Category Archives: 2008 – Scoot 66

This is the last installment of the “recollections.” Not really sure why I stopped writing about it, but I did. The one I posted yesterday was disconnected and too long. Maybe today’s is as well.

As I threw the starched covers from me, waking up in the third unwanted motel room in a row during what was supposed to be a camping trip, I resolved to get a little tougher. I could have looked harder for a campground last night. And tonight, I had plans – a campground in mind. Tonight’s home would be in Edwardsville, an Illinois town on the Mississippi, across the river from St. Louis.

Another plan, the one to explore Springfield, would have to be cut. The morning sky looked like rain and I wanted to roll out before it happened.

After several miles of Springfield’s finest parking lots and stripmalls, I hung a few rights and lefts and was on the 1926 alignment of Route 66. There are two through this area. It’s said that most folks like the 1930’s alignment. On it you’ve got Our Lady of the Highway monument and Mt. Olive with Mother Jones’sou’es gravesite.

Though it’s a fine alignment, it lies right next to the interstate for the entire time. It’s basically a frontage road and while it’s very nice that the Department of Transportation allowed it to remain, I was looking for a more rural flavor.

Illinois Route 4 South through Chatham immediately took on that rural feel. Though only a handful of miles separated it from its state capital, the sprawl had yet to take it over. It was a larger town, probably due to its proximity to Springfield, but still retained a weathered-rebuilding appeal. I rode through clusters of housing developments, chains of fast food joints and pre-fab office buildings before coming to where the downtown should have been. Instead, the development peters out to farmed prairie land. Chatham was a scattered collection of buildings surrounded by cornfields. If there was a town, I missed it as I rode through.

I was generally following State Route 4, renamed so after Route 66 was moved a bit east. This was a modern road that sometimes cut through the land, cut curves and sometimes wandered away from the original 66 roadbed.

Just south of Chatham, Route 66 took a strange curve to the right, following the flow of the land, while modern Route 4 continued ahead. There, for a couple of miles along this old stretch of road, the original brick pavement is preserved. This dark red oddity curves and rises and falls with the land, just like any concrete alignment of 66 would. As it curved and sloped, the bricks seemed like an over-sized garden walkway winding between pea patches and out buildings.

The silence around me and of the road surprised me. The bricks had been worn smooth and were softer than asphalt. I could almost feel their segmented breaks in my hands, vibrating through the front tire to my handle bars, but we rode frictionless and alone along this too short and unremembered path.

I pulled to the side and dismounted Ruby next to a small grain silo with a faded “Hell Awaits” spray painted on its front. The weather had worn much of the paint away, but the words could still be read. I snapped a photo of it and then of the road, a gentle ‘S’ curve that slips back onto the busier Route 4. Not exactly hell, but not the heaven of quiet bricks.

Route 66 skirted another town before delivering me into the heart of Virden’s town square. A park was planted in the middle and on four sides, two and three story stone and brick storefronts lined the streets. Above them all hovered grain elevators planted next to the rail line just a couple blocks away. I pulled Ruby into a stall and ate a small granola bar for breakfast as I wondered the town park.

Sometimes parks can tell you all you need to know about a town. Here, it was history. I saw a granite monument stretched on one side of the park and went to explore.

This was the site of the famed “Battle of Virden.” I had heard of this, but didn’t connect the two until now. In 1898, this was a mining town. The companies refused to pay the workers a higher wage, even after a settlement and so the workers went on strike. Having none of this, the company hired a mob of strikebreakers armed with brand new Winchesters to either force the miners back to work at gun point or bring in poor black workers who were deceived with promises of high pay and good working conditions.

As the train carrying the armed strikebreakers arrived in Virden, a shot was fired and a gun battle erupted. The company men fired from the train as the workers fired from an open field. After ten minutes, 40 miners were wounded with eight dead. The train pulled away and headed for Springfield with four dead company men.

The monument depicted this battle and its aftermath: A grieving widow huddled next to the dead miners’ gravestone, a family making do without the support of their beloved husband and father, but above them all was Mother Jones, labor organizer.

The churches of Virden would not allow the miners to be buried in their cemeteries so the union purchased a plot of land in nearby Mt. Olive and laid the eight dead to rest. Mother Jones was so touched by the Battle of Virden that she asked for her own body to be buried there with the miners.

I should have asked around to see if I could find the actual site, but I didn’t. Not wanting to take up more time than I already was, I mounted up and rode on down the road.

Time is a strange thing when you’re traveling. It gives you the opportunity to discover things you’ve always wanted to see and even things you never dreamed of seeing, but you’re always afraid there isn’t enough of it. So you skip these things, gambling for more over the next horizon. Even this trip, which was never about getting some place specific, could sometimes devolve into a typical vacation, complete with destinations and time tables.

With that simmer in the back of my brain, I rode on.

Not two and a half miles down the line was Girard. Though Old 66 cuts through the center of town, it still feels like it’s bordering something bigger. Towards the south side of town, I passed a park that still had all of its old playground equipment. Its old sliding board was attached to an old steel swingset, next to an old wooden merry-go-round and near old pipes threaded together to form monkey bars. I was surprised this relic was allowed to survive.

It was two miles of concrete Old Road to the strange town of Nilwood. There’s not much that can be said for such a place as this. By all looks, it is a ghost town. It’s got an old, abandoned two story school building from 1927, a post office, rail road tracks and a very very very creepy blue one story house that seems sort of sunken into the ground. There are stairs that lead down to a door and a sign claims “opens automatically upon payment.” There is no explanation offered as to what you are paying for. You are just supposed to know. Also, the curtains in one of the windows are actually a child’s bed sheet with Disney’s 101 Dalmatians on it. Nilwood is really out in the middle of nowhere. I thought it best to continue on, curving back onto the Mother Road.

When the old highways were named, they generally didn’t make any new roads. All they did was pick out “main” roads, link them together and slap a name like Yellowstone Trail or National Road or, in this case, Route 66 upon them. Sometimes, like the two mile jaunt between Virden and Girard, they were straight. Other times, they worked their way south, like steps and like the Old Road to Carlinville.

Though modern Route 4 cuts off these right angles, they are still out there as crumbling concrete in farmers’ fields. They’re given names like Harvest Road. Here, you can tell when you’re riding on one. Route 66 through southern Illinios was concrete. It’s rutted and broken, but has this 1930’s look of getting somewhere. Frontage roads along the interstate, even if they are Route 66, don’t have this feel.

On one of these concrete segments, just north of Carlinville, are the famous Route 66 turkey tracks. In 1929, when the original concrete was being laid, a turkey came out of field, did a little dance and left his footprints forever upon our Mother Road. The site has been highlighted with white paint around the markings.

