Labor Day ride

[watchman]

Liz and I are leaving for south Missouri after she gets off from work this afternoon. We plan on riding down to Lebanon and spending the night and then tomorrow heading out on the back roads returning home Monday. This is kind of a test to see how well I get along riding. I had to go and get both my lower back and neck injected last Monday. I am hoping that riding will loosen up everything and ease the pain. It should be a great ride with temp's in the low to mid 70's today and tomorrow and only in the mid 80's Monday with no rain in the forcast. We haven't decided yet what direction we will go from Lebanon. It doesen't really matter as long as we just get out and ride somewhere. Last week Rick and Teresa went to Rolla and rode part of old Route 66. We might do something like that or cruze some State Parks. Just getting on the road again will make the weekend. This will also be the last trip on the old front tire. I have a new one setting in the garage to be installed next week so the bike will be ready for the fall Rallies in ES and Antlers. Hope everyone has a great weekend and we will see some of you in a few weeks.
Jim

[zoom45]

Ya'll have fun and be careful. Me and Vickie are riding our bikes up the Natchez Trace to Nashville.
Bobby

[petenomad]

Ann and I headed out in that same general direction Saturday morning. We went on 50 to Gerald down H and then to Meramec Caverns for the tour. About 230 miles there. 50 east of Jeff City was a nice ride, but I planned some better options for the ride back.
I used the motorcycle roads web site and we rode Hwy K around Meramec State park to 185 to 100. We stopped at the state capitol building and wandered around the back side a bit. We left headed North on 179 and planned to take J,E and HH over to 65. Unfortunately, when we stopped for gas at Prairie Home, their station was hit by lightning and their pumps wouldn't work. We made a brief detour to I-70 and back down Hwy 5 to pick up our planned route. (Low fuel light on the whole time - needed 4.5 gallons whe we got to a station that worked.)
We can highly recommend K and 100. 179 was also enjoyable. 185 was recently patched and nearly every curve had an asphaslt patch that went only half way accross the lane creating a ridge right down the middle of the lane. Kinda limited how I could take some of the curves as I didn't want to cross this ridge in the curve.
Overall a good warm up for the Talimena ride at the end of the month. Got in about 580 miles.

[watchman]

We got home about 2:00 this afternoon. Road almost 600 miles total. We went down Hwy 5 all the way to Lebanon and spent the night there. The next morning we went out to Bennet Springs and toured the Trout hatchery and then after Liz's excursion to the outlet mall we hit the roads again and made a big circle on roads 32, 137 and back north on 17. Spent the night at St. Roberts and had a great steak dinner at a new sports bar there. This morning we rode parts of Route 66 over to Rolla and then north on 63, 28, 19 and then across country to Macon. I believe I can ride 350 miles without much if any problems. I might have to take a little extra pain medican. Doing like we did last year making a 2 day ride to Antlers and 2 days to return home should not be a problem. So we should be seeing you guys in a couple of weeks hopefully.

Jim

[petenomad]

Good to hear Jim, looking forward to seeing you guys.

[oldbikers]

Can't wait to see y'all again and I am looking forward to meeting the 6'2" handsome man Liz said was coming with her.

[trip]

Have a good trip, Jim and Liz.

One trip I want to ride someday is the old Route 66 from Amarillo to St. Louis.

[watchman]

Finding the real old Route 66 is the hardest part. A lot of the signs have been stolen and the state has renumbered the pieces of it like part of hwy 32 through Lebanon and hwy Z east from St. Roberts. And since now they are secondary roads they are not very well maintained. And try as we could there was not a map to be found that really shows the route and it's changes. I searched the internet for over 2 hours getting bits and pieces of info looking for the old route. By the time we got to Rolla I was just tired of messing with it and headed north.