ROUTE 66 ADVENTURE (DAY ONE)

It was Thursday morning and the sun was shining. The sky overhead was clear blue as far as the eye could see. It was the first day of the rest of my life and I was ready to get started. After a hearty breakfast and a last minute look around the house I was off on my next big adventure to ride the historic Route 66 highway down to the "city of angels". Before  leaving Muskoka I had one quick stop off at my good friends, Jim & Penny Burns, who had a hot cup of java waiting for me along with a gourmet lunch in a bag for my first meal on the road.



Once under way I had only ridden 45 minutes down the highway when I discovered that a major accident had forced the police to close the highway and the closure could last for up to four hours. I figured that they would simply detour us around the spot and I'd be on my way shortly. I was wrong! Due to the unique location the detour went on for miles as it wound through dozens of tiny towns, farmland etc. as the miles long bumper to bumper procession inched it's way to the open highway. This took over two hours to get around so that it was 1:00 pm before I finally saw the Toronto skyline in the distance. I was hot, tired and wondered why of all days for this to happen it had to be today. Then I remembered the sack lunch and stopped for a rest and a well deserved sandwich. I later learned that the accident had been caused by a motorcycle cop who had hit a goose in the road and lost control and crashed. Little did he know how so many people's lives had been affected by his unfortunate mishap.
Before long I was on my way flying down the road headed ultimately to Holland, Michigan where I planned to have dinner and spend my first night with a couple of old collage friends in their home there. Although I had visited them in the past finding their home was tricky and this was only made more difficult because my new GPS had lost all it's map files the night before when I tried to download the latest mapping update. Fortunately I was able to find their house using my phone's GPS.
Crossing the border in Sarnia took an hour and I did run into some rain briefly but I finally rolled in to Rick and Candy's place at 9:30pm. I had just ridden over 500 miles. Candy had waited for my arrival to prepare dinner so by 11:00pm the three of us were sitting down to barbecued pork chops, corn on the cob and scalloped potatoes. Yum! They both had taken off the next day so we took the opportunity to catch up and wound up heading to bed around 1:00am.
My first day was now behind me and a new day awaited my arrival in the morning.