Wednesday, June 18, 2014

More lunches in the small towns....

Traveled on two more luncheons again this week......  The first one was due South of Overland Park, Kansas on highway 69 about 70 miles..   69 is four lane divided highway, so it seems boring to drive on...

But then at the last minute you drive East over the state line into Missouri...  Hume is a coal mining town that has mostly gone extinct in recent years...  But they do have the restaurant Sisters..


The main restaurant is in that tan and green building behind the grain bin...  But the dining room is in the grain bin.....  We like this place and have gone down there several times.........


Once inside of the grain bin, you would have no idea what the building was..  I'm sitting there next to Al leaning intently forward listening to yet another story... Green shirt and black hat....  Al has his arms folded with the blue hat sitting next to me...

Like usual we came back the long way thru a town named Lacygne..  It is on the Marais des Cygnes River.....  For the record, in French marais is a marsh and cygne is a swan....  I have been thru this town several times but never have seen swans...  

And then we found a big road resurfacing project on the other side of Lacygne...  Chip rock and tar sealer...  When the rock is still loose and fairly deep, it is really hard to ride on....  As my tires threw up the stones inside of the plastic fenders, it sounded like the bike was about to be ruined...

Then today (Wednesday) we were off into Kansas to the town of Oskaloosa.....  This is over North of Lawrence (University of Kansas)...


We did our best to stand right in the middle of the street and talk to another of our riders Mike...  The court house was across the street behind Al in the orange shirt...  There wasn't enough traffic to bother us as we stood there...  Some of these places are really sleepy...

This restaurant was more of a bar along the street in the trees beyond us...  It was clean and offered pulled pork barbecue and one side for $7.95.   It was good, but I didn't sit with Al...  Which turned out to be my mistake...  Someone paid for his bill, and he didn't know who it was...

There were no open checks that remained on the computer system, and they were emphatic that no food left the kitchen without a ticket entry into the computer... So the owner insisted that all the bills were paid....  He said he had over 50 tickets by then and it wasn't much past noon.  We do make a difference to these proprietors...  And we are having fun too....

Again on the way back we ended up riding most of the way to Atchison in the country, and then back South along a river bluff into Levenworth.. This was quite the windy road, which challenges my riding skills on the big heavy Goldwing...  And of course they will tease me about those skills if I drop back too far from the leaders...

But don't worry, I never do anything that I don't think is safe...  I hadn't ridden cycles for years when I took it back up in retirement...

Once back here in Overland Park, I had a grand daughter's softball game to go to tonight at dusk.....  It was in the 90s again today, so I am quite tired from the exposure of being outside all day...  We covered about 350 miles in the last two days....

In the middle of the afternoon, we always stop for ice cream cones at one of the fast food chains... Today it was a Burger King....  But I have to watch the others do that since sugar isn't on my diet......  Just a small diet pop for me....

Talking about the exposure part of these rides... I am fair complected and don't tolerate the summer temperatures as well as some of the other riders, so I am really happy when they decide its time for ice cream...  By then I really need that cold drink and some air conditioning....

But I can stay home all day tomorrow, and it is supposed to rain again so I won't get sunburned a bit....

Retired Rod

4 comments:

  1. One good thing about all these rides and lunches is you don't have to fix lunch for yourself at home. And you have other folks to have a meal with, which is really nice when you live alone.

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  2. I think it's great you have all these rides to get you out of the house. How does Biscuit deal with you being gone?

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  3. Your photos in the eating places remind of 'Find Waldo' only in your photos it's find 'Rod':))

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  4. We always enjoyed getting out on the bike for those "lunch" rides.

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