Well I made it to Amarillo, TX. But first I had the ride of my life. Wind on my back, stars were out, temp was about 80 degrees. I'm enjoying looking at looking of fields of windmills in the darkness. You can't see them but they have their aviation red beacons all set to come on at once so the entire field lights up at once and then goes dark again. It's kind of eery. So this is all off to my right so I didn't notice the smudge on the horizon to my left. About San Jon NM the gust front hit and the wind on my back turns into a 40 knot crosswind with higher gusts. And the temperature drops 20 degrees in a mile.
It was blowing so hard I had to down shift to keep the bike running some wheres near 50 mph. And I'm wondering what next!
And then the angel arrives, in fact two of them. A pick-up truck pulls up next to me and blocks the wind. And I can get back to 65mph in fourth gear and run with my Denali LED high beams on. So I'm a handle bar width off this guys RH front door and the GPS says 70 miles to Amarillo (?) and we dance. There are tumbleweeds blowing across the road in front of us along with the dust, about a 1/4 to 1/2 mile visibility.
There were faster drivers out there that night. When one wanted to get by, the pickup would pull in front and move into the RH lane. After the pass he would go back to the LH lane and and I would move up to the door. At one point during one of the passes, an 18-wheeler CTI rig pulled up next to me and I got a moments rest (sitting up) next to his drive wheels where I knew the "quiet" spot would be.
I drove this way all the way to Amarillo that night - a solid hour of formation driving. When I got to Amarillo I could see the thunderstorms flashing in the darkness. But this was where my hotel was for the night so I stopped.
The next day I got up early and drove though the storm. About three hours worth of rain and some lightning between Oklahoma City and to about 80 NW of Little Rock AR where I turned the corner on the line and started working my way to Memphis. Then I headed SE out of Memphis to Fulton MS where I had ridden as far as I could into the darkness, and yet far enough ahead of the storm so I could stop, sleep and not have to ride out of it again.
That was only two days of some of the wildest riding I have ever done.
Home safe again after 6809 miles in the saddle over three weeks. I'll try to post up some links to picks.
This afternoon I ran some errands on the R65 shaking out the cobwebs.
