I’ve been off the airwaves for a while, for no particular reason. But I’m back, at least for a while.

Many of you know that I’d been talking about spending three weeks or so in Northern California, searching the area to see if Jean and I would be interested in spending a month or so spring and/or fall. My thoughts were to drive out, stay across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, and spend some time going from town to town checking things out. Many of you also know that Matt offered to fly back to Michigan, spend a week or so with family and friends, and ride back with me.

So that’s where we are…on our way to San Francisco. We got kind of a slow start. Without going into a lot of detail, we planned to leave at 2 PM yesterday, left Hastings at 3:45 (my fault), and had to stop at the cottage. We made it as far as Munster, Indiana which, luckily, is the home of Three Floyds Brewing Company (what a coincidence). We had dinner and maybe, just maybe, a beer or two, then called it a day.

We stayed at a motel near the expressway. When we took the exit, we drove about a mile down the road, so I thought to myself, at least we’re far enough from the road noise to get a good night’s sleep. Not so!! We turned to the right, made another quick right, and drove a mile back on the service road to I-94, I-80 and whatever other highways intersect there. We could have thrown a rock to the Eastbound lanes, and I thought Matt was going to do that this morning. The traffic never stops, and it was 99% “big rigs”. To say it was loud was an understatement. But the trials and tribulations don’t end there. We stayed at a Motel 6 and paid three extra dollars for Wi-Fi which did not work. I spent 15 minutes this morning getting the three dollars taken off my credit card.

When Motel 6 says in their ads “We’ll leave a light on for ya”, we didn’t think that meant right outside our window, shining through flimsy curtains. Between that light, Matt having to put his hat over my phone ‘cuz my phone light kept blinking, and having to put on his head phones on to drown out my snoring, he didn’t get much sleep. He hasn’t shot me yet, but if I disappear, check Matt’s luggage.

To help break up the trip, we drove to New Glarus Brewing Company near Madison, Wisconsin. We planned to get there by 10:30 but that didn’t happen. The Tom-Tom doesn’t like it when states change road names and addresses, so it took us to Madison, out to Verona, and told us we were at our destination as we passed the bike special needs area for Ironman Wisconsin. We had to drive 16 miles back South to get to the town and another mile South to the new brewery. We took the self-guided tour, Matt sampled a beer, and we bought around three cases to go. We had to unpack and repack the back of the Jeep to fit it all in. Many states have laws against bring beer into or out of the state, so we may be calling for bail money.

After leaving New Glarus, the quickest way to get back to I-90 is through Madison. Luckily we went right by Ale Asylum Brewing Company, so we stopped there for lunch. As it turned out, Ale asylum is less than a mile from where we stayed last month for Ironman Wisconsin.

Needless to say, we didn’t make much headway, so tomorrow is a full travel day. We’re spending the night in Albert Lea, Minnesota and will get into South Dakota a couple of hours into the drive tomorrow. It started raining when we left Madison and it rained on and off all the way here. The wind is blowing quite hard. Hopefully the storm that is going through will pass by us in the night and it won’t be bad tomorrow.

So I’ll sign off for now. I’m tired and my brain is working way below its normal 50% level.

Just (Bloated And Tired Of The Drive Already) Jack