We rode the deteriorating concrete, making sharp lefts and rights, under rail road overpasses and all with newly tilled fields and light clouds. The possible rain of this morning had passed. A warm spring sun flushed the open prairie, deepening the rich brown soil and almost sparkling the new green leaves of the treeline against the tracks.

This, like the Chicago Road that seemed so long ago, felt like the real Route 66.

I left this wonder for the wide bricked streets of Carlinville, passed through their square and continued on. This was not the time for towns.

The Old Road moved from the right angled alignments to a more direct, but flowing with the land, route. The fields were typically flat and open, but the original road dodged west around a small valley that modern Route 4 carelessly slashes through. This old alignment can be seen to the right and then to the left as modern Route 4 cuts through that as well. Partially ridable and now called Deerfield Road, this old section laid itself through a thicket of trees and wraps around a slight hill. On either side of the road are curbs. This was an early attempt to keep drivers on the road and not wrecked in some gully.

A long straightaway of modern Route 4 and more open fields lead to another town, Gillespi. There’s strangely no town square, but a small downtown with a firehouse that was converted to a still operating movie theater. It’s strange to see such a change. Normally, towns convert old theaters into other things (or just tear them down), but Gillespi has converted something else into a movie theater.

The stretch between Gillespie and Hamel includes Benld. The towns were melting together and it was hard to tell one from the next. Normally, you’d remember the towns and forget the road. But it was turning just the opposite for me. I could remember each turn and curve, the color of the pavement, which side the railroad took and the open emptiness of it all. The towns, however, seemed even emptier.

From Hamil, it’s a descent into the Mississippi River Valley. The road rides atop a plateau and through the trees lining the road, I could see the land around me falling away into valleys. The descent into Edwardsville is quick and for a moment I could nearly make out the river before dropping into one of those valleys and into the town.

It was merely 12 noon. I was making excellent time, I thought. And that thought bothered me. Making excellent time to arrive where? When? The road I was riding, the towns I chose not to explore were my destination. It was noon and here I was in some small city with too much traffic and no real regard for Route 66. With each mile, I would have to remember to take as much time as I needed. There was no where to get to, I was already there. This whole trip was my destination. I could be neither late nor early. Slow down.

Route 66 between Edwardsville and Mitchell is weird and straight and seems to go on forever. It crosses a few highways, twists around some rail road yard and then dead ends at the Chain of Rocks Bridge. There are old motels and a drive-in theater along the way that kept me company.

In the spirit of slowing down, I stopped at Chain of Rocks Bridge. This was an old Route 66 bridge over the Mississippi. The steel bridge is most noted for a strange angle near its center. This caused a lot of problems on foggy nights and eventually the bridge was shut down. It’s now preserved as a pedestrian walkway.

I left Ruby next to an interpretive kiosk and noticed that the parking lot smelled like nothing but vomit. I tried hard to breath only through my mouth, even covering my nose to keep out the acidic stench. Still, I could hardly escape it. Why everything smelled like throw up, I couldn’t figure out. But it did and I picked up the pace, almost running to get onto the bridge.

–

I stopped writing here. The rest of the day involved a ride through East St. Louis and then St. Louis itself. I ended up staying on the west side of the city. The next day was Missouri. You can continue the story here, at Day Seven.

Maybe I’ll continue writing about all of this at another time. But probably not.

Two years ago was my first full day on Old Route 66. Joliet to Springfield, IL. It’s a very short distance to travel, but Springfield wasn’t really my destination – just my stop for the night. The Old Road was my destination and I was on it all day long. Read on!

It’s about 150 miles from Joliet to Springfield. Hop on the interstate and you can do that in a little over two hours. So far this trip, I’ve avoided the interstates. Maybe out west I’ll not be able to do that, but for now, I’ll stick to the two lane blacktop.

I was hoping to sleep in a bit, but woke up at 6am. Last night I had discovered today’s first mission. I was looking at a map of Joliet and came across Mound Street. I figured that since it’s called Mound Street, there must be a mound. Probably an Indian burial mound.

This was only a few blocks away from my hotel, so after packing, I rode to Mound Street. Though the street still holds the name, the mound itself is long gone. At one time, there was a mound, but it’s not there anymore. Someone needed some stuff that the mound was sitting on. So they turned it into a quarry. The claim was that the mound was not a burial site, but a naturally occurring 1,350 feet long by 225 feet wide, hill with a flat top and steep escarpment, rising 140 feet above the Des Plaines River seems hard to believe since everything around is flat. Too late now.

As a city worker mowed the grass and a few locals walked their dogs, I rode up and down the short street hoping for an explanation or historical marker. I found neither, so hit the road.

Our beloved Route 66 originally passed through Joliet. This is the alignment most traveled today. But after the 1930s, it was moved to a town a bit north of Joliet. Plainfield is well named and the ride to it, upon the Lincoln Highway, passed several fields and even a green lake. The traffic into town was backed up. As we funneled through to the intersection with Division Street, I saw that the stop light was out. I had arrived during a town-crisis. All of the traffic lights had lost their power. The cops were nowhere to be seen. They left us to work it out for ourselves. And we pretty well did.

Though stop and go, the traffic was moving. I think it was just the traffic lights that were out. If all the town’s power was out, I would have seen neighbors outside talking to each other. People only speak when there’s a disaster of some kind.

I followed Lincoln Highway as it converged for a block with Route 66. This is the only segment across the whole United States where both of these old highways share the same pavement.

This alignment was interesting, but hardly fun. North of town is where all the cops were. They directed traffic around the strip malls. There were tons of strip malls. Miles of them, in fact. I’ll never understand why we like such things.

South of town there was less sprawl and less traffic lights. Eventually, the few that were there were working. The old road ran back through Joliet and back through more Chicago sprawl.

I had had enough of this scenery and was glad to be moving on to the countryside.

The Old Road has been converted to a four lane highway. While it’s not a limited access road, it’s wide and carries the local traffic into and out of Joliet. After only a few miles, it became desolate spaces planted with wheat and signs urging developers to buy and convert to housing developments, business parks and more strip malls.

A reprieve found itself as the Chicago Road. It was probably a really early road leading north into the city that later became 66. It didn’t last long before it was bypassed by the four lane. That didn’t matter to me. This was my first stretch of Old Route 66. Just Ruby and me alone on a forgotten two lane. I stopped to take it all in, not having to pull to the right to avoid traffic. A kid on a four wheeler flew by me and waved. I returned the gesture and suddenly couldn’t believe my fortune.

