Tales of the Dragon

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The Long And Windy Road That Leads To Your Door

Breakfast buffet at Brown County Inn--yet another benefit of staying at a resort rather than a motel. Plenty of food to fuel our bodies and 275 more miles to fuel our souls.

We decided to hit the road right after breakfast rather than hanging out in Nashville, exploring the little shops and such. It turned out to be a good decision to get on the road. The road was IN46 into Bloomington on a windy, sunny, and cool, and windy Saturday. A relaxing, curvy, and mostly tree-lined ride. I believe it was the most pleasant start to any of our riding days. Just one of those roads that makes you love motorcycling. Did I mention that it was windy?

It was to be 46 through Bloomington, picking up US231 and then a left and a right and we'd wind up on US41 North which would take us the bulk of the way back to the Chicagoland area. We would stop for lunch someplace, but I was not going to take full responsibility for where--too much stress. If I saw a place, I decided I would stop and ask for a consensus. 46 was pretty straight after Bloomington, but both it and US231 have enough curves to make things a little more palatable. Nice ride, but it was windy.

We turned off of 231 (the aforementioned left) onto US36 west toward Rockville. Rockville was looking like a good place to stop for food. 36 was pretty much straight as an arrow west into the 20+mph wind. I don't know if I mentioned it, but it was windy.

Rockville is the county seat for Parke County ("The Covered Bridge Capital of the World") and, as such, has a beautiful courthouse in the center of the town square. Adjacent to that is a little restaurant/bar called Thirty-Six Saloon which looked good to me, but I also noticed another bar a little up the street with a bunch of bikes parked in front. I pulled off to the side and, as I previously decided, left the choice to the group and we opted for Thirty-Six as the other bar seemed too crowded to get a relatively quick lunch. It was a good choice.

Thirty-Six does their own BBQ and their brisket was fantastic. As it turns out, we stayed a little bit longer than originally planned because, although it was not spoken, it felt good to be off the bikes for a bit because it was really windy.

Thirty-Six Saloon








After lunch, we hopped on the bikes and made that right turn I mentioned earlier onto US41 north. The section of 41 north of 36 until just past Turkey Run State Park is really a great motorcycle road. Not challenging, but big sweeping turns and some elevation changes made for a picturesque ride. We even crossed a river where I beeped and waved at kayakers who actually waved back! Kind of silly, but kind of neat, too. The curves, the trees, and the hills broke up the wind a little, which was a relief. It was really windy that day.

Shortly after passing Turkey Run, 41 runs north along the Indiana/Illinois border through flat farm country. We passed a few wind farms along the way. Apparently, this section of Indiana gets a lot of wind all year around. This was evident to us as we rode with all bikes leaning noticeably to their left. The Goldwing and F6B had fewer problems with the wind, but we were all getting beat up a bit as we rode the 75 miles to our next scheduled gas stop. That 75 miles at 65mph felt like 150 because, as you may know, it was very windy.

Somewhere close to Morocco, IN, where we had our first breakfast on this trip, someone in our group lost their last lunch. A little stress and a lot of wind caused a little queasiness and we had to stop at the side of the road for a few minutes before the gas stop and then for a few minutes more at the gas stop itself. Boy, was it windy.

We decided that we would take the remaining 100-125 miles home slower and we would stop to check on our distressed rider about every 1/2 hour and at stoplights until we arrived at home. We thought this was best because it was still very windy.

I hesitated to talk about our queasy rider because I didn't want to embarrass that person in any way. I included it, though, because it caused me to realize that me and my friends were were different now than we were when we started riding together. Our universal agreement to stop frequently in deference to our weakened member showed me that we were now a cohesive unit, not 5 individual riders and 1 passenger. One "club" as opposed to a 6 member "group". It wasn't an individual rider in distress. Rather, the club was in distress and it was the club's responsibility to get home as one.

As it turns out, we felt much better after the rest break in Morocco. The rest of the trip was still very windy, but the frequent breaks made us feel better able to cope with that. We made the mistake of taking 41 all the way to I-80 which brought us through two towns with dozens of stoplights. This worked out OK for us in light of our circumstances, but avoid this if you are traveling up US41 toward Chicago--huge waste of time.

Safe at home...






We arrived home tired and wind-blown, but thrilled about the amazing journey we had just completed. Sometimes, after a trip with friends, there is a period of reflection before discussions of the trip or plans for future trips begin. We arrived home, if I recall, at about 5:00pm. By 6:00pm I had emails from everyone in the group talking about the trip and looking forward to the next one. 1800 miles. Eight days. Six riders. Five bikes. One unit. One fantastic ride. Many more to come.














(Thanks, Mickey )