Day Eight - Truckers

Start - Mentor, OH

Stop - Duluth, MN

Today's miles - 873

Total - 6,081

Before I get into today's report, I want to make a recommendation:  The next time you have spent 24 hours on the road, having had three hours of sleep before leaving, and having taken two naps laying on the parking lot in turnpike service centers (yeah, the next time that you find that happening to you), I highly recommend the Best Western in Mentor, OH.  The place itself is a bit foo-foo for me (modeled after the home of hometown hero, James Garfield, the 20th President of these United States, who was quite unfortunately shot to death after four months in office...but I digress...)

Anyhow, the place is fancy and maybe a little bit spendy but the air conditioning / mattress / pillow / blanket combination was worth every penny.  I haven't had such a nice hotel bed since the synod assembly was at the New Orleans Sheraton.  And the shower!!!  It was the most memorable shower I've had since the time I rented a shower at the truck stop in Belle Fouche, SD, my first shower after nine days of riding and sleeping on the ground during the 2010 Hoka Hey.

I'm glad I trusted my instincts and stopped when I did.  It make for a great break and this morning I left feeling like myself.  I was itching to ride.

In terms of today's ride, there isn't a whole lot to report.  If you begin east of Cleveland and your goal is to get to Duluth, you basically go west on I-90 and turn right in Eau Claire.  That's about it in a nutshell.  Although today I did use my GPS instead of my route card.  I had little fear that I would be routed through Canada.  And I'm glad I did as I learned something - the best way to ride through Chicago is to ride around Chicago.  It was very pleasant.  I just followed the roads that the GPS told me to follow and every few minutes I handed $1.50 to some over-educated person in a bad mood working in the toll booths.  I am SO done with toll roads.  But the ride was perfect.  No rain.  No traffic jams.  Just lots of miles.

Today was a big mind picture day for me.  The first mind picture (pictures I thought about taking but didn't take time to take) was of my bike in front of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH.  I didn't stop but I thought about it.  Then I realized that I really didn't care.  Why is the R&R HOF in Cleveland anyway?  And yes I know that Cleveland had the Wolfman Jack radio DJ of the Midwest but the very fact that he was LIKE Wolfman Jack instead of the other way around tells me he was second fiddle.  Besides, what is Cleveland besides "like Chicago but less interesting?"  Those were my thoughts so I passed it by.

I also passed by the World RV Museum in Elkhart, IN.  And the factory where my little house was made.  Those were tough ones to skip.  Back in the 1960's, my dad - who by then had moved on to wife and family #2 - bought an old bookmobile that didn't run at an auction.  He hauled it home, rebuilt the engine, gutted the inside, built some bunks and a table, cut a hole in the back and installed a ramp so that they could haul my little sister's pony.  Seriously.  My dad was a mechanical genius.  Fast forward many years and he had been at a new job selling RV's for a living when he was invited to participate in a dealer's council (a way for RV manufacturer's to give sales guys a heads up on new models and to get feedback from them.)  My dad told the story of the bookmobile.  The next year that manufacturer came out with a line of what became known as toy haulers.  Dad died believing he had been something of an innovator in the world of toy hauling RV's.  I, by the way, was his final customer. He sold my little house to me from the rehab hospital he was at a month before he died.

(Quick aside to that:  I checked the internet tonight and, according to rv.net, various types of homemade toy haulers were made through the years, the first commercially crafted ones in 1974.  So Dad, rest in peace, and I still think the bookmobile was brilliant and I'm very proud to have been your last customer.)

The next mind picture I took was of my bike in front of the Notre Dame football field with Touchdown Jesus behind it.  I didn't go there either but I did ride by the exit.  I realized that I didn't really care about Notre Dame.  I liked Lou Holtz but that's about it.  And Notre Dame has been irrelevant in basketball since Kelly Tripucka channeled Freddie Mercury back when Digger Phelps was the coach.  "Digger", by the way, is an awesome name for a basketball coach.  Or any coach for that matter.

