Day one dawned bright and sunny and beaut... oh, wait, no... we woke up to a thunderstorm! Just exactly what you hope for when you're setting out on a 900+ mile motorcycle ride, right? So, we set ourselves to packing the bikes and getting ready for the trip, hoping that it would blow over. In fact, it actually got worse for a time, but fortunately by the time we were packed, and had met Heather's sister at the Coffee Pot restaurant for a hearty breakfast (great Corned Beef Hash!), it had mostly stopped raining and the roads were just wet. Either way, it was still looking pretty cruddy, so we suited up in our rain gear, and packed our clothes and electronics into plastic bags to keep them dry. We got a later start than we thought, probably around 10AM, but given the weather, I'm not sure that was a bad thing.
This being the first time I have ridden a Harley (that happened to also be someone else's bike), I was less than thrilled with the idea of starting out in the rain. However, apparently I've gained enough XP for my motorcycle riding skill that I was able to manage the -10 rain and -5 unfamiliar motorcycle modifiers and keep the shiny side up. This is not to say that it was exactly easy. I definitely had a couple of close "saving throws" (ok, I'll stop with the gamer references for a while, I promise) where the bike fishtailed or the front tire tried to lock up on braking, but it didn't put too much of a damper on our travels. Once we got into Chicago, we headed towards Lakeshore Drive, and were able to see the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan, including Navy Pier, the McCormick center, etc which was really nice despite dampness and intermittent actual rain. Our rain gear kept us reasonably dry, and we drove out of the rain as we got out of the city. As an aside, by the end of the riding day, really the only part of me that was wet was the part of my jeans that stuck out of the bottom of my rain pants, which in turn had wicked moisture down my socks, making my boots pretty damp. Guess there's something to be said for overboots.
One thing to note, because we were avoiding interstates, this also had the practical upshot of allowing us to avoid Chicago and Indiana's repressive toll road system, with one small exception, where we were on a toll road for all of 2 miles to get from one secondary road to another. Chris had an EZ pass, but since I don't have one, I had to pay cash. The smallest bill I had was a $20, so I ended up with 18 one dollar coins as change - fun!
After we got out of Chicago and into Indiana on US-41 and 52, unfortunately the roads were pretty stereotypically midwestern. That is, flat, straight, and flanked by corn. As I will cover more in my actual post on my riding impressions, these are not bikes that really make a 1+ hour run at 75 mph exactly comfortable, so we were squirming a little between stops on this section. The one highlight was that we drove through a portion of the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm. While I have seen wind turbines before, this is the first time I was able to see them from a short distance like this, and it really did give a better impression of their size. I honestly don't understand why people are so worried about the aesthetics of a wind farm - I think they're sort of graceful and beautiful in an industrial sort of way.
We stopped for lunch (and gas - with a 3.5 gal tank, this is a regular occurrence) a bit late, but since we had gotten a late breakfast, we weren't really hurting for having pushed along for a few hours first. Lunch was White Castle. Since neither of us live near a While Castle, I was pleased to have found one right on our route - it's like going to In-N-Out Burger on the west coast - you gotta take advantage of the opportunity when it presents itself. A bit further along the path, we encountered a car show in a car dealer's parking lot, and decided we had to stop and wander around for a few minutes. It was pretty cool. They had the usual cross-section of muscle cars, but they also had a first generation Honda CVCC, which I'm pretty sure is smaller than a first-gen Mini, and a couple of nice choppers. We only spent about 20 minutes wandering around, but it was a nice diversion.
The second half of our trip brought us through the middle of the Purdue campus in West Lafayette. Another unforeseen upshot of getting a late start is the fact that we didn't come through Purdue until well after the football game was over. I don't know how Purdue is in terms of traffic pre/post game, but if it's anything like PSU, we would have been stuck in bad traffic. As it was, traffic was slow on our way out of town because of 2 or 3 different accidents.
Next stop was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This was mainly a place to allow us to stretch our legs, especially since we were mainly on the Interstate and there was some pretty major construction and traffic outside of Indianapolis, but we did take the obligatory pictures in front of the main entrance. From there, we headed for Greensburg, IN and our reservation at the Hampton Inn. It was well after dark, probably almost 8:30 by the time we arrived, and we were quite happy to be done traveling for the day. Last order of business was to find some food. There wasn't a lot of options, because Greensburg isn't exactly a huge town, but we ended up at Buffalo Wings and Rings, which had decent wings, good beer, and TVs where we could catch up on the day's college football action. We splurged and had dessert in celebration of my birthday, and then headed back to the hotel.
Preemptive Advil applied, we dragged ourselves into bed and enjoyed some needed rest before the next day of traveling. Day two would see us headed for Cincinnati, covering pretty much all of Ohio, and then a portion of West Virginia.
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