In this empty field upon this empty concrete road I realized the reward of this expedition. The price was always obvious. While I knew that there would be bad days, days I’d want to turn back, even days I would hate from beginning to end, the reward was never as clear for me. But here it was. This vacant landscape, this scant hint of how it used to be was everything I had come to see. To the eyes of most who traveled the four lanes and interstates, here was nothing. But to the pilgrim who sees the auspiciousness in the journey itself, these three miles were a true reckoning.

This was the actual Route 66. These unmarked, hidden spans of aged byways, lying between dusty towns and within keen eyesight of interstates are what we came to see. The Chicago Road was the first of many.

It curved to a 90 degree turn and emptied unnaturally across Route 53, the four lane, into Elwood. The smoke still smoldered from the site of a local tavern that had burned down. A few townsfolk were still milling about. Again, people talk to each other during disasters. It’s finally something they have in common.

Route 66 itself is somehow supposed to represent this. It’s a thread tying east to west, making neighbors of everyone. That’s the story, anyway. Maybe it doesn’t work like that. Could this collection of disconnected historical segments, strange roadside attractions and icons really be America?

Could the Gemini Giant of Wilmington be the fiber of our culture? This tall fiberglass giant, once a “muffler man,” one of many who hawked car mufflers, now sports a space suit and has traded his exhaust for a rocket.

America or not, I parked Ruby by his feet and took a few photos of the two of them together. It was the closest thing to a family I had now. Ruby and the road replaced friends and loved ones. This new home helped me miss the old home less.

That newer alignment from Plainsfield, the town without working traffic lights or responsible cops, was buried under Interstate 55. This lost road returns from the west, curving towards and nearly meeting with the alignment I’ve been traveling. Only a railway separates them. For miles they almost touch, the old alignment east of the tracks, its newer cousin to the west. Braidwood, Godly and Braceville all favor one or the other. Each town was a railroad town and some were mining towns. I don’t remember stopping for even a photo.

This arrangement of roads split at Gardner. The later highway bypassed the town, the older wove its way through. Both united south of town, hugging the interstate as a frontage road to Dwight.

The town’s history is based around a strange windmill hiding behind a mansion off some side street. Its train station is still an active passenger stop. Route 66 never really went through town at all. A highway previous to 66 turned left, then right, then left and right again, working its way north to south through the heart of downtown, past the bank and train station. Local commerce has taken advantage of both alignments.

We nestle close to the interstate as we leave town, south towards Odell and Pontiac, towns which seem indiscernible from one another. Pontiac is the larger, which would make Odell seem like a suburb if it weren’t separated by five miles of Illinois grasslands.

Odell clings to Route 66 and has restored an old gas station to prove it. The streets are empty, but an old pedestrian tunnel under West Street gives evidence that things used to be busier. When the main road changed to the interstate, they filled it in.

Changes in the road mean changes to the town. An inn in Pontiac first faced the Road to the east. When the alignment changed to another road, just west of the inn, the owners lifted the structure and turned it around. We adapt as best we can. When the interstate came, the inn went under.

The banks of The Vermilion River host a park on the south end of town. The river is crossed by “swinging” bridges – suspension bridges for foot traffic only. It’s difficult to just see a swinging footbridge and not give in to the urge to walk across it, feeling the entire structure vibrate and sway with your steps. These bridges were made of iron and covered in a newly built wooden walkway. It took away some of the unsteady, older feel, but was enough to satisfy.

This served as a break to take off my helmet and riding jacket, to stretch my legs and wish for a quick nap in this town park. The short miles were quickly adding up as the hours floating by. The towns were getting farther apart and the Chicago sprawl of this morning became the wheat fields of the afternoon. The towns were also getting smaller and the signs of clinging to life were obvious. Here, the life is Route 66. The town either embraces it and stands a small chance of survival or simply fades away to nothing but rusted street signs.

Sometimes the towns don’t need to provide the entertainment. Between Pontiac and Lexington I found five train cars on their side, just east of the Road and the tracks. They were neatly arranged, their wheels in a pile next to a county road. This was the site of a derailment in mid-clean up. Maybe “entertainment” is a bit too much to expect from toppled rolling stock, but it was enough for me to pull over.

It doesn’t take much for me to pull over. I’ve never been so concerned about the speed of getting “there.” And on this trip, there’s hardly anywhere to get. The road is my destination.

Just a few miles farther, Lexington took this literally, turning an old segment of 66 into a “Memory Lane” of old billboards for businesses long made history by progress. Towanda, a name meaning “where we bury our dead,” did much the same. It’s nice in a sort of sad way. but that is how Route 66 can be. The history is the attraction, but only exists because it’s what used to be. If it were the same today as it was then, we’d not notice. We barely notice anyway.

After handfuls of broken small towns the twin cities of Normal and Bloomington came as a shock. They’re basically one town and not very interesting as far as Route 66 goes. The only difference between the two could be that the sky opened up, raining like crazy in Normal. It caught me off guard and once again I was soaked. By the time I crossed over to the Bloomington side of town, it wasn’t raining at all. By the time I got through the cities, the sun returned and I was mostly dry.

The sun was now well to my right and the daylight much closer to twilight than my day’s route to ending. Picking up the pace became a necessity. In Joliet, I discovered that my headlamp could be seen over the bag strapped to my front rack, but its light could not hit the road in front of me. Oncoming traffic could see me, but I could hardly see them. Until I figured out a way to fix this, I would have to stop before dusk.

This meant breezing by towns rather than exploring. Not to say that I didn’t immediately disregard this new rule. The very small town of Shirley had its own broken down homes and a few dead businesses. The paint peeled to expose cheap plywood, evidence of a mid 80s attempt at revitalization. Still clinging to life, the church was freshly painted and still in use. I rode quickly and almost silently through streets of well-kept houses in a town that’s become nothing more than a name printed on an unnecessary interstate exit sign.

Old 66 was still little more than a frontage road for that interstate, which planted itself not twenty feet from the former. For most, the temptation to slip onto I-55 after Shirley or Bloomington would be too great. I kept to the Old Road, nearly feeling sorry for those who didn’t, but thankful they were not here, surrounding me.

This straight stretch of Old Road wasn’t always straight. Just east of our next stop, Funks Grove, lies an older, abandoned quarter mile curve where Route 66 slid away from the town, following the land. Passing through a copse of trees, I found this section, paying some half-hearted homage to it as I turned the bike and headed back towards the town. Though long ago abandoned, Old 66 still created a tunnel through the trees.

An old road guide to Route 66 describes several surrounding towns, including the forthcoming Mclean and Atlanta, as having “no tourist facilities,” but having a cafe. Each of them. It must have been nice when every small town had a cafe and a gas station with a garage for repairs. If that were still true, this narrative would have dialog.

