West 16 Day 1

To be fair, 2016 has been a good year so far - maybe even a really good year.
Despite being cut short, my winter hog hunt was successful, and the abbreviated trip may have prevented me from being stuck on locked up winter weather roads.  March came with a late(ish) snow storm, but we made it to Hawaii, "our" 50th state, and had an absolute blast.
Still, with really nothing since then, it seems like it has been a very long time since the last adventure - not even a brief impromptu weekend motorcycle trip somewhere.  This isn't like 2012, when there really WAS  a long spell without an extended motorcycle adventure, but as I look at the proposed route for a 2016 trip, it looks surprisingly similar, knowing no two trips are ever the same.
And yet, summer has been somewhat complacent.  Weeks of the comfortable routine.  Dog walking, biking, mowing, and working and working.  It is time to get out of Dodge for a while.
I've reread Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in preparation for the trip.  We'll be traveling many of the areas Robert Pirsig did in the book; I fully anticipate he'll make an appearance on this adventure.

And so, after mowing some disgustingly long grass, we are ready to go.
SO took a half day off of work to drop off the dogs in beagle jail.  I escaped the incarceration of work as early as I could.  We finished packing up the Goldwing, and off we went.

Home to Danville, IL:  179.2 miles

We started on 2-lane roads before hitting the interstate.

Traffic was tolerable and not even that bad around Indianapolis even though it was approaching rush hour.  Once through Indy, traffic thinned noticeably.  Somewhere outside of Indy, my Goldwing ticked over to 50,000 miles.  Frankly not that many given the bike has been in 49 states and never on a trailer!

(The picture with the actual 50000 was blurry, but doing this at 75MPH wasn't easy or prudent)

We hit a little bit of rain, but it was almost pleasant with the heat.  Radar suggested we missed some good thunderstorms by only an hour or two.  More was coming, so even though we could have gone further, we stopped in Danville.  Riding in the heat after work is slightly more tiring, and this sets up us well for tomorrows destination.

Dinner at Big Boy was better than it had a right to be, followed by an early evening with a giant chocolate chip cookie to end the day.