55th Class Reunion on a Two-Wheeled SUV

Dick Fredericksen's Website 55th Class Reunion on a Two-Wheeled SUV

Home Page

55th Class Reunion on a Two-Wheeled SUV:

A Two-Wheeled What?

Laying On the Utility

Thinking Small for a Big Trip

Day 1: Tucson to Las Cruces

Day 2: The Road to Santa Rosa

Day 3: Kittycorner to Kansas

Days 4 and 5: Wet Wichita, Sunny St. Joseph

Day 6: This Way to Humboldt

Enjoying Humboldt (Iowa)

Gas Tank Blackjack

The Real Kansas in Technicolor

A Liberal Dose of Memories

Holbrook? How Did We Wind Up In Holbrook?

Painted, Petrified, and Perfect

The Home Home Stretch

Days 4 and 5: Wet Wichita, Sunny St. Joseph.

Day 4: Liberal to Wichita, Kansas. The scenery on this part of the route impressed me in 1999, if only because I wasn't expecting scenery in Kansas. Now I know better, but I defer it all for the return trip. The weather is too cloudy for good picture-taking anyhow.

Day 5: Wichita to Saint Joseph, Missouri. This time the threat of thunderstorms looks real. I load up the bike anyhow, put on the rainsuit, put on the rain boots, and step out the door. Just then the storm breaks. What a deluge! I carry everything back into the motel and watch from inside for a while. There is no abatement, and the weather forecast hasn't promised any. If the storm continues at this intensity, it's inconceivable that the travel bag and the saddle bags can stay dry for long. They've been through stuff like this before, and never leaked much, but usually it slacked off in an hour or two. This one looks as if it might last all day.

Morosely, I arrange with the motel to stay an extra night if the weather hasn't improved by checkout time. I'm all set to phone my cousin, who has proposed to convoke the other members of the family for a dinner on Saturday evening, to warn him that I can't make it on time. I hold off, though, until the last moment, and what do you know? The rain begins to slacken. The weather channel still shows a line of thunderstorms all along my route, but they're a few miles to the southeast of it, and moving southward. I decide to chance it.

Good move. The storm remains visible off to the east of the Kansas Turnpike all the way to Topeka, but gives way to sunshine somewhere to the north of there. At Topeka, I leave the Turnpike, which would sweep me into the Kansas City area. Maneuvering around Topeka on its beltway system, I cross the Kansas River, head a few miles east on US 24, and pick up Kansas Route 4. Ah, this is more like it! An irenic country road, where the only concern is whether it will have gas stations. It does.

Eventually Route 4 meets US 59. This leads on into Saint Joseph, via what is very much a back door. I skip a turn onto Interstate 36, which cuts across town, and continue on into the center of town. I haven't looked at a map since morning, but remember the name of the cross street on which my motel will be located, so I just continue northward ... and northward ... and northward. The cross street never seems to materialize. Eventually I pull out a map and see that quite possibly it never will, on this side of town. I'll have to backtrack.

Meanwhile, I've been finding out something about my rainsuit, which I never removed since morning. The sun is shining, the traffic is slow, and the rainsuit is HOT. Finally I pull over to remove it, and eventually arrive at the motel reanimated but in sweat-streaked apparel. Another good entrance scene completely ruined.

Naturally, it's late in the day after the late start.