The interstate gets much of the blame for destroying small towns. Rightly so. But Atlanta once boasted three hotels, five grain warehouses, four lawyers, seven doctors, one saloon and four churches – all within two years of its founding. Abraham Lincoln was the keynote speaker at the 1859 Fourth of July celebrations. Atlanta was a boom town and was ready for a bright future that never came. A series of fires destroyed much of the city.

There was no growth. The population when I rode its wide and empty streets was the same as 150 years ago. A pride in their history was obvious. They held a love for the Road passing through their town and had murals with classic cars on Old 66 to prove it. Atlanta is also home to another Illinois giant. The lumberjack, Paul Bunyan, actually another redressed Muffler Man, welcomes the weary by inexplicably holding a giant hot dog.

I was growing more and more weary myself. This short riding day was turning into a series of ramshackled small towns connected with little more than a frontage road barely allowed to live next to the interstate. I wanted to escape the notion that one small town was the same as the next, but in quick secession with hardly a moment to explore, how was that possible?

Lincoln, the county seat, was named while Abe was still alive. He approved it. Route 66 doesn’t claim its downtown and neither did I, sacrificing it for time. Someday I would return, but today was beginning to be over for me.

North of Lincoln, the interstate switched sides with the Old Road and south of town, we again were side-by-side, but now it was on my right. A similar switch happened after Bloomington. If you’re not paying attention, you’ll get a strange feeling of being turned around. This is flat land. There are no mountains in the distance to keep you pointed in your direction. Your landmark is the interstate. When suddenly it’s on your right rather than left, it’s worth a second look.

In dusk I rode through or around a handful of small towns before reaching Springfield, my home for tonight. I found my way through the city with quite a bit of ease. I will see more of it tomorrow.

My decision was to finally find a campground, unbundle my tent and unroll my sleeping bag. I had noted one being just off a street in the southern part of town. I rode to it and discovered that it was only for large RVs. I paused at its manicured entrance and gazed over the rows of motor homes the size of buses, the waning sun glistening off their roofs. There was no room for a small motorscooter and tent. I had no need for a potable water or sewage or cable hook up. All those things I left back home. Here was another night for a motel.

A very floral print bed and pastel paintings of some beach scene greeted me in yet another room on a trip where every night was to be under the stars. I probably made a few phone calls and watched some television. I was getting too comfortable. This was Route 66 and my own migration west. I was riding outside with the elements, not in the comfort of some retirement home on wheels.

Tomorrow would have to change this. I had fallen into the monotony of motels just as I had fallen into the monotony of small towns bypassed by the interstate. I would wake up the next morning ready to put this all behind me and get to the actual business at hand.

I woke, showered, dressed and opened the door to a chilly but windless air. The blue sky had not a single cloud to hide the sun. Unlike the previous days, I knew today would be short. The distance I had to travel allowed me to slow down, enjoy what I saw rather than wish I could enjoy it.

A small, celebratory breakfast of donated trail mix and a granola bar was enough for me for now. It was time to roll out. While packing, a very ambitious member of the cleaning staff tried to break down my door, so I loaded up Ruby and rode a block down the road to a supermarket. I walked more aimlessly than not through the aisles. I was looking for juice or I didn’t know what. I was hungry and just wanted something.

I found nothing to my liking and left with empty hands.

It turned out that I had stayed in Plymouth last night. I was back on the Lincoln Highway and saw signs with arrows
and followed them west, disregarding today’s directions.

Old roads, especially forgotten alignments of old roads draw me in. How can anyone resist the urge to rediscover how their ancestors used to travel? The disintegrating towns bi-passed by the highway still cling to life and offer what little life they have to those fortunate enough to find them. Today, fortune would be my ally.

Soon, we found ourselves speeding down back roads that were once part of the only coast-to-coast highway in America. Some were still busy, some nearly forgotten.

I first stumbled upon a ruin of a diner simply called “EAT.” I pulled over and took a few pictures. How could I not? What a brilliant idea – to name your restaurant “EAT.” It would be like naming a bookstore “READ” or a gas station “PUMP.” This simplicity is forgotten now, buried under corporate banners and multi-national ad campaigns. We cannot remember the nights we’d linger over brandy at EAT.

The diner was collapsing just east of the railroad town of Hamlet. A Wisconsin & Southern Rail Road locomotive sat next to a grain elevator as I explored the town’s streets. Old buildings with western faces sat boarded and closed. Houses no longer homes chipped paint onto once groomed green lawns. Hamlet was dead.

I followed the Lincoln Highway west along the tracks. For awhile, we paralleled the Yellowstone Highway, a forgotten coast-to-coast road, slightly younger than the Lincoln. Our short stretch of old road came to an end at modern US Route 30. We had to join in the four-lane rush for several miles.

Once you start riding upon the old two-lane roads, it’s hard to pull yourself back onto a modern highway. You feel foreign and as unwanted to the racing monotony as that monotony is to you. The exit for Hanna and the Lincoln Highway was a welcomed sight.

Hanna was much like Hamlet, . Hanna, once a very nice town, was co-founded by the oddly-named “Nimrod West.” Here, two railroad grades, one running east to west, the other running north to south, intersect. For some reason, I’ve always wanted to see this. I parked and walked twenty feet through an abandoned lot to this dream-come-true. A few locals were gathering as I did so. I snapped a few pictures, waved to the populous and continued west along the tracks.

The Lincoln Highway, in this part of the country, is what would later become US Route 30. It was clear that certain sections had been abandoned, some marked, others not. When trying to follow these sections, I found much of the old Highway to be gone, either unmarked or buried under the modern four-lane. It was difficult to tell which back roads were true old alignments and which were just ordinary back roads. I followed some to dead ends and some back to the main highway. I hoped that each road I was on was the Lincoln Highway. And who knows, maybe some of them were.

This combination of Lincoln Highway and US Route 30 led to Valpraiso, where I discovered that I had gained an hour. I don’t know when this happened. Between which dying towns and barren fields did I miss the small, rusted sign reading: Entering Central Time Zone?

I turned north on Route 49, a state road, but four lanes and heavy with traffic. Over this short and quickly conquered twenty miles, we crossed US 6, I-80, I-94 and US 20 to arrive at US Route 12, the Dunes Highway. And before me were the gates to the Indiana Dunes Park.

Before setting out upon travels, friends will often give advice about what to see. I was told by someone to visit this park and I very much wanted to. Though I had time on my hands, the admission through these gates was $10. I would have to settle for a rain check and the photography of others.

