Cannonballin'

Sunday, September 9th, I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn in Sandusky to see these Cannonballers take off for the day. I had experienced this Run in 2010 when they were in Clovis, NM, so I wanted to take it in once more. Coincidentally, this time I was 1,300 miles from home and I was on the same track they were, so why not.

Real exciting. I got up and walked over half-awake, took some pictures, said hello to Michael Lichter, then went back across the street to pass out for a few more hours. 

Four hours later, I was up with some coffee in me and the bike packed. Destination - Madison, WI - an easy 440 miles. 

With an hour to gain heading west and no real rush, I exceeded the speed limit a little less than usual.  I did get pulled over in Indiana. Similar to the last 8 or so times I've been pulled over on my bike, I talked my way out of a ticket. Don't ask me how? Most of the time I get to talking bikes with the officer, who is usually a male, naturally, he should like motorcycles if he's a normal swingin' dick. Half-way through the conversations, the reason for pulling me over usually turns into an afterthought. 

This Indiana State Trooper walked up and said, "I pulled you over for excessive speed, do you know...?" and he stopped, basically answering his own question by looking my bike over. "You don't have a speedo?" I told him yeah, explaining that I didn't have a cruise on this bitch either. He asked me a few questions about the bike, not the usual 'where you coming from', 'any alcohol in your system', or my favorite 'are you concealing any drugs or firearms'. After a few harmless motorcycle-related questions, he got serious and returned to his car. A minute later, he came out and handed me this, saying "My boss would fire me if he knew I was letting you go for how fast you were going." I got back on the bike, thanked him, then laughed and laughed and laughed as I made my way back into traffic. Maybe next time smokey. 

I made it to Chicago by mid afternoon, right after the Chicago Bears game got out. I pulled into South Chicago on fumes and made an emergency stop at a gas station right off of the highway, just South of the White Sox Stadium. Fucking Ghe-tto. Crack heads, hoopties full of bruthas rolling through, and cops in bulletproof vests. Went inside to take a piss and a big black cop tried stopping me on my way out. Guessing he was wondering what the hell some dirty, long-haired white-boy was doing on that side of town. I gassed and got back on the road, rolling and splitting through hordes of cars displaying Chicago Bears shit all over them as I made my way through town on the Chicago Skwy. Shit got so congested, I was using the shoulder most of the time. I made it through to my sister's in Madison before the sun went down and started drinking beer(Ale Asylum, Madison brewery, good stuff)... I was about to take a break.