It’s Wednesday evening in Plymouth, Indiana, and I had the pleasure of riding on 4 wheels into our destination today. That is sarcastic, if you can’t tell by the written word.
The Boys on bikes from Indiana, are now home, safe and sound after about 6,600 miles on 2 wheels and 22 days on the road. They had an uneventful ride in from Peoria, IL, to the best of my knowledge. They only had about 240 miles to do today, and they pretty much hot lapped it in by 2pm, with a minimum of stops. The horses were headed to the barn, so to speak.
My bride, Julie the “ On Reserve” Search & Rescue truck and trailer, arrived at the Holiday Inn Express in Plymouth around 4 pm, and about a 3.5 hour ride from Flint, MI. Pretty impressed with this young lady, while she enjoys driving my “zombie apocalypse” truck, she had never pulled a trailer before. I assured her that “you won’t even know that trailer is behind you” and she took the reigns and ran with it.
Funny story about that, as I was awaiting her arrival under the portico of the hotel, she rolled in, and I expected her to jump out and say “here take it” instead she said, in true trucker fashion, “ Where you want me to put it!” I chuckled out loud, and said, well just park it over there by that other truck & trailer.
Monkey & I dropped the trailer gate, loaded up my dead Panamerica and our gear and other odds & ends, like the 2 dozen tshirts, each, we bought along the journey. After a quick clean up from the loading process, Julie, Monkey, Monkey Brother Rick and myself unhooked the zombie truck, and headed to the Brass Rail, where we met the rest of the crew.
It was a pleasant surprise to see that the guys all brought their wives with them for our final dinner as a group. It was a great way to have a celebratory dinner with Jen Coffel and Kim Phillips joining us for our raucous final meal, and to share their perspectives of our ride, and rehash our stories from the road. In addition, Truck/Trailer Brian rejoined us with his wife Stephanie, and it was great had by all, putting faces to names, and so on and such.
After our dinner, Ski Doo took me, Monkey, Monkey Brother and Julie to his Wings Etc. restaurant for a couple of night caps and an order of wings and hot poppers to finish us out. He got Monkey and I a few beers to go for his and my final tailgate party back in the parking lot of the hotel.
Monkey Brother and Ski Doo drove the truck/trailer to Ski Doo’s home that evening, as Monkey Brother has a flight out tomorrow, Thursday, from Ft Wayne IN back to Las Vegas, and Ski Doo will ensure that he gets to the airport, but it will be up to Brother Rick to be sure he doesn’t miss the flight… again.
Tomorrow morning it will be just Monkey on his KTM making the final leg to home in Michigan. Julie & I will be in the zombie truck, and running about an hour behind him, as his support vehicle, just in case.
We shall see.
Bye for now
Stick