This road hugged Lake Michigan with sand dunes interspersed between the harbors, factories and general urban decay that make up Gary, Indiana. Route 12 joined and then disembarked from Route 20 as Gary faded into East Chicago. Though the smokestacks and tanks of the refineries hid the skyline, Indiana became Illinois without so much as a sign. Here was Chicago, eastern terminus of The Mother Road, Route 66.

A Sunday morning can empty a city. I zig-zagged around the curves of Lake Shore Drive and saw hardly another vehicle.

The start of the main subject of my planned travels would have to wait on lunch. I decided to find the Chicago Diner, a vegan “greasy spoon” somewhere in the heart of the city. I thought I knew where it was. I took Lake Shore to Foster and then Foster for several miles and then nothing at all looked familiar. I rode 30 or 40 miles through uptown and midtown looking for something I remembered. I couldn’t recall the name of the street, the section of town or really anything. I knew the general location, but wasn’t really sure where I was, specifically. I was hungry and wanted to eat, but traffic was light and it was sort of fun. Beautiful day for such dealings.

Eventually, I found it. I had ridden not three blocks from it a couple of hours earlier. Sometimes that is how it works.

The streets were nearly empty, but the diner was full. I was lucky enough to get the last seat next to a strange man who seemed to want very badly for me not to talk to him. I obliged. I sat silently with my Dagwood and a vanilla shake, left a generous tip and then headed back to Ruby, parked only a block away.

The start of Route 66 is unceremonious. Even on a Sunday afternoon the traffic situation is too dangerous to stop and commemorate the event. Technically, Route 66 no longer exists. It was decommissioned by the Federal government in 1983. All that is left are historical markers and deteriorating stretches of road. This, of course, is part of the allure.

The Road’s traditional beginning was at Jackson and Lake Shore Drive. This is a one-way in the wrong direction now, so the unofficial start has been moved to Michigan and Adams. It all sorts itself out in a few blocks on Ogden Avenue.

Though it was without solemnity, we passed a brown sign which read: “Historic Route 66 – Beginning” and dodged both a pothole and a pedestrian as we drifted with the now heavy traffic down Adams Avenue, a street that, though now marked as so, was never the Mother Road.

We turned left onto Ogden (Old 66) and rode for miles as the buildings around us grew smaller with the skyline of Chicago behind us. Passing once-independent towns like Cicero, Lyons and Romeoville, it still all felt like Chicago. Route 66 through the city’s sprawl didn’t feel like much more than a ride through any city anywhere. I didn’t feel anything until reaching Joliet.

City riding eats up a lot of time. With stop and go traffic, stop lights, stop signs, you’re often stopped more than you’re going. With a bridge over the Des Plaines River into Joliet, we were out of Chicago and into our first real town.

That said, this town is a large and important road town. Interstates 55 and 80 intersect here. US Routes 6 and 30 both thread themselves through the downtown streets. Historically, the Lincoln Highway and the Mother Road both claimed Joliet as their own.

Tonight, Joliet was mine. Though I had originally planned to camp just east of town, I had found a very inexpensive hotel on my last trip through and decided to again take advantage. The layout of the town confused me a little, so I quickly headed to the hotel, unpacked what I needed and headed out to explore the streets before dark.

Joliet doesn’t feel like a mid-western town. It hardly feels like a town at all. It is a city, bustling with traffic (though not tonight) and all the fittings and trimmings of a city trying to dust itself off from the shadow of Chicago.

I visited the park dedicated to Route 66, speckled with one part strange sculptures and one part trash that’s blown in from the streets. The newly-mulched and landscaped trees and shrubbery caught plastic bags, fast food cups and miscellaneous bits of paper in their branches, displayed like unproud Christmas decor. A few hours with as many trash collectors would solve this.

The park is situated upon a ridge overlooking much of the town. Collins Street Prison lies east of a train yard and just north of the old iron works. I took Route 6 and found my way to this castle of a penitentiary. It’s a pretty huge place. Her most famous inmate was Jake Blues.

Sunset led me back to my hotel and the end of a good day, but thoughts were already on tomorrow.

I thought it would be fun to share a bit more of my early experiences with Scoot 66. This day happened exactly two years ago. The writing is from a possible “book” that I was working on. I got a few chapters into it and decided to put it off. We’ll see if I ever go back to it. I thought I’d post what I have so far.

It felt strange to take two days off from what is essentially a vacation. Even stranger was that these two days happened after only the first day. By the time I was ready to mount up, I had spent more time not riding across the country than attempting to do so.

I wanted to be on the road in the early morning. Though the night before was again a late one, I rose at dawn, geared up and was hugging my good-byes by 8am. By nine, I was in Wheeling, passing burned out, broken down brick factories and condemned row homes on US Route 40. This is known through Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio as the National Road. It was a very early alignment used by settlers heading west.

Here, I stopped next to the Madonna of the Trail monument. Each state along the National Road has a memorial like this to commemorate the mothers of the pioneer days. A Vespa like Ruby is certainly no covered wagon, but by the looks of the sky, I was soon to be introduced to the same elements that these brave mothers weathered.

Several miles through town and before I crossed the Ohio River, I threw on my waterproof gear while dodging wind and light rain by hiding under an overpass on Wheeling Island.

Crossing into Ohio, the rain sputtered to a stop while I picked up my pace shadowing Interstate 70 to St. Clairsville. Turning north on Route 9, the rain began again. Here it was no mist or sprinkle. All through Routes 9, 250 and 39, the rain fell, mostly, in buckets.

While it was raining, I rode through the Amish town of Berlin. Berlin is like the Lancaster, Pennsylvania of Ohio. The Amish are everywhere, though their buggies differ from the Pennsylvania Amish. They seem more high-tech with their battery-operated lights, black finish and mod-style mirrors.

Before rejoining The Lincoln Highway, I stopped in the town of Lucas for a short lunch (I had skipped breakfast). If this trip works at all, it will be due to frugality. Today, my breakfast was an energy bar, which I ate in front of a strange blue building with waves jutting up from its facade and bubbles for windows. Along its side was the word “Liquid.” The rain fell steadily as I shoved the energy bar’s wrapper into my pocket and rode north towards the next town.

Mansfield, Ohio delivered the Lincoln Highway to me before I expected it. I instinctively wandered from my directions and followed it. This does sound like a recipe for disaster, but I promise, it’s not.

I took a really old alignment of it and I was afraid I’d get lost if I kept that up too much longer, so I went north to find a slightly younger segment. I crossed modern US 30 and went about a mile, nearly giving up until I saw an old concrete Lincoln Highway mile marker.

Moving west, I managed to dodge about four storms. It got really nasty to the south and east of me. Ohio’s wide-open plains made the dark clouds seems nearer. The storms were headed north-north east, so we had to keep on to avoid the wet.

