– on our return drive from a weekend away we stopped at the hipster town of Three Oaks MI. In one of the dusty window displays at an old hardware store stands a couple of vintage bikes. A 750cc Triumph Bonneville and a Norton Commando. I’ll have a 1/2lb bag of 6d nails please!
– Brief stopover at this northern Illinois town yesterday for a coffee and seat outside the old bank building watching the world go by. The late 19thC Main Street architecture is still part of the towns character.
– on this day in 1979 a NASA probe became the first to encounter Saturn and its impressive rings. A gold anodized aluminum plaque designed by Carl Sagan, was attached to the robots body in case in some distant future should it be intercepted by some alien intelligence its graphics may explain its origins. We’ll be long gone by then… but at least in some far flung corner a little hint of our existence will be drifting about.
– Triumph company advertising photo of a couple of adventurers parked up in the woods with their Tigers getting a fire going to boil up for a brew.
Having a marvelous time. Scenery pleasant, company good, roadside attractions zany, weather warm, and traffic light. Wish you were here.
Route 66
We had a full day ride looping mid-north Illinois. Heading down old Highway Sixty Six from where it springs at Lake Shore Drive it runs parallel to Interstate 55 through small grain fed towns. A stretch between Dwight and Bloomington has a vestige of one of the southbound lanes alongside the road. The telegraph poles still line the grass cracked asphalt.
Sirius the hound peers out of the tank perched knapsack. The warm tones of desert rock outcropping litter the arid scrub alongside the blacktop route. The Sporty bobber is fettled for such a journey; and the companion just adds to the enjoyment of travel and adventure.
At about the same time BMW was introducing the Gelände/Straße GS range Triumph was grasping a straws during its business death throes. One model that hinted of what was to come was a slightly modified 750 Tiger named the Trail. 21” front wheel, single seat, high pipe, off road gearing. You can nearly see the looks of latter model Tigers in its DNA. Growing up I always loved the look of the dirt oriented front fender.
Head down the road. Aim for the horizon. Take your wits, your sense of exploration and a heady dose of adventure to venture out into the yonder.
Old Roadhouse at the intersection
– one of our stops for a leg stretch was at this abandoned crossroads building. You can imagine hoarded of Harley Davidson bickered swarming around at this corner on a Sunday morning before roaring around the backroads then heading back to Milwaukee after a spin around the Moraine’s.
Marvelous day on the road today. 250 miles on a route around the bottom of the Lake into Michigan on lanes lined with trees leafing out. Lilac fragrance wafted from farm hedges laden with bloom and rolling fields being watched over by soaring hawks. This old barn was seen in the small town of Eau Claire MI.
When we were scooting through Racine County WI at the weekend the price of gas dropped to $1.48 per gallon. That’s the lowest I’ve seen it for over twenty years.
… back in the fifties Mr G G Evans rode his Triumph Thunderbird through Europe and on through North Africa, along the Suez and down into South Africa. I wonder if this journey was inspiration for Ted Simon fifteen years later as Jupiter?
This fella has the right idea: get the motorhome packed, hand a ‘sled on the back, and head into the back of beyond until this all blows over. As Thoreau said: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
