Time Monster is chasing me, and getting closer and

I once said one should only do four hundred miles a day in order to see something of what was around. Hmm, that must be buried under that pile of good intentions on this planned ride. So I left Huntley, IL about seven their time, and am now in Madison, Ohio, at almost eight this time. Where have I been? On the motorcycle on the road and on the run. South Dakota has a seventy-five mph speed limit, but it seems like every state to the east drops the limit by five mph, and people just ignore it.

My first challenge of the day was Chicago morning commute traffic and road construction. It does seem to me that the toll road should reduce their fees when the road isn't fixed, fast and furious - I mean what am I paying for? But I took mostly 355 until I found 80 and headed to Indiana. For days I have been thinking that a photographer should take some great pictures of the abandoned barns around the country - before some slick developer buys the property and makes it into some more suburban blight area (not that it won't be pretty - but it will be hardly alive). Farms are still great, the trees are taller in Indiana and Ohio on the farms, the farms seem smaller than those great expanses of farther west, but still very much alive, it was nearing the Ohio border that I finally smelled the smell of money - don't know what kind of farm, but it was producing. And smelled so, wonder why I hadn't noticed it before. The weather has be outstanding, lots of sunshine and blue skies.

At the Fallen Timbers Visitors Center I received helpful information to get to Camp Perry - one of my major goals along the way. He told me not to take one route - it was slow and twisting along a river. I said I am riding a motorcycle, that is the route I must take -- and I did, it was a nice ride. You see so much of the same thing on the Freeways, that the county and state routes are full of variation and interesting stuff. Camp Perry was there, funny how I don't meet all the people I thought I would, but people do keep moving and working and doing stuff - have ever since they left the cave to hunt and gather. I do know I would like to shoot there one day - not in any too big a way, but just to shoot at far targets and pull and help score others. Great way to spend one's declining years.

Onward on Ohio State Route 2, towards Cleveland, named for the brother of the man that had seven daughters and died on Bunker Hill, one of his daughters is one of our ancestors and my sisters can be Daughters of the American Revolution, not quite as good as being a Revolutionary War Veteran or a member of such and Association (RWVA, just kidding!). I don't do the research, just my mother has told that story for years so there is some kind of truth in it. In Cleveland I pulled over to fuel up, and found no immediate joy. I did have a very nice ride through Rockefeller Park, saw several bronze statues of famous people I didn't know until Ghandi - he was a gimme'. University Circle, get lost a bit, find Coventry Road and those houses on the hill. I almost stopped to take a picture of the one I want my wife to buy me. Big bold brick, large front door with castle tower-like appearance. Sigh, sure I couldn't pay the taxes on it. Lots of those fine old homes and grounds up there.

I found a BP and fueled up, called Mike and Breda and talked. Then I had to find my way out of town, so I asked the young man working the station. He told me a long way and sounded positive and I took it. The worst that could happen was he would have a good laugh if he was foolin' me. He wasn't. The directions got me out and onward, high speed. Everyone is driving way too fast. In Cleveland, I was using my turn signals to warn of my changing direction, and in Washington State they would be nice and allow merge - not here - they honked at me like I had done something wrong, sigh. I do appreciate they didn't hit me, that would have been bad. Well, my battery is about done, so I must be, too. Y'all yeild a bit of space for the silly guys on those two wheeled thingees. Okay? Nite!