7/14/08

Today we awoke to cloudless skies and a temperature of 48 degrees. Glad I took a shower last night. Gene and I didn't cover our bikes, which were soaking wet with dew when we got up this morning. Apparently Harley guys don't cover their bikes at all. It was interesting that we passed a town this morning that had a John Deere tractor dealership and a Harley dealership right next to each other. The BMW owners can only conclude that they must be located that way to make it easy to swap parts back and forth. After another hardy breakfast and a couple of wrong turns, we headed for the Aerostitch Factory. This place is located in the low rent district of Duluth and is so nondescript that we passed it twice before finally getting it right. It is a model of efficiency and of how to run a business on a tight budget. We picked up a couple of things and headed for somewhere in South Dakota. Minnesota is supposed to be the land of 10,000 lakes, but we saw more water in South Dakota. Right before we got into SD, we came upon a windmill operation that numbered 350. They stretched for as far as the eye could see, and they weren't small by any stretch of the imagination. Keeping to our plan to stay off the interstates, we met some challenging situations, the worst one being a road resurfacing operation (oil and chip no less) that stretched for miles. It was signed at 40 mph, we were doing 55 and a lunatic in a semi passed us. Being showered with loose gravel from a semi was no fun, and having stowed his helmet safely in the saddle bags, Uncle Eddie took the worst of it. Restraint not being his strong point, he gave the guy the finger after we repassed him on some better road. We were safely ahead and pulling away when Bear took a wrong turn and we ended up right behind the doofus again. Not good. We played cat and mouse with the guy for miles before we finally took another route. Uncle Eddie has still not cooled off. It being another 400 plus mile day, we decided on a Super 8 motel, and had a burger (Eddie had two) in some Irish Pub in Heron, SD. The plan is to ride to somewhere else in SD tomorrow far, far away from this place. These are some wide open spaces. Wondering what the bikes would do, Gene and I took them up to 101 mph and were still 2000 rpm below redline. Uncle Eddie stayed with us but said that he was about tapped out. The Harley guy has been coming down hard on the Beemer guys saying our bikes sound like coffee grinders, but so far we haven't had to visit the repair shop and we haven't irritated any of the various campground inhabitants at the places we have stayed. More tomorrow.