Homeward bound!  Does that sound sweet!  We knew we only had a little over 400 miles to ride today, so were taking our time getting ready, when….

We hear on the morning news there are tornados on the leading edge of a storm cell in Missouri, and of course it’s heading our way!  Time to pack and run!  Can we stay ahead of the storm?  Just to be sure, we put on our rain gear before we even hit the road.  Again.  Rain gear.  We got spoiled with all that hot dry air in the southwest.  Rain?  Would we be lucky again and stay dry?  Yes!  Fate smiled upon us once more as we barely got hit with a drizzle all day. 

Traffic was heavy pretty much all day, but we just stayed with the fast movers and kept an escape route.  This is the second day in a row, and the only times the whole trip, we had lane changers not see us and had to brake to avoid them.  I make a practice of not riding in someone’s blind spot, and moving through it quickly when I pass, but sometime’s they still don’t see us.  Twice in three weeks and 6000 miles isn’t bad, though.

Stopping for lunch and gas just south of Dayton; we thought it was going to have to be chain food (oh no!).  But as we turned into Perkins, there it was!  The Dark Horse Tavern!  Yes, cold beer!  Very nice decor and excellent food & service.  Then back on the road home.

We got into Belleville at 5:30, and breathed big sighs of relief.  As much as we enjoyed the journey and adventure, it’s always nice to be home.

A few statistics: 405 miles ridden today; 37.5 mpg; 45.3 mpg; and 44 mpg.  21 days away from home, 16 of those on the road.  6,164 total miles ridden, average of 385 per travel day.  Tomorrow I’ll do a little bit on what I learned, what I’d do differently, and what I wouldn’t change.  I’ll also share details on expenses for anyone planning their next adventure.

We’d again like to thank Martin for allowing us to use his website for the blog, and Ryan for all the hard work setting everything up and making it look great!  We’d also like to thank each and every one of you who followed our journey - it was great having you “ride” along with us!  Frank and Sharon

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 7:35 pm and is filed under On the Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.