BRP Harley Trip - Day 2

Welcome to Ride & Rally with Fix My Hog. We're ready to leave Galena. And, in fact, we are really ready to leave Galena 'cause it looks like weather is coming. All indications are, do you think we can ride ahead of it? We're gonna race it, yeah. We'll be right ahead of it. It's very dark right now. Every once in a while a drop is coming. So this is gonna be our shortest open of the trip because we're rapidly- yeah. Yeah, hopefully this is the only time this happens but don't wanna get rained on if we can avoid it. Our goal today is Champaign and this is just kind of a flyover state. Easy, now. We got listeners here. Oh yeah, no, we really, really like Illinois, but... We gotta get there. This isn't our scenic tour part of the trip. We'll capture some stuff on the bike cameras as we see it. But really our endgame at this point is to beat feet for the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is, I dunno, like two or three days away, but Champaign is next. Fours hours worth of driving. Fantastic. Right, right, George? It'll be "vonderful," There you go. That's my new one, "vonderful." So it looks the weather's a little bit iffy today and it's cooler. I dunno. It's 65 degrees this morning. Cloudy. Got drizzled on just a little bit as we were getting started. So we're anxious to get rolling here. Galena is a very cool town, if you get a chance to come, a very historic town. It's existence was based on lead mining. In fact, the word "galena" has to do with lead or lead production. I don't remember. General Grant, Ulysses S. Grant lived here for a while. So if you get a chance to come to this part of Illinois, it's a cool spot. You can see a little bit as we're going through town here, the older, historic buildings. Boy, there's a change in country-side, huh? One of the things I think is, you know, you get wrapped up in this trip and there's an endgame here in our case, we're trying to get to Blue Ridge, not trying. We're-we're headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway but it's also the journey, not the destination. And I was thinking of this on the river yesterday, as you're driving along, you know you gotta look around and enjoy what you're looking at. The river was absolutely beautiful yesterday. The countryside here, these rolling hills, the corn fields. This is pretty. And, uh, I don't know, I'm just saying sit back and enjoy the ride. There's so much stuff I can see from the seat of a bike that you don't see when you're inside a car and that's a very cool aspect of riding a motorcycle. And when you're doing a trip like this, you know, Don't-don't get caught up with where do I gotta be? And when do I gotta be there? Enjoy the path, while you wait. Got tactical rain gear on. I think we, like dumb luck, got good timing there. It is pouring now. It is pouring. So, we... It's funny except it's not funny. So we're in Galena saying, 'we should get moving.' 'Cause- We're gonna beat the, we're gonna beat the rain. We're gonna beat the rain. And then we stopped, like, five minutes ago and put our gear on and we've been, like, drizzled on a little bit but we were already kind of damp at that point. And then we're looking ahead at like, it's kind of breaking up. Maybe we don't need the rain gear after all. And, uh... It's pouring. Yeah. It's-it's pouring pretty good. So we have like, 35 miles straight East and then we go South. We're going to Rockford, then we go South to Champaign. So we're cautiously optimistic. Hoping. I'm hydrating a lot, just drinking water as it's blowing into my face. I'm well-hydrated. Gaining back all the water we lost from sweating on the Great River Road yesterday. So yeah, hopefully when we cut South, we drive out of this. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens here. This is where we cut South, we're getting on 39 to go to Bloomington, Illinois. So hopefully the change of road and direction changes our weather. We got absolutely poured on. You saw that and, uh, it let up a little bit, but it still very gray. Looks like it could rain some more any second. It's just cool crossing bridges. That's the Illinois river. No colors changing yet, still very green. What's for lunch, Charlie? Sandwich, a salami sandwich, cheese, some awesome, uh, walnuts. Some home brew. Yeah. So we're, we're mostly trail lunching. We're trying not to stop and buy lunch. Well it's only the second day. So anything could happen. But our idea is to pack a lunch every day, and then, I do some backpacking, so I've got small-scale gear. So I brought my backpacking stove, instant coffee and then, I don't know. It's good to get off the bike for 45 minutes, especially today. Holy buckets, that rain, man. Yeah. Once it decided to come, Yeah, we got wet. It came like crazy. So it's, I don't know. It's gray now. We'll hopefully be dry from here to Champaign. We'll see what happens. Got an hour to go. Yeah. About an hour from here. Easy hour. Cool. I gotta eat. We spent a few miles getting wet. Then we put on our rain gear, rode in the rain. Now we took the rain gear off and we spent a few miles getting everything dry. It's beautiful now. It's sure dark for the Northeast and that's, we're going East tomorrow. We'll see what happens. But, uh, where we are, man, beautiful out. It was kind of a long day today. It was a real short ride. We only had, I actually haven't looked at the tracker in the GPS yet, but something like 200 miles, four hours. You really got rained on. Yeah. Cause Charlie doesn't wear a helmet. So he got a lot of water in his space today. But part of what we wanna bring out of this is that "S-blank-blank-T" happens sometimes. And we didn't stop. No, you can ride through it. I mean, you gotta be smart about it, but you ride through it and you pay attention and you pay attention more to what's around you and- Gear up. We had, we had full rain gear. Yup. So initially, you know, I, it's my fault. I waited too long to stop. He may have reminded me of that once or twice. Stop before you're soaking wet. Then it, rain gear works a lot better But then it got really nice out and we took our rain gear off and we dried out. So it all worked out okay. But, head to toe rain gear. So we got the rain gear on and then, like Charlie said, it's just, be conservative with your riding, know when you should get off the road. And it's, this friend of mine, a scout master, taught me the expression that sometimes you just gotta embrace the suck. And I, and I like that. Like, these are not the most pleasant riding conditions, but we got, what? If we're 500 miles in, we have over 2,500 miles to go. We can't just stop on the side of the road for two or three or four hours. We're gonna get rain. Yeah. We're, we're gonna hit rain and more than today. Yeah. In fact, someone told me, tomorrow morning we do it all over again. We're putting rain gear on early tomorrow. Yeah, we'll start sooner. So we obviously, we made it safely to Champaign. We're staying with my good friend, Danny and Eileen who are just standing right there on the other side of the camera. And tomorrow morning, we have a long day tomorrow. So we'll get rolling when we can. But for now, we're embracing the not-so-suck. This is, what, again? Yuengling. Yuengling. Because we can't get this where we live. We get beer, but just not this one. Not this beer. So we're gonna enjoy this while we're here and take a night off and do it again tomorrow. Anything else? What, what would, how was your day? It was not fantastic, but it wasn't horrible. Alright, alright. Come on, come on. I, mine was "vonderful." Oh. Because we're here now. Right? Now, it's fantastic. It's like banging your head against the wall. It feels so good when you stop. So riding in a downpour but it feels so good when you stop. So, alright, we should be done. Yeah, yup.