Day Nine – Corn and Beans

I got a good night of sleep and was ready for the road bright and early. The wheels were on the interstate at 4:30 pointed east; toward the plains and away from those awesomely beautiful mountains.

The first part of the ride was under a crescent moon hanging beautifully in the eastern sky surrounded by constellations I have not the knowledge to name but the capacity to appreciate. Dark as it was out here without the light pollution of urban areas there were not as many stars as I expected to see on a clear night without much illumination from the moon.

I started out in a state of extremely high alert after my encounter with a deer the prior night. After an hour on the road I began to relax, figuring that there really should be no deer issues out here on the plains. Though I was relaxed, my eyes were still taking in whatever the beam of the headlights presented and I saw, off to the right hand side, two round reflectors that were not in line with the others on the road. A second later, the headlights revealed a buck on the side of the road.

Yeah, I know the drill, apply full brakes and keep your eye on the critter. Luckily, it did not move so there was no incident to recount on that encounter.

The sun came up soon after that to reveal a countryside devoid of anything that would be of interest to anyone other than a botanist specializing in prairie grasses. I have said that Kansas west of Salina has absolutely nothing to look at as you drive through. Well, the drive through the southern part of South Dakota has even less! Before you get to the Missouri River, there is nothing but grass. No farms, no houses, no crops, just grass, not even the dot of a solitary cow punctuating a distant hillock.

I ran through my first tank of gas and stopped just after crossing the Missouri and filled both the bike and my belly. I was soon back on the road and the scenery changed from grass to a few farms with either corn or beans. The population of both animals and people rose evidenced by the increasing number of homesteads – speaking of homesteads, I drove by the home town of Laura Ingells-Wilder from Little House on the Prairie! – and acreage under crop. The variety, though, did not change from corn and beans!

On into Minnesota, and it was pretty much the same – corn and soy beans. The one cool thing in Minnesota was the electricity windmill farms. It is windy as hell out there and they make good use of that renewable resource.

I got gas again in Minnesota, enough to get me half way through Iowa. Ah, Iowa, more corn and beans! I was making great time and feeling wonderful so my plan was to get gas, eat and then think about canceling my hotel in South Bend, Indiana and driving on to Cleveland tonight. However, I went into the gas station to use their bathroom and when I came out I noticed the rear tire was worn down to the wires around probably two thirds of its circumference. I wondered if I could limp it back home but home was still over six hundred miles away. I then wondered if I could limp it to South Bend, Indiana where I was booked for the night and then figure out how to get it home.

That too was not a good idea because I ran the risk of catastrophic tire failure and, being in no mood for a catastrophe, I called Michelle, my travel agent and asked her to cancel the hotel in South Bend and find me something in Iowa. I told her that I also wanted her to check out the BMW website to see if there were any dealerships in Iowa. When I hung up with her I called my dealer to see if they could find out for me and they did find a dealer in Iowa City, about 50 miles further down my route. I thanked them and called the dealer to find out if their service department was open on Saturday and if they could get me in for a set of tires. The answer to both was yes but the appointment was at 11:00 am. Well, when you are the mercy of others, you are at the mercy of others so 11:00 am it is.

This set has less miles on it than the last set of the same brand and I wondered why the tire was worn through two thousand miles shy of the mark the other one hit. Then I remembered that I spent a day and a half wringing every available ounce of horsepower out of that motor. There is a price to be paid for fun and the currency for this version was rubber from the tire. It takes quite a bit of horse power, 110 in this case, to propel the bike to the speeds I reached and sustained in Montana but that power has to be delivered to the road and with a contact patch smaller than a deck of cards I was shredding a small layer with each full power exit from the hundreds of sweeping turns I enjoyed.

I called Michelle back and she found me a hotel in Iowa City, provided the directions and wished me well. What a woman!! She was there in a moment of need and came through! I’m telling you, if you want a really good travel agent, click on the link at the top right of this page and call her.

I arrived at the hotel and waited my turn in line as the woman in front of me told the clerk that she deserved the Mother-of-the-Year award for driving her daughter from Chicago to Iowa City so that she could see her boyfriend for one night.

There is a restaurant/bar attached to the hotel so after I got myself situated I wandered over there and had dinner. When I was done and about to leave the Mother-of-the-Year lady came into the restaurant, recognized me from the check-in, came over to chat. It was a wonderful conversation that covered so many topics and it was quite delightful to spend the evening just yacking away. We ended up talking through a few rounds but could not get the problems of the world solved so we called it a night.

Now I need to pull up directions from here to the dealer who will replace my tires tomorrow. Hopefully they can get it done pretty quickly and I can get on the road. I have between eight to ten hours on the road to get home and I don’t get to leave in the morning as I normally would so my arrival will be sometime late in the evening as opposed to the late morning arrival I had planned and expected.

Oh well, none of us has a crystal ball and we cannot see what the day brings. Best thing to do is take it as it comes.