We had some severe weather roll through the part of Kansas I was in last night. It was a good thing I decided to stop when I did. The nasty weather was still there in the morning so I left a little later to give it time to blow through.

The rest of the ride through Kansas was a bit damp but uneventful. I got in to Kansas City just before noon, ate lunch and made my way to the rally site.

I wasn’t the first person in, but pretty close to it! This would prove its worth because the good campsite under the trees kept me drier when the overnight storms hit.

Lee set up the keg and beer consumption started, helped out by some of Turbo Sam’s Wild Turkey. There was a pretty good turnout today with about 35 people showing up early. I finally turned in at around 10:30.

There’s no cell service here so this update will get posted when I get back in to Kansas City.

I hit the road a little later than I had wanted to but made really good time so it didn’t matter. The headphones worked really well and it was really nice to have some tunes on the road. The Hydrapak, when full, forces me to sit up a little straighter because it hits the T-bag but that is a minor annoyance compared to not being dehydrated.

I stopped in Oklahoma City to pick up a shirt from the dealership and had some lunch.

I got in to Wichita at about 2:30 and decided to push on a little more since I was making such good time. I finally stopped for the night in Emporia, Kansas.

Keep Crude in your prayers. His mother passed away yesterday.

Understandably, he’s dropped out of the ride, so now I’m going it alone and have rerouted again through Wichita, still going to the XL List Kansas City Rally for the weekend.

The oil has been changed, new spark plugs have been installed, and with that it’s ready for the ride. Now I’ve just got to get packed and hit the road!

As I’ve been getting ready for this road trip one of the things I’ve been wanting to do is use my GPS, but putting it inside the map pocket of my tank bag just didn’t work. First off I had to look down in order to see it, thus taking my eyes off the road. It also got unacceptably hot in that pocket, to the point where I was worried that it’d be damaged after a full day’s ride.

So today I went down to Bass Pro Shops and picked up Ram Mounts‘ GPS-60C mount and a U Bolt adapter.

The GPS is now mounted on my handlebars just to the left of the speedometer and there are no visibility issues, either with the GPS or it blocking the view of the road.

Red’s annual birthday bash was this weekend and after getting back from getting the new tires on I hopped in the Jeep and drove on up.

The usual suspects were in attendance, including Redbeard Emeritus, Ghost, Yo Adrian!, Sam, Redbeard, Banker Bob, and Amada Hargis.

Yo Adrian! and I spent about three hours trying to get his GPS working with the mapping software, including a trip back to my house and one to Bass Pro Shops. He finally did get it going.

He also brought along some Cuban cigars and we enjoyed some Montecristos and Cohibas along with some good single malt scotch after the rain cleared off.

We finally turned in at around 3:30 in the morning after a full night of catching back up.

Morning came around too soon and we all parted ways for points elsewhere. Once again the time together was much too short.

There are some photos over at my gallery in the CRABB 2005 album.