With the storms behind us and the sun drying the road, I pulled over to remove and pack away the rain gear. We pulled off the Highway onto a farmer’s lane with a strong wind from the west Though I was avoiding the storms, I wasn’t avoiding the wind, which kicked up as I was closing the saddle bag. This gust knocked Ruby over and onto me sliding us both down a mud and gravel embankment. I held her up, not allowing her to fall all the way. If she did, I would never be able to right her on my own.

I struggled for several minutes, just holding her in place. My heart panicked as my boots began to lose their grip on the stones. She was heavy and over-burdened with luggage. If I couldn’t pick her up, I would be camping here for the night and calling a tow truck the next morning.

Because of the panic, adrenalin was starting to race through me. In one quick heave, I was able to steady her as I gasped for breath and prayed that my heart would slow. There was no real damage to either of us. Ten minutes and a quick adjustment of the mirrors later, we were back on the road.

The sun shown warmy over us and the road was straight and long. The wind was blowing pretty well due-east, which meant that I had a horrible time keeping Ruby up to speed. Normally, with the weight of the bags and me, she can pull 75mph with little effort. But with this wind, I couldn’t even coax her to 60.

Our mileage suffered horribly because of the wind. Running low on gas, I pulled into a truck stop to fill up. As I walked inside, I was stopped by a nice-ish man who had about five teeth to his smile. He asked me how much I paid for the scooter. I told him $6000 to which he replied that he could get one just like it for $2000.

No, he couldn’t, but I needed the restroom and didn’t want to argue. I simply didn’t care. He then asked where I was going. I told him California via Route 66 and that tomorrow I’d be in Chicago.

“You don’t need to go to Chicago to pick up Route 66, ” he said. “It’s starts in Ohio, just down the road.” I told him that it didn’t, but he insisted it did, so I said, “you’re talking about Ohio’s State Route 66, I’m talking about US Route 66.” He said, “yep, I know, you can take it to California.”

I agreed because I didn’t care enough not to.

He kept talking, even when I tried to make it for the bathroom. I have a hard time just ending a conversation. It went on and on for about 20 minutes. Finally, I got my relief and used another door to exit the truck stop.

As we pulled out onto The Lincoln Highway, the clouds were rolling in. Ohio was nearly at its end and Indiana was waiting with open arms and darkening skies. I took Lincoln Highway a few miles into Indiana, then turned north on Indiana Route 101.

Indian seemed much like Ohio, flat, open, barren of all life but corn. We had made good time so far today, despite the rain, wind and nearly being swallowed by the earth.

My original destination was for a campground in Auburn, Indiana. My plan was to camp the whole way across the country. Tonight it would be much too cold and windy for that, so I decided to continue on 101 past Auburn to US Route 6. It was about 30 miles heading north. The 30mph headwinds of earlier were now my 40mph cross winds, mercilessly pushing us to the right. It was pretty tough keeping the rubber side down. I had to lean hard to the left just to keep everything straight. On the plus side, I could get higher speeds with cross winds, but it was a bit hairier.

I took Route 6 west to Kendallville, but since it was only 5pm I decided to keep pushing on. The towns of Wawaka, Ligoneer and Nappanee provided nothing but a broken down motel and a closed campground a few miles later.

By the time I hit the town of Bremmen, it was 7:30 and I was starting to get nervous. This was the second traveling day in a row that had me racing against the sun. It was darkening dusk and the temperature was dropping. I needed to find a motel, but there didn’t seem to be anything anywhere.

I was lost and needed to call Sarah, my off-site navigator. She had no real experience in mapping, but was willing to learn on the fly. I was also low on gas and hoped to hit the next town not only before running empty, but before total dark as well. While praying for a safe landing, a rain storm I could not see burst down upon us. My gear was wrapped tightly in the saddlebag and I could find no safe place to pull over.

What was only four or five miles seemed an endless nightmare, fighting wind blowing rain and cold through my now saturated clothes. My hands were numb and knuckles locked white in useless gloves. A light up ahead pulled me frantically forward. La Paz, Indiana had a gas station. I pulled behind it while bitter rain ran down the back of my neck, opening my eyes and clearing my mind of everything but the need to not be outside.

As I struggled to slide the waterproof gear over my wet clothes, I called Sarah. She told me to head south. There was a chain motel six miles away.

These directions didn’t make a whole lot of sense. From my recollection, there was nothing there. I took the road south and after ten miles talked to Sarah again. The road had turned into a busy four-lane highway with too many car lights reflecting off the wet pavement. An exit later, we ended up on Route 30, the exact same Lincoln Highway I traveled 30 miles away from to be on US 6. I could have stayed on Lincoln Highway, enjoyed a lovely ride and ended up in the same place as I did in much less time and probably much drier.

Lost and being lead away from where I needed to be, I called her back, this time in front of a boarded up curio shop looking as broken down as I felt. I had taken the wrong road, she told me. The Michigan Road exit would take me to the motel. She couldn’t tell me where I was, only where I should be. I would have to retrace my tracks back to La Paz and start over.

The needed exit was less than a mile south of town. She had never mentioned this and though I wasn’t angry, I was exhausted as I pulled into the motel.

The Indian gentleman at the front desk seemed shocked to find a dripping wreck of a scooterist willing to plunk down the $60 to stay in his establishment. I got my key, thanked him and retired to my room.

Everything was wet. My jacket, sweaters, shirts, pants, even my socks were soaked. I laid them out on and around the heater in the motel room while I stood above it shivering, but savoring the heat.

Only slightly warmed, I climbed into bed and drifted to a well deserved sleep. Today’s 412 miles were something of an initiation. The next day was the start of Route 66, the reason for my outing. Today was all a preamble.

Two years ago today, I started off on a three-month, cross-country adventure that took me from Pennsylvania to California to Utah to Seattle and back again. I rode over 11,000 miles across 28 states on a Vespa motorscooter.

The first day was cold and seemed to drag on forever. Since then, I’ve had some time to reflect upon that first day. It was a long time to be in the saddle, but I survived and was greeted with open arms by some of the best friends anyone could ever ask for.

Though I wrote about it in my blog that same night, I’ve decided to revisit that day and wrote some more…

My tent and bedroll occupied the bag on front rack, just low enough for her headlight to peek out over the top. Two saddlebags carrying maps, various tools, extra water and a small pillow hung from her flanks. A wardrobe of ten tightly-rolled shirts, socks and shorts were squeezed into the largest bag and tethered to the rear rack. Upon that was a waterproof bag for my computer. Behind me was a black canvas bag for the things I would need throughout the day: water, snacks, first aid kit and itineraries.

All of these things, I thought, would be found to be useful, even necessary. Maybe not today. But someday soon over the next forty-five.

