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This is the helmet I bought the Spouse for his last birthday. It's what he asked for.
A bit over a week ago, the grandparents took the boys to the cabin, and the Spouse began packing for one of his Chicago rides. He's done three or four since I've know him, in an effort to shed the skin-crawling feeling he gets from sitting on airplanes, among other things.
This time, though, I got to go. At least as far as Missoula.
The bike, all packed with clothes & camping gear, and my shadow at 8am, departure time. The Spouse left business clothing in Chicago on a previous trip, and shipped his laptop.
Day one was Highway 14 up the Gorge to Walla Walla. (You'll not get scenery photos, because I can't take pictures at 65 miles per hour.) Our friends the Fayettes fed us and kept us overnight. The view out their guest room window the next morning:
Notice who got to wear the new helmet. We were on the road by 8:30, determined to have breakfast in Lewiston. So we headed off into the Palouse, which is some of my favorite landscape in the world.
Here is a list of some things you can smell from a motorcycle: Grass, flowers, pea fields, wheat fields in all stages of ripeness, asphalt, tar, roadkill, cows, horses, creeks, all the cool-smelling plants that grow near the creeks, and rivers. The Snake River has its own smell.
Breakfast in Lewiston:
My bagels & lox were good, but if you notice, there's a big pile of cream cheese on my plate. I'm guessing the waitress told the cook, "That one has a skinny face. Give her extra cream cheese." But a person just can't eat that much cream cheese all at once, delicious as it is. This cheese issue will recur, but it's not a bad problem to have.
Heading toward Lolo Pass:
Did I mention that the weather was hot? After a point, there is no wind-chill. Finally I asked the Spouse to stop so I could jump in the Clearwater River. He got in, too, and we took off all wet. Dried in fifteen minutes.
Lolo Pass has a great visitor's center at the top, with ICE WATER to drink. We rode into Missoula at 6pm, and went almost immediately (after we washed the dirt off our faces) to Famous Dave's where we ate an embarrassing amount of barbecue from a trash-can lid. Then we went to the hotel and slept very, very well.
Next morning we found a cafe' for breakfast. I ordered a dish called "the heap," which was tasty, but once again smothered in cheese. I like cheese a lot, but just not all at once. Still, it was good.
Then, after riding around Missoula, the Spouse dropped me in the airport and I flew home to the boys. The Spouse kept riding east, on and on. Next time I'll post some of the photos he's sent.
4 comments:
Oh how cool! That sounds like so much fun. And wow, that's a lot of cream cheese.
Boy, we were on the same roads pretty close to the same time. Did you get stuck in lots of construction? We were imagining how bad it would be on a moto.
No construction at all! We stuck to Highway 12 through the panhandle - no delays.
I could eat cream cheese with a spoon. I think I need a root beer sparkle helmet. The Lolo Pass area is one of my very favorite things I've seen so far. LOVE it. I hope we can take a trip like this someday! Except we're apparently anglophiles, so we'll be riding a Triumph. :-) I'm guessing you can appreciate that, since it was a ride with you in a certain engineer's Defender that toppled me from Land Rover enthusiasm to all the way smitten back in the day.
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