Sun-day, SUN-day, Sun-day!!

So what to post for today. Well…we got up. And we hit the road. And we rode. We put Indiana behind us, shot through Ohio and West Virginia and are now in Pennsylvania, just about one hour north of Pittsuburgh. Just under 500 miles for the day, so not too shabby, considering the directions we were using to locate the Biker Memorial weren't very reliable and we got turned around on some deep, back roads and lost some time there.

The sun was frikkin’ brutal today, which was surprising. Here we’ve just spent a week out in South Dakota with temps which ranged between 95 – 100 daily, and we fared better in that, than we did in one morning, today. It was humid as hell, but how that caused the sun to be so much more intense is beyond me. We both have some burning as a result, despite each having SPF 50 on. Weird. But it started to cloud up a little after 1 or so, but I’ll get to that later.

We did manage to locate the aforementioned Biker Memorial (in Hopedale, Ohio) and snapped some shots of it. I’ll do a full write-up on that later when I have…say it with me…a better connection, so that I can post the pics.

We passed a pretty bad accident today – one car was banged up and off to the side, a mini box truck was spun around backwards in the median…and there must have been a third vehicle of some sort, because right where the accident happened, we were on a bridge and when we passed by, a State Trooper was putting out a fire on the slope of grass, leading down below our range of vision. If someone did indeed go down there, it couldn’t have been good for them.

Something on a lighter note; we were going past a huge field of corn at one point (I know; a field of corn! What were the odds of finding one of those??), and there was a road passing right through the middle of it. There was an 18-wheel rig (no trailer) going through the field, but because the corn was so high, all you could see was the top 1/3 of it. So it basically looked like a shark fin, gliding through a field of corn. Which was a pretty cool sight, actually.

Oh yeah; at one point, we were idling along at a measly…oh…85 miles an hour (in a 55 zone) when we came around a corner and there was a Statie on the side of the road, radar going. As soon as we passed, he put his lights on and started to pull out. The road was curving fairly hard to the right, so no sooner had we seen his lights go on, than we lost sight of him in the bend. Figuring it’d be better to just pull over and not risk pissing him off any more, we rolled to a stop in the breakdown lane. And waited. And waited some more. Several cars passed us…but no cop?!? We looked at each other, shrugged, and kicked the transmissions into gear and blasted off again. Even now, we have no idea why he didn’t come around the corner, tickets in hand, but we aren’t complaining.

Rain. We encountered our second rain storm of this trip, and because we seem to enjoy this kind of nonsense, we played tag with it several times. The only problem with playing tag with a thunderstorm is that the storm doesn’t care about who is ‘it’, it only wants to soak you. And it always wins. It was raining so hard that just about all the traffic was pulled over into the breakdown lane with their flashers going. There were so many yellow flashing lights that it looked like we were riding in a construction zone. We managed to find a spot under a bridge which had already been claimed by one biker (thankfully, there was room for a couple more – us!). When the rain finally passed, we fired the bikes up and headed back out…only to have the storm swing in and nail us again within two miles. So we found another bridge to hide under, etc., etc. When we were finally convinced that it had indeed passed us for good this time, we rolled out again – only to find the temps soar back up into the 90’s. High humidity again…oh boy, what fun. And not to have our previous rain adventure (up in Canada) be outdone, we managed to have the storm catch us a third time, about a half-hour outside of our current location. So we were pretty drenched when we checked in – earning us some sympathetic looks from the owners.

But not all was lost. We managed to find a KOA again, unpacked and shot off to a pub that Zig noticed on the way in. The food was good, the beer was cold…and the best part? They sold beer to go!! So now we’re back at the site and enjoying some cold frosties.

Chatted with Pat a bit ago and our plan is to arrive in the Olean area around noon, noon-thirty. We have to stop at Jamestown HD along the way and pick up some fluids so Zig can do the next service on his bike. Aside from that, I imagine we’ll be catching up with Lynner and kicking back for a bit. Although, we’ve had enough sun for a while – we may opt to find some shade to hang out in. We’ll see.

I think that about wraps things up for today’s events. So until next time…

Ride Hard, Take Chances