12 July 2007
Later start this morning, but it shouldn't matter; I'm only going as far as Xavier's. (Tried to call him last night, but no answer, and no call back--I'm speculating that they're up at Lake Muskellunge.)

Keeping the speed down to whatever the sign says is a pain. For a while, I tried telling myself that the speed limit was actually five mph slower, so it would feel like I was speeding, but it didn't work that well...

My ears are quite sore, to the point where I had to try something different. Instead of the molded ear plugs, I decided to use the old Sony MDR's I had along, and they're much less painful, although not as quiet. And if you tug on the cord, they can pull out of the ear--which happened. Rather than pull over to fix it, I tried sticking my finger under the helmet, and when that didn't work, opening the chinbar for more room. But the wind caught the visor, and tore it off the helmet.

I stopped as soon as I could, turned around and went back slowly, looking, past where I thought it had happened, then drove back again and didn't see it. I parked the bike on the side of the road, and walked back more than half a mile looking for it, on both sides of the road, but never did find it. Now, if I can't find a replacement shield, I'll have to buy a new helmet. I mean, I need one, but I sure don't want to be breaking in a new helmet with 8,000 miles still to go on this trip!

And now I had to hope that it wouldn't rain before I could get one. So of course, it did--once I crossed into Wisconsin and headed south, it looked nasty, and turned that way, for 10 miles or so. When the rain started, I crouched behind the windshield and avoided most of it that way. As long as the rain wasn't too heavy, that was almost OK, but when it came down hard it was almost impossible to see. I ran into spots of rain off and on for the rest of the day. (I considered deviating from the route to try and avoid where I thought it was going to be raining, but eventually decided that it was a crap shoot, and I might as well follow the GPS.)

When I got to Xavier's, the trailer was gone, adding to the speculation that they were up north; a call to my niece Kathy confirmed it. So I'll do laundry, check the weather, and if it looks like I can make it down to West Bend without getting wet, head for the MOA rally tomorrow.

States: Minnesota, Wisconsin
423 GPS miles (3494 total), 59.8 moving average, 72.9 max (call me chicken!).
next
home