The BLT launch was a success today. We started out as every trip does with the breakfast meeting of the brain trust. This took place at Denny’s in Brownsburg somewhere near the agreed on time. I say near because we said 9:00 sharp. By 8:20 all 4 of us were seated at the table and Alexis was taking our drink order. Did I mention we were anxious to get rolling.

We thought we should get at least one picture of the us while we’re still speaking to each other.

The rest of the day (400 miles worth) was spent working our way across Indiana, Illinois, and crossing the big river (Mississippi). The temperature was great in the morning but got progressively hotter as the day went on. If you’re travelling with friends, having an intercom system you can count on really adds to the experience. The Cardo Packtalk Bold units were still in good shape battery wise after 8 hours on the road.

If you’ve traveled this part of the country, you know that it’s difficult to call it scenic. If you are a big fan of corn and / or soybeans, scroll back thru my previous blog posts and you can find pictures of corn.

We stopped for gas a few times and tried to keep hydrated. We initially talked about what we might run into while trying to take this trip during the 2020 health situation. On our gas stops we encountered very little evidence that anything out of the ordinary was happening. Use of face masks was spotty. Keeping 6 feet apart was pretty easy to do – most places we stopped at weren’t very crowded.

The only real excitement during the day came when we missed a turn. How can that happen with 4 GPS’s running and a brand new copy of Rand McNally road atlas. I’m not sure but there might have been some distractions (I was trying to call home will riding the bike because I thought it would be cool.) OK – all we need to do is turn around to get back on track. The GPS said once I made a hard left hand turn all I had to do was to go 2 miles straight down the road I was on to get back on track. No problem. I cranked the bike up to about 50 with everyone else following my lead. The excitement came when we popped over a hill and the asphalt stopped – gravel started. Huge pucker factor. My 1000 pounds of touring machine is far from an adventure bike. Yikes. 1 mile of loose gravel and washboard road put us back on a real road and back on track. There was a lot of silence on the intercom system then and a little bit of disgruntled conversation later over dinner. This is not an experience I want to try again.

As we neared our destination, there was talk about dinner plans – Mexican, Italian, Thai, even KFC. Hmmm – we pulled into our hotel and saw Culver’s across the parking lot. Not exactly the fine dining experience we had hoped for but it was within walking distance and we could sit together inside the place. All other plans were abandoned and butter burgers were ordered (if you’ve never been to Culver’s – that’s their claim to fame).

The bikes are nestled safely into the hotel parking lot. The temps are dropping some, and the first 400 miles of the BLT is in the books. The launch was a success.