Sunshine on my shoulders

Now … you won’t be able to get that song out of YOUR head, either.

Yes, yes, finally a great day of weather. The sun rode with me all day and coupling that with long expanses of open prairie and few officers of the law, the odometer racked up 373 miles. Departing Weatherford OK this morning, there still remained about a third of the state to cover. I blazed through the 97 degree panhandle of Texas and got a good start on New Mexico, landing in Tucumcari. So it’s been a Great Plains sort of day.

Today’s tracks included a pre-1958 alignment through Sayre OK, several dirt road alignments in TX and a “where the hell am I” dirt & gravel alignment through a Native American reservation in NM. On the last segment, it was once again confirmed that if you’ll just TRUST your GPS device, “where am I” quickly becomes “wow, that was a cool track”.

The neat thing about moving westward is that, each night before dusk, I get to “ride off into the sunset”. I didn’t bring any silver bullets but I’m pretty sure that I can fashion one of my socks into a Lone Ranger mask. So it’s Hi-Yo Silver. Ke-mo sah-bee, let’s ride.

OK, a hawk, a snake and a coyote. Enough said.

Bikes are like magnets on road trips…for other bikers. Today an impromptu gathering of 3 bikes and 5 strangers led to a half-hour get-to-know-ya session at a fuel stop. Niagara Falls Canada, Milwaukee WI and Long Beach CA were all represented. As we left, I noticed that each of the 3 bikes seemed to have their own ideas about which way RT66 went from there, although we were all intending to be westbound. Passing ships in the night. It’s all a part of the adventure.