We arrived Home on Friday a day ahead of schedule. We were early because of the running ahead of the storms. Thursday was a miserable day. We woke up to rain and cold. Fortunately, we had the wisdom and the sheer exhaustion, to stay in a hotel on Thursday night. All day Thursday it rained. We were all just soaked. I don't think we even took a picture at all, except this one.
Our hotel for the night.For a while we all had plastic bags over gloves to try and stay a bit drier. It helped until the wind tore the bags. Then we stopped and bought rubber gloves to go over garden gloves. This worked pretty well. Jim's and Doug's rain suits worked pretty good for keeping most of them dry. But with as wet as it was, nothing was perfect, we all got wet. Our first thought in the morning was that we would ride out of the rain in a few miles. Nooooooo. Not even....At first I was wearing a leather jacket. That was not a good idea. I then put on a rain jacket and rain chaps. The rain chaps were ok except that the new wind shield on my bike funneled the wind and rain up between my legs and up the center of my body. It's great in the desert. It sucks in the rain! That means I was always sitting in a puddle, and the wind and rain went right in the zipper of my jacket. This didn't make me real happy, nor comfortable. When we finally stopped for the night, I think I was colder than I have been in 20 years or more.
It rained until we stopped for the night, near Champaign, IL.
By morning the rain had stopped and the sky was not terribly threatening, although rain was in the forcast. We packed all of our still pretty wet gear, clothes and stuff and got ready to roll one more time. We had a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby, then were on the rode once again.
We had just over one hundred miles to Indianapolis then about a hundred home.
The ride was cold but the rain did hold off all the way to Jim's house where we officially ended this road trip with 7698.1 miles!
7698.1 mile....no mechanical problems of note.....one tire change, not serious... no injuries, slight sunburn.... no accidents.... no serious animal encounters, 'cept the skunk and that didn't turn serious and the bears that ignored us.....and surprisingly...no one really tried to run us over....except that one lady in Carmel, but even she didn't try real hard.
We did note several times through out this trip how people tended to give us added lee way, motioned us all three to go through stop signs or lights together, most usually didn't try to cut between us. It was actually noticeable that people tried to accomodate us. It was really quite a surprise!
Some lessons....a Wide Glide is not a touring bike, but it isn't bad, after market wind shields are for bugs only!
All in all, one terrific month of riding through this great country of ours!
We have a bunch of pictures yet to load up here. Between the 4 of us we took nearly 3000 pictures! (we won't load them all) Doug was by far the most prolific photographer, but then, he was the unofficial, official potographer for the group. His total was at least 2087, maybe more. I'm still looking. Between Jim and Pam there were 586, and for me, a paltry 311. An awesome collection of.... mostly... reasonably ok photos...a few really bad ones....some that can't be readily identified...and some really, really good ones. We still don't have Doug's 35 mm photos. That may take a while. When he switches to the 35mm, it usually means you're in for a treat. Some of his Grand Canyon photos from 2007 were simply fantastic!
I still want to get some last thoughts together from everyone and post them here. I also want to post more photos. If you're interested check back in a few days and maybe we'll have more of them up.
To those out there who followed this little adventure of ours, thanks for coming along, hope you enjoyed the ride. I know we did! This blog part was fun to put together too. It gave us a chance to kick around the days ride, and just recount the day and compare notes.
Maybe we'll do something like this again.
To Doug, Jim, and Pam, was this a hell of a ride or what!!!?
The following pictures were taken at Big Sur by our California friends Barbara and Ben.
Barb sent them along with a short note.
In both photos Pam's trying to hide, note the hat.....
Hello Ohio Friends, Thank you for the photos! They add story to our trip and our grandkids (8 & 10) chose them as their favorite out of nearly 500.
I have many of the scenic route you were on, from Malibu to Fort Bragg (over the Golden Gate), to Leggett up 101. Giant redwoods,
beaches, wine country, Hearst Castle etc. Would be glad to share if you missed photos of something special. Hoping you continued
on having a wonderful vacation and arrived home safe and sound.
From Anaheim, California ........Safe travels, Barbara & Ben
Barbara H.
Indeed we did continue on, and in the end, arrived home safe and sound.
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