Brain Dump

Had a nice weekend on the bikes; Friday night traveled about 20 miles down to Indianola Bike Night… this is a once-a-month event that usually draws about 2,000 bikes. Food, music and BIKES on the square in a small Iowa town… very nice! Saturday went up to the dealership to sit on bikes (I’m thinking about a Dyna or Softail), then went on a nice 60-mile-or-so ride, including some quality time on the Interstate, which I *hate*. But, we are planning to ride to Sturgis in August so I need to get used to it. On Sunday we rode to breakfast and put some new highway pegs on Steve’s Heritage.Speaking of Sturgis, Steve has a story he likes to tell about a previous trip he’d made out to Rapid City, on which he and his then-wife actually got so low on gas… with no stations in sight… that they had to ask at a nearby farmhouse if they could siphon some gas. Turns out no one was home, so they took the gas, and left some money and a note. Along those lines, a friend of ours who trailered their bikes to Sturgis last year cautioned us to always top off the gas, because there were stretches out there where no gas was available. So I got to thinking… there’s a publication I’ve seen that truckers use that gives information about all the various Interstate exits on I-80, which runs across Iowa. I wondered if there might be a similar pub about I-90 that runs across South Dakota, so I went to Google and found a page that gave me the info I wanted. So now on my atlas, all the exits that have gas stations available are highlighted in yellow, and I was able to figure the mileage between each to pre-select our gas stops so we wouldn’t have any problems. I feel SO organized!

Indianola Bike Night 2006

Just wanted to show you Indianola Bike Night – it continues to be one of our favorite local events. Third Friday of each month, May-September… bikes, food, folks and more bikes on the square in Indianola, Iowa. About 2000 bikes, maybe? I’m a terrible judge of crowd size, but the square’s a block long, and bikes are lined up 3-4 rows per street, plus 3-4 rows per sidestreet (8 sidestreets). This cool photo, by the way, is courtesy of the Indianola Record Herald (www.indianolarecordherald.com), the local newspaper that featured us on their front page recently. I thank them for letting me use it!