Well, despite being in the "clear," this is what I saw. This would be behind us. Sorry, no view of what was ahead.
No big deal at all. We got wet. Exactly 647 tiny rain drops. It was that horrible. Gradually, we broke out into clearing skies. It was very cool while we were in the "clag" as we pilots like to say. The bottoms of the clouds, only about 100' up were ragged with more layers of gray ragged clouds above them. That turned to solid overcast, followed by wisps of blue sky and then, like magic, the sun poked out behind us.
Since the weather was looking worse going east, Mike decided to join me the rest of the way to Des Moines and then cut a path southward to St. Louis and hopefully stay behind the weather. Enroute, I thought about Omaha Nebraska only being an additional 100 miles, so I invited him to tag along the rest of the way. That gave him a straight shot down I-29 and another 1.5 hours behind the weather. I know he got wet; but, I haven't heard how bad it was yet. I know he's safe and resting for the night.
Back to Iowa. It's beautiful farm country. Even the Western part of Illinois is great. The eastern part, like the Chicago metro area totally sucks; but, if you simply carve that part of the state off the map (and all the big shot politicians from that area) off the map, you have a pretty cool state. Need pictures of this part of the ride? Take a picture of a corn field and one or two with a corn field and a red barn and bright blue sky in it. Multiply that times 10 billion and you get the picture. It is gorgeous and I would do that ride again in a heartbeat...just not the Chicago part.
Nebraska is equally beautiful and green. The interesting thing about Nebraskan motorcycle riders is that some of them like to tow their boats behind their motorcycle. Yeah, no kidding. Both times, the biker was in the opposite lane. Sorry, no pics of that. I wish I had it. I would put it with my picture of a guy on a small motorcycle with a 600 pound pig strapped to the back. The other thing I noticed about Nebraska motorcycle riders was that there are no crotch rockets to be seen more than 20 miles outside of any major city. Big bikes only and it seemed like most of them were packed solid, some with trailers and many with stuff bungee corded everywhere. I saw a couple more crop dusters and bi-planes. Corn Huskers seem to love yellow bi-planes. By the way, there's a Corn Huskers driving school.
After a long time, Nebraska turns to Colorado. How long? I don't know. 2 tanks maybe. It's all a green, blue and occasional red barn blur. Again, I'd go back to Nebraska. Sorry I don't have pics. I was on a mission to complete the bun burner 1500 - that's 1500 miles in 36 hours. Mission complete by the way.
The eastern part of Colorado is ugly and reminds me of Texas. I had daymares for many miles. It's very brown. After all that green, brown sucks. I stopped in some horrible little Sinclair gas station to complete my bun burner paperwork. The town wasn't or ever will be memorable. In fact, I don't think there's anything there other than the gas station - population 3 probably. With me, that made 4. After a well deserved break, I cleaned up the guts from all the bugs that decided my bike was the best bike to commit suicide on, and rode west for Loveland. Tomorrow is the Walden loop through the Rockies - 220 miles of sight seeing instead of plowing miles under my wheels. I am totally looking forward to this. There's a small chance of a thunderstorm. I'm not worried in the least. You can see a thunderstorm coming for a hundred miles. In fact, I was watching the storm below build for hours while coming across I-76 and Rt. 34. The whole time, I could hear Boss Spearman saying to Charlie Waite "I wonder if she'll get over this-a-way." Guess the movie.
Once I finally got off the interstate highway, I saw something a little different - golden fields. I don't know what this is, early wheat crop maybe? Not the storm building in the background. That's the same storm that became what you see in the previous picture. It just got meaner as the day went on.
I wanted to get the pictures of this field and pulled onto the shoulder. I don't do this often because it scares the hell out of me. Too many people aren't paying attention and could hit me or my bike. That being said, I saw lots of people texting and driving. I kept my roadside time very brief and moved on. Sometime later, I saw this corn field that was seemingly endless. County rt. something or other provided me an opportunity to pull off and get some pics.
County Rt. something or other doesn't go very far before it becomes a dirt road. No thank you, I'll stay with pavement. Not that I'm not adventurous; but, you have to remember, at this point, I've traveled about 1800 miles in the last 2 days. I don't need to be riding over anything that isn't smooth and even.
Right about now, it was getting warm. It was around 87 degrees. We started out at 65 and I spend the majority of the day in the mid 70's. Tired and warm, I decided to stop at a Fridays and get something to drink and find out how far I was from Loveland, check the weather and check on Mike again. My waitress was Jerry and she was very nice. She sat and chatted with me for a few minutes. She's a Geography student. We talked about Esri, the company I'm consulting for and she knew exactly who they were. She should, they are the leader in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). I had one glass of iced tea and ran out of there due to the storm in the weather pic above. If there was any chance the storm was going to get over this-a-way, I wanted to be in Loveland when it happened. Mission accomplished. Right after leaving Fridays, I got my first glance of the Rockies. They are buried in haze this evening. Maybe tomorrow, I'll ride away from them a bit for a picture before I head into them for more. It seems that Loveland hotels are all booked on the weekends. I got the last room at a super-8. There were 2 bikers that didn't get a room. I'm nice; but, not nice enough to share my room. I pointed them back toward Greeley. I'm willing to bet they can get a room there and it's only 30 minutes away.
That's all for tonight. Tomorrow, the weather picture is promising - only a 20% chance of thunder storms. After I ride the loop, I may continue on my trip North for a little bit. I may not be able to get a room in Loveland tomorrow night anyway.
I forgot what FLAT really looked like. Pretty country though.
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