Day 1.
August 21st, 2021.
My buddy Mark was up early on this morning as well. He was going to be riding out with me for a few miles to see me off and get me started on my trip out west.
We had previously arranged this and set a time for around 7: 00 a.m.
Mark and I live in the same residential complex and make time to get together during the warm months and ride together whenever our individual schedules allow.
We’ve logged quite a few miles together.
Mark rides a 2015 Honda NC 700x DCT and I know for a fact that he loves it very much, especially now that he has gotten so used to the automatic transmission/gear-shift feature it has.
Like clockwork he reached out to verify if we were still on time target. I responded, requesting a slight delay, on the agreement that I would pass by and “call for him” so we could take some photos with his little nephew, who was so enamored by the stories Mark had told him about my stuffed animals all strapped on the back of my bike (I never travel without them).
They each have a story and history with me and like all other things in my motorcycling life they will have a place dedicated to their story on the website. (It is already in the development stage and I will “dump it” when appropriately complete, so stay tuned.
Stopping by Mark’s, I put a smile on the little one’s face, chatted a while before Mark and I proceeded to ride off into the bright morning sunshine.
Heading south, we put ourselves onto Interstate 90 direction west, till he parted ways with me where the interstate joins up with the Ohio Turnpike, Interstate 80.
Grabbing my toll road ticket, I filtered onto the Turnpike and settled in for the long ride ahead.
As with the first day of any of my tours, the desire is to get as far away from home in the shortest time legally possible.
So I cranked up to the legal speed limit, maintaining “+5” m.p.h.
I was in no great hurry. For once on a trip, I really really wanted to slow down and smell the roses!
I have come to realize after many miles of touring, that blasting my way through locales and areas has made me miss things of interest I did not know were around the bend and defeats the whole purpose of getting out to see things and places of interest as a form of relaxation.
It becomes more stressful since you also have to maintain greater concentration on the road at higher travel speeds. No chance to look around or wonder what’s around the next bend or where that side road might lead to.
So I forged on.
My plan was to overnight in Illinois tonight.
For the first time on any of my tours, I had actually planned my stops for the night.
Typically, I roll into town, check out the neighborhoods and then pick a place to stay.
It has always worked for me that way.
This time though, not knowing in what way conditions would have been affected by the ongoing health crisis, I planned and made determinations ahead of time.
The GPS unit, as I had pre-planned, soon took me off the highway and into the countryside.
I was determined on this trip to see relatively more of the smaller towns of middle America.
The weather was great.
White puffy clouds complimented the rich blue sky, making for a wonderfully picturesque ambience.
I began to compose some lovely photos in my mind and no time at all I had my camera in hand, actually trying to create images I could see in my mind’s eye.
I began to “burn up” time, but hey, I was on vacation and this is what I had been planning for all these months - slow down and smell the roses!
I crossed into the sate of Indiana just after midday.
I was beginning to get hungry and decided that soon I ought to take a break for lunch.
That was just as well. I had been on the bike for quite a few hours already and a mandatory break would be beneficial.
It wasn’t long before I entered the town of Butler, IN.
I stopped to take a picture of a very colorful mural on a wall in the middle of the town which caught my attention.
It gave me pause and a chance to find out a little more about the town.
Butler came about because of the railway line being brought there in 1856.
Sometime in the summer of 1966, Butler was chosen to be the end point of a speed run made by a twin-jet engine powered train.
The rail line/tracks that ran between here and Stryker, OH along which it ran, were very straight and flat along this section which was required for and allowed the train to attain a record setting speed of 296 km/h (184 mph).
This American railway speed record still stands today!
As I motored along, I caught up with a train running on those same tracks parallel to the road, so I slowed down and maintained the same pace with it so I could spend a little while looking at all the contemporary art work it was adorned with.
It was running nowhere near that speed record I shared above!
I was able to sneak in a little bit of moving video footage as well.
After about a half hour of this I arrived in the small town of Walkerton, IN.
Pulling into a Casey’s Gas Station along this country road, I found a shady spot underneath a fully-foliaged tree, stripped off my riding gear and shirt in the now rapidly-heating up day and took an hour off the road to cool off and “put away” my Roti and Curry meal, and chased it down with some ice cold Gatorade.
I was content.
All was well and life was good!
A group of Harley-Davidson bike and trike riders returning from this year’s festivities in Sturgis, SD, pulled into the gas station looking for some Ethanol-free fuel and decided to share the cool of the shade with me for a little break when they found out that this station did not serve the fuel they were looking for.
They admired the ST and we made some good small talk and took a few photos for all of about a half hour at which time thereafter, I wished them all well, suited up and pulled away to resume my journey.
And yes, you do meet some nice people on Harleys!
(Hondas too!)
So in the heat of the early afternoon, I motored on towards my first night’s destination of the trip.
Part of my trip research of areas of my interest, included agricultural technology.
