Day 12 – May 30, 2010

I got up before 6:00 this morning to say good-bye to all my friends.  A lot of them were lined up to ride as a group to be in the protest parade, Rolling Thunder.  The Pentagon parking lot gets very hot on a day like today.  Quite a few people were leaving today to go home.

We left at 7:30.  There were 13 bikes in our group with Larry leading us.  I knew that they planned to go on hwy 50 to do the scenic route.  After 45 minutes or so, Jerry, (Ray Adams' Brother), got out of line and pulled up next to me and said I can't handle going this slow, I'm going take I-81 up to I-70.  I said me too, so I pulled up next to Sven and told him to tell Gary that I would call him tonight.  I rode at almost 100 mph for a couple of miles before I caught up to Jerry.  We rode between 80 and 85 mph most of the time. There was a LOT of cops out on this Memorial Day Sunday.  Most of them had cars stopped when we flew by them.  We slowed down a little when we passed radar cops that were in the median as we waved to them.  I still don't know why they just sat there. It must have been our lucky day, 3 or 4 times like that.  We ran about 118 miles for the first fuel run and a fill up, and rest room stop and back at it again.

The next fuel run was 128 miles and I took 4.89 gallons in my 5 gallon tanks.  OK I will stop sooner if we stay at above 80.  It is getting hotter out and about 30 miles before we stopped for fuel again my right side running board just fell down in front.  A bolt either broke off or fell out.  I pulled it back up with my heel and I hoped that it would stay with only one small 1\4" bolt holding the rear of it balanced in place.  If it fell down all the way and caught the pavement, it might not have not been very pretty.  At the gas stop I was prepared to wire the board up and I discovered that the bolt was still there!  It backed off all the way from the bracket and was just waiting for me to re-thread it in and tighten it up.  I got that done just as Jerry got done with his gas and rest room stop.  It's all good, and the bike is running very well at 80-85 mph.....

I got a message on my phone from Gary telling me the possible plan is to stay at the same motel in Brookville, Ohio that was used when we went east.  Jerry took off on another road heading North as he lives in Michigan.  I pulled into the motel at 4:20 and got a room and left Gary a message that I was here.  At 7:30 he called me and told me they were in the lobby.  I arrived over 3 hours before they did and had plenty of time to try to get the picture sending done for this trip.  My computer, (me) has had problems sending the pictures.  When Gary got settled in my room we headed out to the lobby and I found Mike, Tony, and Steve out there too.  A few of us walked next door to the restaurant, only to find out that it stopped serving 5 minutes before we walked in!  Down the street to the Waffle House, seven of us went to get something to eat.  Gary and Terry rode 14 miles back east to get a steak.  He is still not back, but he finally did call Nancy, after Nancy called Joni only to find out that I had been at the motel for hours, and nobody else was there yet.  She was a little worried because yesterday afternoon Gary had a flat rear tire and could not find where the air was leaking from.  He had to air the tire up a few days back too.  I got a bottle of water and poured some on the valve stem where it came out of the mag wheel.  Gary saw bubbles coming from the base of the stem.  He just had a new rear tire put on before he left Illinois.  They did not do a very good job if the stem is leaking.  The tire is very badly worn on both sides and needs to be replaced AGAIN, as far as I can tell.  Gary borrowed a 12-volt tire pump and had to air it up twice today.  It went from 45 psi last night to 30 psi this morning.  We have a light 300 mile day tomorrow to get to his house.  I just got done watching the NASCAR race, and it's time to get done with this race too......