Home again, home again, jiggity-jig

Cliff and I had made plans for a week to go to Dogpatch, south of Harrison, Arkansas, this weekend.  There's a biker motel there called “The Hub”, and we've wanted to stay there for a long time; we even had Cliff's sister and her husband making plans to meet us; Arkansas has some of the best, most lovely motorcycle roads in the country.  Oh yes, we had wonderful plans.

Thursday I just happened to read a certain blog where a lady in Arkansas mentioned rain.  Lots of it.  Rain that won't quit.  I left a comment for her, saying I hoped the rain stopped by the weekend, and I told her our plans.

She commented back to me, saying that we were bound to get wet.  When I checked with weather.com, it appeared she was right; so we changed plans. 

Cliff’s St. Louis sister had already put in for Friday as a vacation day.  The weather in her area looked much better than that for Arkansas, the only fly in the ointment being possible rain on Sunday (today).  So off we went, taking the longer and more scenic route (Highway 50) to St. Louis.  Pat and Charlene met us halfway on their Harley.

We had a great time and some nice rides.  It’s amazing how many wonderful, scenic rides can be found such a short distance from a big city like St. Louis.  Yesterday we crossed into Illinois and rode along the Mississippi River; it’s a route we’ve taken a couple of times before, but it’s always fun.

This morning, we woke up to steady rain; we could have waited around in hopes it would quit, but we might have had to wait a long time; we decided to put on our rain gear and head out.

Riding in a heavy rainfall on the motorcycle is one of the more terrifying experiences I’ve gone through:  I’m not afraid of getting cold or wet; the proper gear takes care of that.  But when it’s raining, Cliff and I become legally blind.  Headlights are blurry, and vehicles fifty feet ahead are only shadows.  Rain makes our glasses, and the windshield, impossible to see through clearly.  If someone ahead of us made a wrong move, we’d be out of luck.  My Georgia friend Celeste, the same one who gave me possum-killing advice the other day, informs me there is a Rain-X made for motorcycle windshields.  We’ll be buying some of that!

Thank the Good Lord the rain only lasted for about the first forty-five minutes of our journey home. 

We usually stay off freeways, but after the terrifying experience of riding on the freeway in St. Louis in the rain, I-70 was a breeze the rest of the way once the rain stopped, and we made it home in good time. 

I took some chili out of the freezer for our dinner once we got home, made a pot of coffee, and gave a sigh of relief.  The return home was made even better by the fact that our neighboring fisherman gave us a big freezer-bag full of boned and dressed catfish.