cris managed to limp the bike into a BP station, around the 40 mile mark for the morning. We spent the next half-hour or so watching Cris lift his gas tank to get at the coil, re-tighten everything, dry everything, and reassemble the bike. We rode on, with Roxie purring along like nothing had happened. She's apparently like the deranged cat we have at home. She'll purr and play and suddenly WHAM she claws you just for fun.

As Bill noted, the good news is that the rain pretty much stopped while we waited on Cris, although a couple of people told us it was really rough in front of us. We also heard every estimate from 1/2 hour to 3 hours to our next destination. It's almost as if the locals in every town are out of sync with the highway times.

At the next gas stop, I turned on the key and heard a "pop" and the electrical system went down. I thought it might be the master fuse, but it turned out to be loose connections on the battery from where I'd re-installed the heated gear leads. Fitch had a meter and we tested it... I'm not convinced that he has the meter because he's a technician. I think it's because he rides the Triumph.

Lunch in Sedalia was perfect. Thanks to Larry & Rick and everyone else at Yeager Cycles for a great time. The new windshield allows more wind and bugs, but we're still trying it out. At least it doesn't put that curved line right in the way of my vision, as the standard one did.

After that late lunch, we rode on to Lawrence in the bright sun and increasing heat. A quick change and a jump in the pool cured the hot day very quickly, thus bracketing the day with water. After all, riding in the rain is just like swimming, only without the fun.

As Alice, Matt and I were pulling out to go shopping, Moe noticed that Matt's tire was slack. We check the pressure, and rather than seeing the 42-44 psi I was hoping to find, we saw 11 psi... no, 10 psi... wait a minute... 9 psi... I grabbed the compressor and tire repair kit out of the saddlebag, and we had it patched pretty quickly. The 3 of us then ate at Zen Zero, a funky-trendy Thai restaurant on the main drag of Lawrence. Same place that we had lunch last summer. After dinner we wandered the streets and waited for the others to show up at the ice cream parlor. The three of us then went shopping, and as we returned to the hotel, the bottom dropped out of the sky. A deluge of rain had us scrambling for cover, especially since Kansas is a no-helmet state. We had to finally pull over under cover and wait it out, only 1 block from the hotel. At least tomorrow is supposed to be warm!