On the Road Again

You have been wondering what was in the little yellow bag I carry on the bike. Here it is fully enlarged! You never know when you are going to need Bumblebee to come to your rescue!

So yes, I am finally on the road again after a week away. We had the family reunion in Shawnee, Oklahoma to celebrate my mother-in-law's 101st birthday. Now she is Mrs Patterson 101. Or that is what John Jones said. He is the Indian man who picked me up at the airport. You see, during the birthday celebrations, Stuart Powell died in Danville, Kentucky. His daughter, Patti, talked to the new pastor at Danville, Joey Pusateri, and Joey invited me to come back to the church I served for 20 months as interim pastor and preach the funeral message. It was great fun seeing a lot of my friends in Danville again, and it was especially fun having lunch with Joey and learning about all the good things he is doing for the church. After you have served a church, even as an interim, you learn to love the people and want them to succeed and do well. It has been so exciting for me to see Joey growing the church so much. After the funeral, I flew back to Oklahoma City, where Mrs Patterson 101 had John Jones pick me up at the airport and bring me back to Shawnee.

I had left the bike at the Sehorn Yamaha dealer in Shawnee for some bike repairs. Yes, I got a new battery, plus a new x-ring chain and sprockets. I also changed the oil and cleaned the air filter myself. The bike is running like new again.

So I left early as always, and headed north toward the Oklahoma border with Kansas, where I picked up the TransAmerica Trail again. They are having a wind-boom in these parts with lots and lots of wind-farms.

I stopped in Stillwater, home of the Oklahoma State Cowboys, at Daylight Donuts because I saw it! AND because there was rain about. After checking the weather radar on my phone, I decided to head directly west through the rain and then go on north to catch the TAT westward. The plan worked really well, and I avoided the worst of the storm... and the lightning.

I stopped in Blackwell at Bob's Grill and had a wonderful fried catfish lunch for $7! What a deal. It seemed that everybody in town had discovered the good food and good deal at Bob's. I also met Don who was riding a Harley from Santa Fe to St. Louis, taking the back roads. What a delightful guy! Like me, he travels alone. He said he always tells people exactly when he is leaving and where he is going, but nobody shows up to go with him.

The off road sections looked more like the above picture today, which is not bad at all. You can't tell from the picture, but it wound up raining a good bit  in places today. Some of the roads handled the rain really well, like this one. Others not so much. So when the trail took a muddy turn down toward a river, I bailed and took the easy route again to Alva, Oklahoma.

It's been a good day.

Don't forget that you can follow me on the map and actually see where I am while I am traveling during the day by going to the web site below. My GPS sends a satellite signal every ten minutes. You can see the dot and even click on it to see how fast I was going at the time.

The web site is https://share.garmin.com/CHESTERANDERS.