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| Scenic views of I-70 in Kansas |
This is day one of what could easily be a 4,000-mile motorcycle ride over to Kansas City, St. Louis, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge, Nashville, and Bryson City North Carolina. We have a B&B rented just outside Bryson City where we'll spend a week with 2 other couples doing day rides out and around that area.
We have been planning and preparing for this trip for almost a year. In fact my friend John has probably been planning it longer than that. We did something similar to this over two years ago in 2024, but that time my motorcycle had a problem and I wasn't able to ride at all. Nannette and I rented a car in Nashville and just drove around behind the motorcycles.
So here's my generic plan.
Aug 27 & 28 - ride to my son Kyle's home in Missouri
Aug 29 & 30 - take my grandson Penn on an overnight ride to Hannibal MO
Aug 31 - Ride into Kansas city to tour the World War 1 museum, then the Truman Library
Sept 1 - Ride to St Louis and go up the Arch
Sept 2 - Ride to Vicksburg Mississippi and tour civil war battlefields
Sept 3 - Ride to Baton Rouge to meet up with the other couples (Nan won't fly in yet)
Sept 4 & 5 & 6 - Ride the Natchez Trace parkway
Sept 7 - Ride The Tail of the Dragon and other great roads to Bryson City. Nan flies into Ashville and drives over.
Sept 8 to 14 - Day rides around the Bryson City area.
Sept 15 - Ride to Chattanooga to tour civil war battlefields. Nan flies home from Ashville
Sept 16 - Ride to Shilo to tour civil war battlefields.
Sept 17 - Plans get more fluid. Try to visit a cousin in Oklahome
Sept 18 - ??? Head home
SO here's what happened today.
I've been ready for a couple of days. I've done a couple of test packs and loads of the bike. Yesterday I did a 150 mile loop around the area, fully packet, to see if anything would ride well, and it did.
I've been watching the weather and hoping that it would cook off, but kept telling me that Kansas would be in the mid 90s during the afternoons. But it also kept saying it would be cloudy most of the day.
Normally I start long trips by getting up at 4:00am and getting on the road. But I'm retired now and didn't want to rush myself. Plus I decided to take 2 days to get to Kyle's house so I figured it would be a cake-walk day, super easy.
I still got up at 6:00 but showered and had a casual breakfast. I didn't get out the door until 8:30. It felt really cool, probably the mid 60s so I wasn't worried.
I also decided to take a different route rather than out highway 24 to meet up with interstate 70. Instead I headed out through Falcon and then took the Elbert Road north to meet highway 86 and on to interstate 70. It's a longer drive but it's a much prettier drive too. And the road is in much better condition so you don't have those cement expansion joints that constantly bounce you on the motorcycle. All this together put me in Lyman at nearly 10:00. There's been many times I've made this drive and gone through linemen about 5:00 a.m.
I was feeling good so I decided not to stop at Lyman and kept on going for about another hour and a half. So my first stop was merely 11:30. Surprisingly the gas station was out of gas entirely so I just grabbed a small soda and moved on. About twenty minutes down the road I stopped at some big truck stop and then kept pushing on down the road. The temperature has constantly crept up until now it was over 90 degrees.
By 12:30 I was very ready to get off the bike and cool off. The town I pulled into had an Arby's. An Arby's is one of my standard travel go-tos. I've never had a roast beef sandwich upset my stomach while traveling. It's just meat and bread so it's pretty hard to screw up.
When I finished eating I went out to the bike and grabbed my evaporative vest. I was keeping it in a gallon Ziploc bag so I brought it into the bathroom and filled it about full of water to let the vest soak it in. I took it back out to the bike, removed it from the ziplock, and put the vest on. I used pretty cold water so it felt really good. Then I put my mesh motorcycle jacket over the top of that and got on to the bike to head off.
It felt really good. The evaporative cooling chilled me right down. But it only lasted about thirty minutes. Then it slowly started to warm back up. The vest still felt damp but the evaporative just wasn't working that well. I had brought a 2-gallon collapsible jug with me full of water. So I pulled off on a freeway exit and got off the bike to re-wet the vest.
Getting back on the freeway, it did feel pretty good again but not as good as the first while. Again after 30 minutes it started to dry out. This time I stopped at another gas station. I was only on half a tank but I went ahead and gassed up and took the vest into the bathroom to re-wet it.
This time it lasted maybe 45 minutes and then started to dry out again. Another gas station to wet the vest but this time I took my mesh jacket off to see if just wearing the vest would make it work better. It felt about the same. And all this time the temperatures slowly continued to rise. By now it was up around 97° And the wet vest didn't seem to do all that much. Especially since the last gas station had hot water in their sinks. But the water in my collapsible jug was pretty hot too.
I rode about another hour and a half and reached Hays, Kansas. The temperature was now over 100° and I was sweating constantly. I had planned to ride about another hour and a half but I really wasn't enjoying the ride. When I started this morning I had 3 L of ice-cold water in a hydration pack. It was nearly empty and I've been drinking constantly this whole time. I decided to call it a day and started looking for hotels here in Hays, Kansas.
The hotel was supposed to have an indoor pool and hot tub but when I checked in both were closed for maintenance. I was next door to a Wendy's so I grabbed a Cobb salad for dinner. The salad really hit the spot.
I put together a collage photo of grain elevators that I took while riding. Every time I've come through here I've commented about the only thing there is to see is grain elevators. This time I actually took the pictures to make the joke. I've also written this blog and probably by 9:00 I will be asleep.
Tomorrow morning I'll get up and start heading toward Kyle's house. I'm not gonna force a 3:00 or 4:00 wake-up but whenever I naturally wake I'll have some breakfast and head down the road.
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