Watch this space for reports, starting Friday June 9, 2006.
Report 1: 8:24PM CT Friday June 9. Iowa City, Iowa. 225 miles from Chicago. Left at 3:00PMCT, traveled I-290, I-355, I-55, I-80; arrived Iowa City at 7:15PM CT. Weather clear and traffic light once out of the Chicago area. Now at the Hampton Inn at exit 242, just west of Iowa City. 319-351-6600, room 231.
Report 2: 9:05AM CT Saturday June 10. Iowa City, Iowa. Raining here, but the western edge of this eastbound front is just 200 miles west of here - it is clear from in Omaha west until about sundown. So I am planning to get to Grand Island, Nebraska tonight, and on in to Denver/Colorado Springs on Monday. Now to get packed and head west.
Report 3: 8:00PM CT Saturday June 10. North Platte, Nebraska. 754 miles west of Chicago on I-80. About 90 minutes ago I stopped at Adair to refuel and to call Mike in Tallahassee for a weather report. He said a serious storm system was about 70 miles west of me, and headed east. North Platte was about 60 miles ahead, so I called the Hampton Inn there and made a reservation - the last non-smoking room, as it turned out. (The annual Buffalo Bill Wild West Rodeo, the annual Miss Nebraska Pagent, and the annual Nebraska Girls's Softball Tournament are here today! Most are staying at this inn...the lobby is a zoo.)
As I approached North Platte, large multiple bolts of think-bodied lightening were striking the North Platte area. Some were multi-branched and looked like flashing bright white trees, upsidedown from the sky. The storm was violent for about an hour, them moved on.
Report 4: 8:58 AM CT Sunday June 11. North Platte. Overcast and cool; the sun is starting to break through. The Colorado Rockies play the LA Dodgers at 1:00 MT, so I'll have 4 hours to make a 3.5 hour ride to the stadium for the game, if I decided to see it. I plan to be on the road by 9:45.
Report 5: 8:15 PM MT Sunday June 11. Denver. 1,081 miles west of Chicago. Today's game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Denver Rockies started at 1:05 PM MT, and I got there just in time for the last out in the 3rd inning. The Dodgers came from behind to win by 1 run. The run to Denver from North Platte - about 3 hours - was some of the most enjoyable motorcycling I have done lately - the weather was clear and warm (about 80 degrees), and the traffic was sparce and fast.
At one point, I fell in with a Chevy pickup and a Honda Odyssey that were cruising along at about 95 MPH. That lasted about an hour. The rest of the trip was at a leasurely 80 or so. Tomorrow, the weather favors an early run up and down Pikes Peak, so I will leave here at about 7:00 AM MT and get to PP at about 8:00 AM. After getting to the top and down, I'll turn east and head for Chicago.
Report 6: 7:12 AM MT Monday June 12. Denver. Weather clear and warm until isolated thunderstorms roll in around 3PM, according to The Weather Channel. High winds late yesterday afternoon tore the windshield off the bike, damaging the fastener on the lower left side of the molded clear plastic, but I was able to fix it. Maybe I'll stop in at the HD dealership near Pikes Peak and see if I can get a new one.
Report 7: 4:21 PM MT Monday June 12. Denver. The run up and down Pikes Peak took 90 minutes - from 8:58 to 9:45 going up, and from 10:10 to 10:50 coming down. It was beautiful - perfectly clear and noticably cooler with each 1,000 of altitude. At the top (14,110 feet above sea level, about 7,000 feet above the entrance to Pikes Peak Highway), I could feel the effects of the thin air; heart rate up, and a little lightheaded. The purple mountains were majestic, but I could not see any amber waves of grain today. Traction on the gravel and clay roads above 10,000 feet was a challenge, taking full attention, both upbound and downbound. Some of the switchbacks and most of the narrow gravely straightaways had no guardrails; looking over on the curves, when I dared, all I could see over the edge was little bitty tiny cars on thread-like roads about 5,000 feet below. To make it even more interesting, there were roadgraders and excavators working on a few of the tightest switchbacks.
Before getting to P.P., on the way south from Denver to Colorado Springs, just north of Castle Rock, the road turns a bend and opens on a valley that must be 10 miles wide. It stretches all the way from I-25 west to the base of the Rockies...way off to the west, in the bottom of the valley, I could see a very long train, headed by 5 locomotives, snaking through the valley...the cars stretched as far south as I could see, twisting around the contours of the land. It must have been 200 coal cars.
After getting down P's Peak, on the way back north on I-25, I noticed up ahead, off to the right, a gravel & clay road heading off to the east into the high mesas eastward. ("Hmmm...how do you get onto that interesting looking road?") So I got off the interstate highway at this boondocks exit, and I rode this dusty county road (Douglas County Road 47 (Greenland Road), as I recall, for about 10 miles. Then south on Mesa Road, then...on and on on a bunch of backroads. (Sigh: "35-acre homesites: $199,000.") The roads went over and around several mesa and a few buttes on the way north to Franktown then Castle Rock, where I got back on I-25 after about 2 hours.
(Sign seen today on a computer installation company truck, Castle Rock, Colorado, today, June 12: "Technologize Responsibly.")
Tomorrow, back to Chicago.
(Final) Report 8: 11:00 PM CT Tuesday June 13. Schaumburg. 17 hours and 2,260 miles later, home. I started out at dawn from Denver wearing shorts and lots of sunscreen, to get some tan on my legs, and froze. By North Platte, my legs were black as soot from all the junk from the road and off the engine, so I stopped at a McDonalds and put by long pants on. Richard called at that moment to tell me that he'd been made a partner in his law firm that morning, at a breakfast meeting of the firm's partners.
All the way over - through Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois - it seemed that the territory had two cultures; the culture of the baseball cap and the culture of the cowboy hat...on the land, at the truck stops and gas stations...it was either the farmers wearing baseball caps (John Deere, CAT, etc.) or the cattle and horse ranchers wearing broad-brimed western hats.
Tomorrow, it's wash the bugs and grease off the bike, and go to work.
