June 3rd 2023 Day One

 June 3^rd – Damiansville Il – Day One

 

On the road again and everything was working against me to take this trip. Oh yeak, the end of my contract, the bike with new tires and oil and everything I needed to pack were in order, but my dad fell and had to go to the hospital, my central air went out, one stop along the way was out so I had to find an alternative stay for a night and so many little things that I think someone might’ve been telling me that this kind of trip maybe wasn’t in the cards. 

 

Well, here I am at the local haunt, Fuehne’s tavern in Damiansville Il drinking with the locals. The first day of the ride was pretty uneventful except for the chance of rain in Cedar Rapids  I stopped for gas and picked a spot with a number of bikes filling up only to find out it was a gang or bikers from Minneapolis that made the ride to get together with the local gang for a party for the weekend, It happened to be a black gang and I chatted a little with the president, a good group of people and I’m sure it helped that I didn’t have any colors on. It you don’t know what I mean about colors between the gangs, it has nothing to do with black and white. No colors and I have no affiliation with a 1 percenter.

 

For my first day on the road without much warming up for such a ride, I did feel it. My legs and ass got pretty sore, but after you get done with the ride shower, start drinking and get to writing you forget all about how hard the ride may have been.

 

I do have to back up and say it wasn’t necessarily uneventful from the get-go. I’ve been messing around with being able to load rides into my bike to give me directions for each of the rides I’m going to be making for this trip and it seemed easy enough to use google maps, create my route, convert it to a GPX file and load it into my bike according to all of the videos I watched. Well, my first attempt a few days ago to load the GPX file for my first day’s ride didn’t go as planned that I headed to St Paul Harley to get the latest software loaded on my bike and waylay, the first trip loaded. I also loaded a Harley app on my phone where I can create rides and load those to my bike to give me turn by turn directions…and to top it all off, I usually use iPhone maps to get me where ‘m going because I think it handles more road hazards and avoids road construction even better than the others. 

 

Ok, 3 different maps to get to the same place and sure enough they all have their own preferred route. Google maps is good and I know most people use it, Harley ride planner is all for the rider giving directions for a better biking experience and well, iPhone maps that I use is just straight forward and the fastest way to get to where I’m going. 

So day 1 I get to Rochester and my iPhone is giving me one set of directions and the HD app is giving me another that I asked them why my USB wasn’t able to load my google maps, well, no good explanation that I’ll just have to use the HD app that I loaded to my bike and my iPhone separately. That turned out to be 2 different directions when I got closer to St Louis that I finally decide to disable the HD app and just use the iPhone maps, hell thru Iowa iPhone maps kept warning me about speeding cameras and stop light cameras ahead that it is probably the best way to go.

 

Ok, enough about the maps problem and on to St Louis and wouldn’t you know I’m going to be in town just about dinner time. Time to find a place that triple D may have visited for some St Louis bbq. I ask Shelley to do some homework for me and check out the places and she sent a whole mess load of places. I did stop at a hotel just outside of St Louis and asked which one I should try, but the lady at the desk had never been downtown to any of them so didn’t have any suggestions. At that point I picked one hat sounded good to me, Stellar Hog and according to them, the ribs were the way to go.

 The place was in the middle of a questionable neighborhood, but the clientele was, well let’s just say, one that a biker fits into. I did order the ribs and all I have to say is I’ve definitely had better ribs in Minnesota than what these were, and it wasn’t one that Triple D had been to anyway. I guess you have to watch what you search for.

 

Ok, day 1 in the books and I’m writing this on day two that you won’t believe what happened June 4^th, Day Two…Stay tuned.