Chance Meeting Across The River - May 25

Friday, May 25

Today is 'Towel Day', and only readers of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy will have a clue about what this means. Too bad for the rest of you....

Out of town and across The Mighty Missisippi, helmet off and soon the MZ is humming along on the same pleasant country roads as yesterday. Today turns out to also be 'Acceptable Mileage Day', as putting back the smaller 130 jet in the carburetor improved things drastically. 40 mpg (16 km/l) may not sound impressive, but compared to the first week on the prairie, I no longer cringe when filling up the tank again.

They drive all sorts of weird stuff here. The Moped Army I saw yesterday would have a field day riding under this insect-like piece of farm equipment.

Car based trike whose owner got it after the short-lived venture came to an end.

It's still farm country, today with a jail thrown in: Barbed wire fence all around, but I also see geese, that in other jails are used for sounding alarm if their territory is being violated. They're cheaper than dogs, and probably impossible to bribe. And there's scattered clouds at first, then the whole horizon north of me turns dark. Thanks to the wonders of modern day technology (smartphone) I can sit in a diner figuring out the path of least watery resistance, and conclude I'll just say put here until the rain gods find somewhere else to hang out.

First rain during the entire trip so far. I get 30 seconds of it while retrieving some luggage, before sitting it out in luncheon restaurant.

Only memorable nice thing in Peoria was this antique excavator.

The veteran’s bar, with POW/MIA flag (just outside of photo), Trump flag and a 'support for police' flag. 

Having planned to spend the night in Peoria, Illinois, the run-down industrial town is all but welcoming. Even the ‘veteran’s’ biker bar I get directed to has bad vibes, so seeing that it’s only 5 pm, I press on north. Stopping briefly at a music festival – Cypres Hill, reggae etc., but a $250 entry fee – I cross the Illinois River to the town of Lacon, where I ride down a random side street to avoid doing a u-turn in front of a police cruiser. And stop right outside a shop dealing in old US motorcycles, whose owner Cotten happens to know the same Indian guy in Denmark that I know! Just calculate the odds against this happening.

Cotten specializes in fixing carburetors and a few other things, and while he wants to get out of the business, the back orders he has seem to make retirement a very distant possibility.

Like all such shops, decades of carefully collecting nice bits gives it a museum-like quality.

If I had used the video function on my camera, you’d have seen his black dog humping the teddy bear (lower center).

Thanks to the music festival having taken all rooms in the area, I have to ride another 5 miles north to the town of Henry, where a small riverside hotel has room for me. I end up drinking beer and shooting pool with some of the local youngsters, before giving up another fight against the crappy wifi connection. 

Remarkably loud turqoise 1960 Chevy Impala with 16” pro street rear tyres and digital instruments. The Trepanier-built car even made it to the cover of Hotrod Magazine. Behind it a 1960 Plymouth Fury with oversize tail fins, and behind that a V8-engined propeller boat. This is The Midwest, baby….

film coming up, as soon as my film editor back in Denmark has made it acceptable for viewing.

Crossing the Illinois River, twice.....