BRP Harley Trip - Day 2

Today’s leg: Galena, IL to Champaign, IL, about 4 hours. We’re on two lane roads part of the day,and freeway part of the day. The day started out very cloudy with intermittent rain drops. Hopefully we’re riding ahead of the rain…

Talking about the trip

Having a mic in my helmet that’s connected to the bike video camera is WONDERFUL. It lets me talk about what we’re seeing as we’re seeing it. I love that!

Rain, rain go away

Argh! With weather typically moving northwest to southeast and today’s ride taking us southeast we were hoping to stay ahead of the rain. But, not so much. We weren’t too far into the day’s ride before we ended up in a complete downpour. We stopped to put our rain gear on BEFORE it started to come down hard. Charlie and I both have very dependable rain gear that kept us nice and dry. Full fairings on the bikes help, too. You end up in a “bubble” behind the fairing and windshield that’s pretty rain-free. Like Charlie says, be smart about riding in the rain.

Lunches

Our intention is to stop halfway through the ride each day for a road side lunch. We filled a soft-sided cooler with sandwich fixins, and I’ve got a backpacking stove I can use to boil water for coffee or dehydrated meals.

Mixing work with pleasure

Since Charlie and I are both self-employed it was impossible to find two weeks in which we could both be completely off work. Part of the reason Champaign ended up on our tour was because of a teaching gig I had there. Work factors in a few times on this trip.

More trips

Be sure to check out Ride and Rally trips.