Lost and Found and Lost for Good

So the weather on Wednesday morning was not raining, but supposed to rain later in the day.

Good enough for me.

During work it rained:




The rainfall was rather light, so I planned to ride to church later that evening, and when the time came to go, I had dried out.

But I found that it had started raining a bit harder. Since it was going to be too much time and trouble to put the Rebel away, and that was going to make me late, so I rode.

It turns out that I should have drove anyway.

I was rather soaked. My wet pants even dripped into my socks, making my shoes squish when I walked.

By the time I got home, I was one giant puddle.

I think I caught a cold. I am still stuffed up a bit.

To top it all off, when I got to church, I found that one of my ears had come off.

This is what a helmet looks like with only one ear:

Happily, I found my ear on the deck on my way into the house (that would be silver lining in my puddle).

Here it is:


I can see that this new helmet is going to be hard on the ears. The graphics on the helmet create just enough of a difference between graphics that, combined with ordinary road dirt, is going to be tough on the ears (the seal with the suction cup).

I think that I am going to have to purchase a bunch more.

So Saturday, I watched the Space Shuttle dock with the International Space Station.

It was the kind of day that only motorcyclists appreciate.

The first nice day toward the end of winter. While the Space Shuttle docked on TV, I could see the blue sky peek out from behind the clouds.

The roads were dry, and finally, it was not cold.

I pulled the Rebel out of the garage and picked a direction after stopping for air and gas.

Unfortunately, just outside of town, I found that the reflection in my speedometer was shy an ear, and backtracking the path did not find my ear on the side of the road.

So I had to return home and get a new set.

Fortunately, I had tied the replacement ears and tail together with thread, because the suction cup on the new tail was slightly flawed and it kept coming off.

So headed out of town towards Brownsville, and then toward Coburg. Going through Coburg (slowly, because I hear that the local Police are pretty quick with the ticket book), and ended up in Eugene. Lunch was at IHOP:




On the way home I took the freeway. I like the freeway. Not as many distractions for the driver, so it's really not as dangerous as surface streets. It's just faster.

I got up to 75 miles per hour on the Rebel.

The semi truck in front of me moved to pass someone, and the semi truck in front of him went to pass the same person.

I decided that whatever prompted them to pass, was prompting me to pass too and I passed, what turned out to be a truck pulling a trailer.

When they returned to the right lane, I found a long line of semis effectively blocking my way.

So, I rolled on the throttle and passed a loooooooooong line of semis. There were probably 20 of them, and they were all in the right lane blocking me from merging over, and the traffic behind me was not letting me go my usual 65.

Eventually, there was a break in the trucks and I merged back into the right lane and let what turned out to be one car by.

One car.

I busted my butt for one car.

Oh well.

A link on Google Maps of my route. Click Here.


Ta!


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