Day 2

Day 2 was a day of flat fields and weather. We saw mile after mile of green fields, and one gorgeous patch of black eyed susans inside a highway interchange cloverleaf. Then the ominous gray clouds that had loomed for miles delivered on their promise.

We got caught in torrential downpours for over 2 hours --the kind of rain that comes down so hard that car windshield wipers can’t keep up, and cars pull over under overpasses to wait out the worst of it. When they get back on the road, they drive with their flashers, go slow, and make the best of it. In the midst of that were four bikers, hunkered down low in their seats, helmets thrust forward determinedly into the wind.

Motorcycles don’t have windshield wipers. Because of this, windshields are sized so that you can look over them. However, rain still hits your helmet and/or goggles and visibility is still poor. At one point, we all pulled of the road behind a long line of cars that had stopped on the shoulder, and we ran over to the ditch where elevation was lowest. We were truly expecting to see a funnel cloud any minute. Maybe we weren’t in Kansas yet, but a tornado with a witch on a bicycle and Toto in a basket would not have seemed out of place.

Water hit my face, drained down my neck, and poured under the collar of my “rain jacket,” soaking my t-shirt underneath and wicking down to the waistband of my jeans. I felt cold rain running down inside the arms of my jacket. But still we pressed on.

In my melancholy, I thought about how a cross country trip by motorcycle is much more sensory experience than by car. It involves all your senses instead of just sight. You start out in the morning in crisp air and feel on the verge of being cold. Then the sun rises and you warm you up. You drive by a field and smell freshly mown hay. You take a side road and smell fresh lavender. You have a panoramic view unobstructed by a car roof or door panels.

Of course, if you are going for sensory experience, you don’t get to order just all pleasant experiences. Gotta take it all, my friend: the spectacular and ecstatic along with the extremely damp. Apparently, miserly makes me philosophical. So sue me.

We pressed on until the next gas stop where we complained about the weather and thought proudly of ourselves as some truly tough bikers. I opened the pocket of my rain jacket to remove my iPod, and it poured out with about two and a half cups of rain collection. Cha-ching. The cost of the trip just went up by a replacement cost of an iPod nano.

This is probably an excellent time to mention how a modern biker travels. There was undoubtedly a simple time of Easy Rider, with a couple of badass guys on bikes with minimal gear. This trip is not that time. I have a GPS, and iPod, another backup iPod, a Bluetooth motorcycle helmet that transmits the GPS voice to speakers in the helmet, a Bluetooth intercom system so I can talk to L in her helmet, a digital camera, a laptop to blog at campsites, and the campsites now typically provide WiFi. It is a different age, folks.

Day 2 recap: 450 miles, RV campground in Peoria, IL
2 states: Indiana, Illinois