Sept 24th 2008 #2 St Louis MO

The picture to the left with the St Lous Arch is one of my favorites from the trip as well as the one with the motorcycle right above this text.

I think I mentioned prior, Norm got quite good at taking pictures with the two of in them.

The first picture of the gold wing motorcycle shows the dried mud on the street. As we left the area it was a showdown with us heading one way on the "open air" motorcycle and a large street cleaning truck with large sprays of water pounding the pavement in front of us covering our whole lane.

Norm slowed the bike, we both looked the driver straight in the eye......... it reminded me, for a split second of the old west movies, the stand off just before they pulled their weapons................

Norm slowed the bike to a near stop...... the truck kept approaching.... this large amout of water was going to cover us whether we were moving or not.... there was nowhere to go... the truck kept approaching....... just feet away we braced ourselves to get soaked.... suddenly the water stopped, the driver smiled and let us past...... I'm sure he enjoyed his power over us and pushing it to the last second to cut the water off.

Don't be to judgemental here...... we knew when we left for the trip we would probably get wet and did. The difference being we had rain gear on and on this day we were heading into evening and cooler air. When you pack for 16 days for two on a motorcycle you don't have a lot in the extra clothes category...... Plus the time to stop, find the clothes, change, repack wet, bulky clothes somewhere safe as to not get any other precious cargo wet.

Take note of the pictures of Norm and I by the railing with the Mississippi in the back ground.

Ok now back to the picture of the bike on the road with the mud. The road with the bike, then a probably twenty foot step us pavement, which we are standing on, the railing, over the rail and down say 30 feet is another pavement about twenty feet wide, then down to the river.

Ok now picture the river being so high that is came over onto the road where the bike was sitting and flooded it to the point the road was closed. That is an awful lot of water needed to flood such a large area in such dept.

I'm glad we weren't there a day earlier or we wouldn't have been allowed by the River.

You may be wondering if we went up in the arch. We did not. The one issue we had traveling on the motorcycle is leaving our gear on the bike and will it be there when we returned. Most of the longer touring we did we had our stuff safely at the hotel. Anything with us, including our helmets with intercoms fit into the saddle bags and trunk under lock and key.

Blessed with yet another beautiful day to travel and enjoy. Off to Bedford Indiana!