Day Ride: Mississippi River

The group was meeting at 8AM, but since it was 2 minutes from the house I decided to get there at 8:20AM, at kickstands up. I was 5 minutes late arriving at the meeting spot because the light on the street that I live on never gave me a green, so I sat there and finally the second time around a car pulled up behind me and I got the green light. I guess the group left at 8:20AM as planned, I arrived at 8:25AM, no one was there. I was just a bit late but I was going to make up some time using my short cut.

Then on my short cut though the corn fields, there was a overturned truck blocking the road, so I rode in circles and finally found my way to familiar roads. Now I was really late.

Then half an hour later I looked down and noticed the screw was just about to fall out of my clutch shifter. I pulled right over and went looking for my tool kit, realizing I had left it in my garage on the floor, so I had to tighten the screw with my hand, and re-tighten it every 30 minutes while riding so it wouldn’t fall out. On top of that I had to stop for the bathroom first then stop for gas 100 miles later, there was no chance of catching up with the group in route so I decided that I’d probably run in to them in Galena, where they were supposed to have lunch.

I arrived in Galena at 12:05PM and rode down the main strip, I found no one. I was about to take off and do my own ride when I saw a bike pull up next to me, it was someone from the group looking for a few people that got separated from them. Apparently everyone was at Culver’s on the other side of town.

Everyone was done eating when I got there, so I ate my lunch as fast as I could and we all left following our leader Kaos back though Galena to the twisties. But there would be no riding the local roads today, we were informed that there was a triathlon going on and the roads were closed to traffic. After a re-grouping, we all headed towards Iowa to ride 52 along the Mississippi Road.



Downtown Galena, IL - where do we go now?



A short break in Iowa near the Mississippi River

We started heading toward Chicago but since I wasn’t ready to go home yet, I broke away from the group and went exploring.



I did over 400 miles today and got home at 7:40PM. Today was a perfect day for a ride, sunny and low 70’s, even though there was a 30% chance of rain, I didn’t see any clouds today that would make me think it might rain.