16 July 2010

Even though I thought I was dawdling, we managed to get underway as early as we ever have, before 8, and since we wouldn't need gas right away, we were riding!

Our only stamp of the day was going to be at the Harry S Truman National Historic Site in Independence. There's possibly a stamp at the farm, but we were surer of this, and it was easier access. Lots of street parking on a Friday morning, and a friendly ranger, who was sure we'd want to stay for the next tour. Boyd mollified her somewhat by buying a shirt, we took a few silly pictures and were on our way, with a stop for gas before getting back onto the interstate.

 

It's a lot humid-er than it's been; we're riding in the south, in the summertime. I don't notice how steamy I'm getting, until we start riding again after a stop, and the breeze through the Aerostich feels delightfully cool. I'm finally drinking from my tank bag reservoir once in a while; the last couple of days I haven't even bothered to refill or refrigerate it at our overnight stops.

So we're droning along in the early afternoon, when baza-a-am, we're strafed by a guy on a sport bike, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, doing at least 110. I never saw him coming, and didn't see him long as he cut through the fairly heavy traffic in front of us. I kept expecting (hoping?) to see him up the road surrounded by LEOs, but never did.

Traffic around and through St Louis was fairly heavy, but moved right along, a couple glimpses of the Gateway Arch confirmed that we were there.

Eventually we broke south on I-57 and saw signs for future road construction; the current construction was on the northbound side, and traffic was backed up for about ten miles. Thankful we weren't on the other side of the road, and sympathizing with the oblivious folks that hadn't quite got to the tail end of that line, we motored on.

We'd set a stopping point in Paducah, KY, and although it wasn't yet 1600, stopped at the exit we'd set, where there was a fair selection of motels. We pulled in to what appeared to be the Days Inn parking lot, and as we climbed off the bikes, noticed that it seemed a bit run down to be a major chain. The check-in clerk's claim that she only took cash, and was also the housekeeping staff, and, ultimately, her avowal that the Days Inn was across the parking lot had us head in that direction, where a couple of transients sitting on the curb declared that we'd stopped just in time.

There were grumblings of thunder in the background, but we didn't rush our check-in particularly. We humped our luggage up to the second floor room via an outside stairway, and covered the bikes just as a couple of fat drops started hitting. We were getting set up and settled into the room about ten minutes later when I thought I heard some rain over the drone of the air conditioner. I peeked out the door to be greeted by a deluge of frog-strangling proportions. We turned on the weather channel, where the "Local on the 8s" showed us an intense cell centered right over Paducah. Eventually it moved on, the sun and the humidity came back, and we wandered down the street a bit to a liquor / convenience store for dinner groceries.

States: Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky

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