Summer Dream 2006

With a sweet sendoff from my Milwaukie friends, wheels rolled west into a heavy overcast. An hour of blessed cool riding suddenly turned into an hour and a half of hard rain. While accustomed to these conditions in the beloved Northwest, there were about twenty times when I again wondered what I was doing out there. But I had a deadline with a friend. On the way to visit Gordy in Cuba City, there were only two hours of overlap before he departed for his job in Minneapolis. Five miles out it stopped raining, a dry arrival fully clad in yellow rain gear. A wonderful two hours and a tour of the greatest Felix the Cat memorabilia in the world. When Gordy does something, he does it all the way. All too soon it was time again to part, but even stronger friends with a lifetime of fun yet to come.

The drive across Iowa is a lesson in mass production; in high volume. Iowa is corn, from border to border. Nearly two hundred miles of driving, and not a break in the crops. What does America DO with all this corn. (Well, lil’ Joe drinks his share). Tonight it’s heaven to be warm and dry in a little Days Inn in Mason City, Iowa. Tomorrow we’ll reach for the Badlands. The day’s reward was an inordinate number of opportunites to smell wet hay in the field and wet dairy cattle pens, to be ultimately transformed to the sweet smell of new cut lawns in small farm towns of Americana.

By the way, Internet will be hard to come by for the next week so do not despair, those who have become accustomed to blogging:)