The big ride and 9/11 memories....

Well yes I was excited that I had decided to go on the long lunch ride....  So much so that I couldn't sleep, like a little kid waiting for Santa....  But then I awoke in a start about 5 minutes before the alarm would go off at 7 AM...

I was all cleaned up and down stairs eating breakfast in order to leave at about 8:15..   And the KC traffic was in full swing...  I stayed South on the city streets as long as I dared, but eventually I was about to cross over into Missouri and the streets get all goofy over there...

So onto the interstate I wheeled and sped it up to 75 just in order to keep up..  It is all interstate from there on....  And as I was passing the East I 70 interchange I was following a semi truck... But then I had another one pull up on my left side.... And another on my right side....  I was boxed in with a pickup behind me as well.

The wind was all hoakey with swirls from all sides and the bike wanted to go this way and then another way....  It felt like I could loose it so I just slowed way down and let the trucks pull away....  The guy in the pickup honked at me.... Nice...!

It was 98 miles up to the little town of Gallatin, Mo with the last 15 miles in the  country at more civil speeds..

The corner Cafe was right on the corner  LOL!

And right across the street is the Court house.  My bike is second from the  right.

Of course bikes were lined up all down the street.

As usual, I was right behind the distant fellow with the green shirt on with his back to us...  But not in the picture at all!

We messed around for an hour and a half telling stories and spinning a few yarns...  But then it was time to leave again...

This time I rode down old Mo highway 13... I was sick of the interstate, but this was a bunch farther... The scenery was different and the speeds were more like under 70...

I stayed outside of KC for as long as I could eventually merging with I 470 out on the Southeast corner of the city...  Again, the traffic was bumper to bumper and doing almost 80...  Where the heck are these folks going?

I was hot by now as it was over 90 degrees so I stopped at the state line McDonalds for a small burger and a biggggg soda...  Even filled it up again and put it in my drink bottle out on the bike...  That sun can be brutal on rides at highway speeds...

After arriving back here at home, I used the Google maps and decided that I had ridden about 215 miles...  I was gone about 7 hours....  For lunch!!! ?

Yea, that's nuts!  Romeo Ride Web Site
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Changing thoughts, today is 9/11 and I am reading where folks were on that day, which makes me remember an interesting occurrence from my memories..

I was at work in the grain company's office when the planes hit the towers, and not much else got done for the rest of the day as we watched the news on TV...

But as the sun was going down, and all the planes had been landed so nothing was flying thru the skies. As we were looking out of the South windows at the skies over West Des Moines,  there from the West came a lone Jet Plane at a very high altitude headed East across the sky...

There was only one person that had a clearance to fly at that time......... President Bush!  We were looking at Airforce One as it was making its way back to Washington....

Since we were up fairly high in the building, we could see the plane  easily even making out the blue fuselage.  We all wondered if there were any bad guys around, and how hard it would have been to pick out this lone flight and shoot at it...

In retrospect, I saw a show the other night that reflected where all the people in authority had advised strongly against this flight.  But Bush had demanded that he be back in DC to speak from the Oval Office...

Still we were watching the only plane in the entire US skies...  Our company plane had been grounded down in Southern Illinois and the men on board rented a too small car and drove it back to Iowa..  They griped about that for years to come......

It was over a week before we were able to send a pilot after the plane....  Even then it had to be an IFR flight where the controllers knew exactly whose plane it was and where it was going....   Getting the pilot to that little town in southern Illinois was rather costly as I remember....

I'm sure everyone has a story about where they were on 9/11/2001...

Retired Rod