Welcome to the chronicle of my hair, Heather's Hair.

day 6 - Ames, Iowa to Merriville, Indiana

 

i am driving over the mississippi! look mom, no hands! that which separates the west from the east, Day 6
here we have some more views of the mississippi. it is amazing. just incredible!
and the rest stop is amazing. overlooks the mississippi and is clean and the people are nice (though they looked at my hair funny) and helpful. lots of the rest stops in illinois (which i drive through this particular day) have free wireless. patrick says it is so the truckers can surf porn. the rest stops also have...
a place for a mutant man (his head is not connected to his body and he has no hands) to walk his 3-legged dog!
i took i-80 across 3 states to try and get to the next hotel at a reasonable hour (i needed to do laundry). i beat patrick, for the first time, by 5 whole minutes!

at the beginning of today's ride, patrick, as he writes in his blog (oopsclunkthud), raced to the front of the pack and waved his arms in triumph at being in first place. then the bike started to heat up so he dropped back.

i had some adventures as well. i got a phone call from the local police around van horne, iowa saying that they were given my number as a support vehicle for the scooter group. they had a scooterist who was down and they were preparing to take them via helicopter to cedar rapids. i very calmly told them i was on i-80 and that i could make it to them quickly but that there might be other support vehicles closer so i would call them first. could they please tell me the name of the rider...'um, janice ashrat'. a flood of relief, came over me. then guilt. i wanted ashrat to be ok, but i was very thankful it wasn't patrick. i pulled to the side of the road and called libby. she said she heard that ashrat went down but didn't know they wanted to medivac her out. she figured she was closer and that i should continue on. if they needed me, she would call.

in the end ashrat convinced the paramedics to let her out of the helicopter (by saying something to the effect of 'if you don't let me out of this helicopter right now i am going to sue you for false imprisonment, whereby the the paramedics decided she was more lucid that they thought) and she finished the ride. of course we didn't know this until we saw her ride up in front of the hotel. above is a picture of her headset. she is one tough momma and so is her p200.

i gave my third and last massage in merriville. this was to jd. he was a great client and seemed to really enjoy my massage. that made me feel good. got the laundry done too.

we came in...yawn...zzzzzzz....OH OH sorry, 1st in our class, 11th overall. kickin' everyone's butt but the maxi-scooters (250cc). it was really getting sort of dull at this point. the scenery was pretty dull and the competition still not so hot. of course, it was mostly due to mechanical issues and i felt bad for those riders. they sure worked hard to fix their bikes. pj never gave up!