I stepped away from the bike, looked over a clear sky to the next golden hill, wrapped in freshly-planted fields and dotted with shade trees. There stretched the road that would lead me away and I thought, “what am I doing?” Now that everything was set into unstoppable motion, this whole endeavor seemed almost ridiculous. Swallowing this, I mounted up. It would be the last time I allowed such a thought to float through my mind.

Ruby started gently and rolled almost silently through the streets of New Berlin. We crossed Penns Creek and left my hometown to grow even smaller in my rear view mirrors as the chilly spring air became cold wind against me. The sky turned overcast and offered no warmth.

Normally, in a car on The Turnpike, the drive from central Pennsylvania to Wheeling, West Virginia, my home for the night, would take six hours. But on a scooter, even upon a beautiful ride like Ruby, you can only average 45mph. Though she’ll easily pull 75 with bags loaded, there’s something that slows you down. This is not a bad thing, of course. What slows you down is the reason for the journey. What slows you down is the journey.

The two-lane gave way to a four-lane, following the wide Susquehanna River. We floated south with the morning traffic and her current, breaking west, finally leaving the highway. Here, ten miles after the stop lights of Carisle, we found ourselves misplaced with Route 34 heading south. We needed to be pointed west and had to backtrack those ten or so miles before discovering a beautiful length of road, rolling over hills and through fields with the Allegheny Mountains dotting the horizon. This lead us to Shippensburg where we turned south to Chambersburg and the Lincoln Highway.

I have traveled this road all my life. Lancaster, Gettysburg, York, Philadelphia not only mark the alignment of this highway, but mark pages and chapters of my life. I’ve lived in one, practically another, had family and friends to give occasion to visit the rest. It was rare, however, to travel it west of Chambersburg.

For those next 80 miles, we ascended through the Allegheny mountain towns of McConnellsburg, Breezewood, Everett and Bedford, wanting to spend time in all of them, but unable to stop for more than gas and maybe a quick photo.

Shortly after Bedford, I started to think that I had missed my next turn. It was one of those moments where your gut tells you you’re wrong, but you still insist that you’re right. I continued to press on while rerouting backup plans in my head and smiling that I was still riding the Lincoln Highway.

The more miles and minutes that slid by, the more certain I was that I would need to turn back to find this missing road. Though this ride was beautiful, the sun dipped towards the tops of the pine trees crowding either side of the road. This day was tiring and I was ready for it to come to an end. But not before I found Route 281 south.

Sometimes distance plays with you. Twenty miles can go by with hardly a thought or a half mile can drag you on for an hour. I didn’t know how many miles had passed since my missing road, or if I had missed it at all. And before enough doubt puddled up in my brain to cause me to stop, I found it well-signed and leading south.

When planning this trip, I searched for scenic roads that wound around mountains rather than blast through them, that favored small towns rather than bi-pass them. Though I try to stay on numbered roads when I can, I could not avoid the charm of Jim Mountain Road or the idea that somebody was clever enough to give the name “Jim” to a mountain. For those thirteen miles, time, cold and fatigue stopped. It was the first time of the day that I felt freedom. Though the forests crowded the road, broken here or there by churches or a stream, here was my journey.

This freedom drove me on a beltway around Uniontown, to Route 21 West. This is an old road with pot holes, twists, turns around and through newly-green valleys. Most scooterists love roads with tight turns and will lean into them, speed up as they run through them. I do not. For some reason, I have become afraid the wheels will slide out from under me. Of course, they wouldn’t, but nevertheless, I dislike a sharp turn. We slow down to 35 as I lightly lean into the curve, throwing my foot out to act as a counter balance. I trust those stuck behind me find it amusing.

Fifty miles of Route 21 later, Ruby and I found ourselves at the West Virginia border. I pulled over to take a photo of the small obelisk marking the transition. The sun had nearly set and I was only ten miles away from friends and my stop for the night.

A good chunk of those ten miles is Route 250, a twisted mess of a road that contains not a single straight stretch. It is 100% curves, twists and switchbacks squiggling its way across the ridges of West Virginia all with a speed limit of 55. How anyone is able to reach this speed, let alone maintain it, is beyond me. Time, like Ruby, crawled.

As I pulled into Rati and Dwija’s driveway, I honked my horn. The sun was gone and a cloudy dusk was bringing night down around us. Their home was like a second home to me over the past year. Sometimes it was my only home. It is always good to see them, but on this day, they were from heaven.

We sat up late talking over the day’s trip and gossiping about mutual friends. I had decided to take the next couple of days off to regroup my thoughts and to make sure that this trip is what I really needed to do.

All of that would be left for tomorrow. Finally I could close my eyes. As my head hit the pillow, I could still feel the road beneath my feet.

I wrote all of my blog entries in a separate blog. If you’d like to read them, you can follow the links through this post or just head over to my Scoot 66 blog. You can also check out all of the pictures there. Fun, huh? Ok, there’s a whole lot of ground to cover today, I sum up my three months of traveling in about 2,000 words, so let’s get started!

Or read the whole thing at the Scoot 66 Blog.

May
This was the start of the trip that would change everything. After a couple days tramping around the hills of West Virginia, I departed on May third.

Weather would mar my trip for the first several weeks. The first day was no exception. Rain through Ohio, and then wind and then rain again at night as I searched endlessly for a cheap motel. Eventually I found one.

Route 66 was the main inspiration for this trip. It started in Chicago, and that’s where I headed on the second day. It was my great fortune that it was sunny and springlike. The next day, riding across Illinois, was also sunny and nice.

I crossed the Mississippi. Missouri and I get along very well. Another fairly beautiful day.

Day Eight of my trip was a wash. It rained all day. I have never seen so much rain before or since. It came in sheets and I was nearly swimming through the air. On Day Eight, I had my only accident of the trip. The rain became so intense, so sudden that I could not see and didn’t make a turn, winding up in a ditch. Thankfully a family came along and dragged me out. There was no damage to anything but ego.

I retired for the night, only riding 100 miles, in the small college town of Rolla.

Rain marked the next day and the next as I rode through the rest of Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. The weather was still a factor, I was just lucky. I missed a deadly tornado that leveled a town I rode through by a day. By the night of Day Eleven, I was in OKC, ready for a break.

I had originally planned a side trip here, but shortened it, staying in OKC for a few nights.

Finally rested and fully dried out, I hit the road, falling in love with Route 66 through Oklahoma. This is a very underrated section. Sun, rain, dirt roads, getting lost, hippies and fun were all in store for me through western Oklahoma, into Texas. Texas is unforgiving and relentless and I love it. And it rained. Big, Texas rain. And the temperatures dropped into the low 40s.