Back in the summer after 9th grade, my basketball team played a tournament in Aberdeen, SD.  Our coach was a great guy who worked for my town's recreation department named Don Beck.  We, of course, nicknamed him "Digger."  We won the tournament and that name stuck with Digger for the rest of the time he spent in Wahpeton.  You gotta love that.

And these, you see, are the sorts of thoughts you have while riding 873 miles down the road between Mentor, OH, and Duluth, MN.

My last mind picture was of my bike in front of Lambeau Field in Green Bay.  My GPS didn't take me there and I didn't fight it.  I had a long way to go and I don't much care for the Packers anyway.  But my friend Cory does and he might have appreciated the picture.  At least I thought about it.  And it IS the thought that counts, right?

I did have a couple of way cool things happen today.  I'll set this story up by saying that sometime in the past few months, I was talking to someone about this ride that I'm on, and they told me the story of their friend, Sandi, who decided to buy a Harley Davidson and ride around the country.  So she did. She put 10,000 miles on it in two months, rode out to Oregon and back, and then left in April to ride some more.  Anyway, a great story.

So today I was riding somewhere west of Cleveland (still not terribly interesting but their baseball field looks cool next to the freeway), when I come up behind two Harleys that seemed to be riding WAY too close together.  I'm a stickler for not riding side by side.  Only novices do that until someone teaches them that "yes, I know they did that in Easy Rider but that was for the sake of the camera and it isn't safe."  (Hell's Angels also do that but who am I to complain about that?)

So I come up behind these two bikes and I pass them.  I notice that the woman is leading and I think that is both unusual but also very chivalrous of her partner.  And off I go.  Later, I'm getting gas at yet another turnpike service center (they became service plazas in Indiana) and who should pull in but my two new friends.  We all gassed up, I went in to get some coffee, they parked and then walked back over to me.

"So where in Texas are you from?" says the woman.  "Houston." I reply.  "So are we." she says.  "Hi, I'm Sandi and this is Trey."  So I told her the story I had heard from a friend about a woman named Sandi who bought a bike and headed to Oregon.  "THAT'S ME! I'M THAT SANDI!"

I swear, you could make this stuff up but I'm not.  Meet Sandi from Houston:

I have no doubt in my mind that someday soon Sandi is going to meet Gonzo somewhere and they'll start telling stories.  Before long they will both share how they met a tall pastor from Houston on the road and they will both agree, "The dude could use to lose some poundage."

My last surprise was needing gas at the exit for the Wisconsin Dells.  The absolute best vacation I ever took with my kids was there.  THAT required a real picture.

But the title for today's entry was "Truckers" and I haven't even gotten around to that.  I just want to go public with my appreciation and respect for people who drive trucks for a living.  I'm serious.  I'm out on the road having fun and they are out there day after day making a living. If they aren't moving, they aren't making money.  Those turnpikes I hate? They are on them every day, in every kind of weather, dealing with all those drivers who flunked "lines" in kindergarten.  So I consider myself a friend of truckers.

When they put on a turn signal in front of me, I pull over and slow down traffic so they can move over.  When I see them coming up behind me with a full head of steam, I get out of their way. I wave at them.  I'm their best friend on the road.  So that is what I did much of today - I was nice to truckers and it was fun.

I got to Duluth so I can get my bike serviced first thing in the morning.  I have almost 6400 miles on my oil and that isn't nice to my bike.  Then I have a long day of riding tomorrow in beautiful Minnesota before heading into God's country.

By the way, if anyone wants to stretch a Four Corners Ride into a Six Corners Ride like mine, come the way I did up 53 North.  When you are still over 10 miles from Superior, WI, you come to the top of a hill looking out over a valley.  Way off in the distance you can see Lake Superior. That moment makes the ride worth every bit of the time.

P.S.  Those keeping score of such matters, I'm still wearing the same jeans and shirt I was wearing when I left Houston.  I'm saving my clean pair for Sunday with My Sisters.  You just gotta love road trips!