July 23 - gw

Well, today was full of surprises. Some good, some not so good.

Temps: 70's going into the high 80's. Very muggy day, lots of clouds.

We left Lincoln, NE this morning around 7:30 or so heading for Lasalle, IL. It seemed like all day we were chasing rain. We rode on damp or wet Interstate all the way to Iowa City. Luckily we only had to ride in a slight rain for maybe 5 minutes. We sure thought we were going to see heavy rain all morning, but, again, we were very fortunate.

Now for the bad news... As we neared Iowa City, all of a sudden, Rusty noticed a heavy vibration coming out of his bike. We pulled over and discovered that his final drive bearing had deteriorated to the point the back wheel/brake rotor was rubbing on his brake caliper. Bad JuJu! Then we decided to check my final drive and found mine was loose also. We were lucky in that we were only 6 miles from Gina's BMW in Iowa City. They immediately dispatched a truck and trailer to come pick up Rusty's bike. We got into the dealership and they put our bikes in front of others, checked bikes out and confirmed final drives were bad on both our machines. They went on line and found there were only two of the drives in the U.S. and they were in Stockton, CA. They arranged, on a Friday afternoon, to get them air-shipped into their dealership for delivery tomorrow morning. So, with luck we should be back on the road tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed. (The dealership said our drives were the first they had to replace in over 4 years. Just our luck.)

Mike said he couldn't wait on us and took off and headed for Michigan. What a guy!!!! Just kidding; when it was determined that Rusty and I had to wait on parts and he couldn't help, he did move on and it was the right decision. He called to check on us after riding a heavy down pour of rain all the way into mid Illinois. He should be home tomorrow. Hopefully with better weather for him.

Wish us luck on the parts getting here and enough time tomorrow to get them fixed. If not, we will be stuck here until Tuesday before we can get moving again.