Each night I was having to dry out everything I owned. Not because I didn’t plan for rain, believe me, I did. But even rain gear gets soaked and needs to dry. All day rains are tiering. And going into New Mexico, snow started to appear on the mountains. Visions of the Donner Party wiggled through my head.

But thankfully I escaped without having to eat my own arm to survive. No snow (yet), but wind was becoming a factor.

I fell deeply in love with Albuquerque and a wonderful family I met and stayed with there. I crashed for a few days, took in the local sites, hung out with some of my new favorite people ever and generally had a blast.

I was sad to leave, but had to (though I’d be back). Here is where the wind became a real issue. Actually no, here is where I figured it would be, but only caused minor issues, like blowing my tent down all throughout the night.

By the time I got to Arizona, the wind was amazing. It’s nearly impossible to ride into 40mph sustained winds and make good time or gas mileage. Both suffered. It’s also exhausting. And then there were the dust storms. Huge, billowing clouds of swirling, pissed off dirt kicked my white ass across Arizona.

Day 23 brought all sort of fun weather: wind, rain, snow, cold. It was a riding nightmare, but the scenery and stops were worth it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. The day ended in Flagstaff with flurries flying and temperatures dropping to the low 30s as I rode around looking for a place to eat. No camping tonight.

I awoke to several inches of snow, that held me up for a bit. It soon melted, but more storms greeted me throughout the day. Riding in snow is not very possible. I did my best and ended the day short, which was fine by me.

Route 66 was winding down. Only the rest of Arizona and California to get through. Day 25 was cold at first, but as I wound my way up to Oatman and down the other side into the Colorado River valley and then into Needles, the temps rose, though it wasn’t the 119F that I experienced the last time I was through here in 2006.

It would be nice if Route 66 ended in the Mojave. I love that place. It wasn’t hot and was just an enjoyable ride with a little desert rain. The next day was LA. I hate LA. I blew through it, very unceremoniously ending Route 66 and headed north on California One.

My plan was to make it to Big Sur the next day, but decided instead to head to Berkeley to visit Cole and Josh.

Though I don’t really care much for Berkeley, I had a great time thanks to my hosts. We saw the sights and even some big trees and a fault line and met the Great California Sky Whale! It was a delightful way to end the month of May.

June!
The first few days of June were spent in Berkeley with more fun, but finally it was time to say goodbye to California, climbing the Sierra-Nevadas and visiting Donner Pass. I took Route 50 through Nevada. It’s called The Loneliest Road in America, but isn’t. There are “worse.” This was, however, one of my favorite stretches of road on the trip so far.

It took me through the long valleys where you could see twenty miles of road in front of you, to mountains and finally to the salt flats of Utah. I wound up in Salt Lake City after a brief stop over at the Hare Krishna temple way the hell outside of town.

I stayed with friends, Mandy and Earl, dropped my scooter off to be serviced and picked up a rental car (which turned out to be an evil white PT Cruiser). Smartz joined the trip for a few days and we first drove up north a bit to see the Spiral Jetty and some train stuff. We then headed south for some wild west style fun. We spend the next handful of days hanging out in Albuquerque pondering what to do after Scoot 66 ended. We knew we were moving, just weren’t sure where. Albuquerque? Sure seemed nice.

We drove back to SLC and then Smartz flew out the next morning. I stayed for a day and then was off north through northern Utah and bits of Idaho and Wyoming.

Riding through Idaho, I discovered that I loved Idaho. Would never ever want to live there, but couldn’t wait to visit again. Idaho seems to contain bits of almost every state. From rocky mountains to white water rivers to deserts to thick forests and everything in between. I also discovered that I really dug the Oregon Trail, and followed a segment of it for a spell, however, not into Oregon.

By Day 54, I had been on the road twelve days longer than I thought that I would be… and I was only in Portland, a place that I didn’t even plan on visiting. The trip evolved on its own, naturally. The longer I was out, the longer I wanted to be out.

I could only stay for a few days in Portland, visiting Ashley, a traveling companion from 2004. Portland was my favorite town of the trip. We passed a very happy day there, picking strawberries and wandering the streets. Maybe I would move here. It was a plan. Love for a city makes you do wacky things. The next day, I fell in love with it even more. I did every but promise Ashley that I would move there. Hell, maybe I even did that. And I still might, who knows. Life is long.

I did not want to leave Portland to go to Seattle. But I did want to go to Seattle. I just didn’t want to ride there. I planned a fun, elaborate all-day ride. But I was worn out and said “eff it” and took the interstate.

The last day of June was a day off in Seattle. There would be many more of those days off to come.

July!!
At the very latest, I was to be home in early July. Instead, I spent the next two and a half weeks in Seattle. Mostly, it was so that I could get my scooter repaired – there was some drama associated with that. There was a lot of money associated with that as well.

I stayed with Ryan and Jaime and Jeff. We are old friends. Pretty much the oldest I have. I’ve known them since I was 18. We didn’t grow up together, really, but in a way we did and are still.

I can’t say that I fell in love with Seattle. Not yet. But I fell in love with being around such good, old friends. The plans once more had changed. I was moving to Seattle.

Now if only I could get back on the road!

By Day 78 of what was originally a 42 day trip, I was again on the road, heading through eastern Washington. The next day, I picked up the pace a bit. It’s not that I wanted to be back in PA, I was just tired from traveling and had a whole continent to cross as quickly as possible.

Montana and North Dakota were really fun to ride across. I was doing about 500 miles each day, which is quite a lot on a Vespa. South Dakota was as well. It was also fun hitting states that I had never been to before. Minnesota flew by. I hardly remember it.

But Iowa was like the mid-west’s answer to Idaho! I know that doesn’t sound too appealing to most, but trust me, there’s a lot of fun to be had in both!

That evening, I crossed into Wisconsin. I had never been to Wisconsin before, so yes, yet another new state… and my last of the 48. I have now visited every single one of the lower 48 states. Of my many fairly pointless accomplishments, this is one of my favorites.

I zoom through Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, wiggling closer and closer to home. Though it would not be home for long.

The next day, I was back at Rati and Dwija’s. Home? Pretty much.

Day 86 was the last day of Scoot 66. It was twice as long as originally planned and probably twice as fun.

There had been no major mechanical problems on the trip. It was smooth sailing (save for the small crash in Missouri). I didn’t even get a flat tire.

That is, until the day after I returned. Thank you, dear universe, for sparing me.

And thank you, dear readers, for getting this far. May through July of 2008 were life-changing for me. I wish I could have summed it up in fewer words so that more than a very small handful could read it, but hey, I’m not into the whole brevity thing.

Come back tomorrow and I’ll end the year with you.