Of particular interest to me was the invention known as the Zybach Center Pivot Self-Propelled Sprinkling Apparatus, which I dare to say has been responsible for transforming the semi-arid regions of middle-America into the Agricultural powerhouse of the world that it is today.
(I will elaborate more on this in journals of the following days.)
As the GPS unit announced my arrival, red flags started going off in my head! (The neighborhood, the building in sore need of maintenance … I’ve done enough maintenance work in my years for umpteen motels and the signs of bad business were unmistakeable)
I checked in anyway - much against my gut feeling - and after unloading my luggage into the room I was seriously turned off by sheets and bedcover that probably had never been changed in goodness knows how long!
I made my way back to the office and very politely requested fresh bed covers and sheets and was met with such hostility and an attitude insinuating that since I had already committed to the room, it was what it was, and even if I checked out there’d be no refund!
Then that proverbial voice in my head - the one that always says “I told you so”, told me : “I told you Ernest, you should have listened to your gut upon your first impression”!
Secondly I just didn’t like the neighborhood, but I had been very tired when I rolled into town and decided to settle for what I had in front of my very own eyes.
I telephoned my wife and brought her up to speed on my current situation.
So being realistic now, I knew that even with clean bedding, I would not sleep comfortably, so I decided to pack up and go find somewhere else to stay for the night.
What I stood to lose was the price of the room.
Besides, if this was the way a proprietor had to operate to earn his money at the cost of good customer service, he probably needed the money more than I did.
So without a fuss, I re-loaded my stuff and headed out into the now dark-of-night.
I was so saddened and angered by the reception I had been given in “this town” that I refused to refuel in the neighborhood, opting to refuel along the highway when away from this place.
No way I was giving any more of my hard-earned money to this neighborhood!
I had no one to blame but myself.
All I wanted to do at this time was to put as much distance between this place and myself as I could!
It was close to 9:30 p.m. local time now and with all the construction work going on along the highway, traffic cones, bollards and lanes narrowed down to 1 in either direction, there was no “city light” in sight.I was literally in the middle of nowhere!
I had hoped to find a hotel right along the highway within a mile or two, but it looked like I might have a ways to go for that.
My fuel was low, after having rapidly knocked down the miles during the afternoon!
Now my heart was pounding.
My stubbornness and pride that made me not fuel up before leaving that neighborhood seemed like it would land me in a heap of trouble for the night.
Oh Lord!
What a day this was shaping out to be.
The only thing I could do was slow down, to decrease the fuel consumption of the bike.
So now I’m running so much slower than I could be, meaning that I’d be on the road for much longer, (undetermined period of time yet ‘cos nothing in sight), I was pretty tired from having been on the road all day and might run out of fuel if there was no accommodation close by.
Exit signs off the highway showed up after about 5 miles.
I opted to exit and luckily found a gas station not much further along.
Topping up the bike I made phone calls to my wife and daughters as I knew they were worried about me - I gathered this of course from the missed phone calls and text messages on my phone.
Setting them at ease for now, I made my way back to the interstate and resumed the travel, navigating a steady course, guided by the traffic cones that still forced a narrowing of the multi-lane highway down to one on each opposing side of the Interstate.
With 23 miles now behind me, bright lights pierced the pitch-black of night, presenting me with signs of some development and civilization.
I found an exit off the interstate that gave me quick and easy access into a Comfort Inn Hotel parking lot, where I was lucky to find a room for the night.
I was rather tired and failed to take notice of the construction details or even try to register and take stock of where I was in time and space and what all was around me.
It was 10:15 p.m. (local) when I was unloaded and was ready to settle down for the night.
More phone calls and e-kisses to my loved ones and I settled down for the night.
I was happy to be here. Much, much better neighborhood, close to the highway and a much higher end hotel, all making for a good night’s sleep!
So with no refund from the previous stop and the additional stop for this night, it made for a way over-budgeted expense on this day.
But I was safe and at ease.
In the back of my mind though, I hoped that these particular events were not setting the trend of things-to-come for the next 2 weeks of travel and adventure.
In a matter of sorts, this was part of the adventure I guess.
After all, if things don’t go wrong, it can’t qualify as an adventure right?
……….. so by the time I took my shower for the night it was getting close to midnight.
I reached into my luggage for a can of Vienna sausages, some Trail Mix (mixed nuts and dried fruits) an Apple Fruit Pie and a bottle of water, all of which I “downed” for dinner (After a handful of years on the road, I have learned to always carry some emergency provisions with me purposely for times like this when I am forced to skip normal meal times for one reason or another).
Falling asleep promptly - literally with dinner in my mouth, it had been a stressful latter part of the day and I felt lucky to have been able to avoid having a worse outcome.
“In the saddle” for 501 miles and 15 hours travel time, I daresay it had been an unexpectedly eventful day!