After a ‘little’ work on the laptop we just headed into downtown Boulder on the one bike and went to see Narnia at the cinema. Cool, just us, a bag of popcorn and a movie. It was what the doctor ordered

Lisa barked an order for breakfast and coffee, wearing just a grin. That was the start of the day. Of course it’s her Birthday and so I obeyed ?

With a casual morning taking form, Lisa was outside just soaking up the sun and I’d manged to write up some diary. We’d already arranged with Chris and Erin to join them for lunch downtown…a birthday lunch no less.

It was great to just chat with friends over a relaxed lunch. With Chris and Erins own motorbike odyssey lasting over 4-years and 100,000 miles, nothing we do needs explaining. It’s a nice change to just be with friends and ‘hang-out’.

I’d been teasing Lisa that I’d not bought her a birthday present and so after lunch, C & E headed back to work and I took Lisa over to the Mac shop. Lisa’s face was glowing with excitement. We ended up buying one of the simpler ipods, but this was a big deal. We’re still trying to work out how to pay some of the medical bills we’ve run up and so an ipod seems a little irresponsible. Yeah, good, it’s her birthday that’s a good day to be irresponsible. Lisa wanted to have music on her bike for as long as I can remember and after all the medical shit she’s been through in the last 6-months she deserves some frivilous spoiling.

Chris and Erin are out tonight at a Sheryl Crow concert so with Lisa and her new toy in hand we found a table at a small Italian restaurant and ordered a beautifully prepared risotto.

When Lisa ‘really smiles’ she lights up a room. There were no dark rooms back at Chris and Erins. A good day!

We’d only been on the road for 5 minutes and we were already regretting the decision to leave the GoreTex liners in our jackets. The 7 going East was slow and traffic was daudling. Without some momentum we weren’t getting any cooling air and 30 minutes in we were feeling like cooked chickens. Finally the first signs appeared for the highway 76 and as we hit the on ramp and pulled through the gears we had our first respite.

We needed to fill up and stopping for gas seemed like a good enough reason to remove our liners. Strange the things that you get in your head! We could have stopped at any point and removed the goretex but we’d left so late that we told ourselves that we’d remove them only when we needed to stop for something else, a strange sort of self imposed discipline? We simply figured that each individual stop cost us more time. Writing this now it does seems pretty odd?

I swear today we rode the straightest road in history. Sure, it was great to have a hot balmy day but between the pancake flat farmland of Nebraska and the punishing side wind that saw us riding our bikes cranked over at 45° we had a hard time staying awake. I spent the day in a strange limbo between adrenalin fueled moments of panic as the wind pushed me into the other lane and the rest of the time when I was willing my eye lids to peel back open.

We finally slid off the 80 East at around 6:00pm and easily pulled into the lot of the Motel 6 in North Platte. We had talked about camping, but Lisa’s feeling pretty beaten up as controlling the bike in the wind took a lot of effort. Sod the cost, the thought of Lisa hurting herself and not being to recover properly just because we’re trying to save $30 a night seems crazy.

We’d spent the day battling the boredom of Nebraska’s seemingly endless and very straight section of the I-80. Heavy eye-lids would close only to be opened again with a shot of adrenalin as our lull in concentration was punished with another gale force gust of the North blowing sidewind. We’d battle the wind all day.

Outside Lincoln and we’d stopped at one of the trucking stations for a break before pushing on and the last 50-miles into Omaha. We’d caught a few minutes of the weather warning. Strong winds and storms were heading our way.

Back on the bikes and we’d spoken over the Autocoms, with the weather warning in effect we’ll ‘yet again’ play it safe and book into a motel. We’d picked up a free motel magazine this morning and had pulled out a coupon for a Best Western that would set us back $45. It was going to be the best decision of the day.

We slipped off the I-80 and onto the I-29 that would lead us into Council Bluffs and then easily spotted the Motel from the road. We’d made the appropriate detour into the car park. The clouds above the motel were already looking like something from a sci-fi movie.

We checked with reception before parking the bikes right up underneath the reception canopy. The earlier weather warning of baseball-sized hailstones had us a little more protective over the bikes than we would be normally.

With the bags inside and us out of our riding gear we headed over to the huge outdoor shop and café we’d seen earlier. No one walks here and hence the total lack of paths or as our American friends say ‘side-walks’. We guessed the bemused looks we were attractracting from the passing cars was simply because we were walking?

We’d paused to photograph the bizarre looking cloud formations and did the best we could to capture the earie light.

Things were about to get scary. We’d perused the vast ‘outdoor warehouse’ and had sat to order our first real meal of the day. The café was empty save maybe 9 other guests and the subdued atmosphere was stark contrast to the deafening maelstrom that was buiding outside. The jet black veil that had been pulled over the sky had it’s own presence.

The young manager was walking table to table. It was our turn. “Excuse me”. he started very politely, “we are now on a priority tornado alert and apparently there are two heading our way, although at the moment I’m sure we fine”. OK, that wasn’t the ‘ hi how are you , is everything OK with your meal’ line that we’d been expecting. Our new friend had more. “We’re now asking all members of staff and guests to move their chairs and belongings into the back of the café and into the restrooms (toilets), it’s the safest area” he continued. The rain was now coming down outside…sideways. Apprently that’s bad!

So huddled up in the corridor of the toilet we set about eating our meal and cracking jokes with the other guests as ‘you’ do in time of stress. The windows and doors of the café were now rattling in their frames.

I was suddenly very aware of our surroundings and the film ‘Twister’ came to mind. You remember in the end of the film when the hero and the heroin are running from the F5 Tornado and think they’ve found refuge in a barn, only to realise it’s a barn full of farm equipment, syth’s, saws, chains axes and a plethora of other things that slice and dice flesh easily. I looked around; the café was annexed to the outdoor shop, a warehouse of knives, a thousand fishing rods, a few thousand fish hooks, axes, saws and 30-40 guns with live ammo sitting neatly on the shelves behind them. Oh crap!

In total we’d spent 2-hours in closer to proximity to a toilet than I’d ever wanted. We been very lucky,it wasn’t until getting back to our room than we’d realize just how lucky.

All the TV channels were covering the same stories; the devestation caused and the 4 young cub scouts that had been killed just to the North of us. As the news came on Lisa was already deep in her maps. “We were so lucky” she exclaimed! Where the boys were killed was just 4- miles from where we were aiming to camp. We’d only changed our camping ideas an hour before arriving in Omaha. The guardian angel that’s been following us from the start of our journey is still hard at work. Thank you.

As we lay in bed we could still hear the air raid like wail of the tornado sirens going off not too far away, announcing the ongoing threat. We did our best to sleep both anxious to what tomorrow would bring, and thinking about the poor families and their loss. 48 people in total had been badly hurt.

Check out the short podcast video below for a better view.

Back on the highway and we started and ended our day in much the same way yesterday, basically being blown about like rag dolls. Both of us hanging on for dear life as we passed what seemed like a million trucks.

We’d stopped countless times so Lisa could rest and by 6:00pm we’d found the slip road down to Iowa City and checked into a particluary rough looking Motel 6. The rain had started an hour ago and had now even stopped cars in the streets due to poor visibility.

With our wet kit in the hotel room we just stood and watched as the ceaseless rain pounded into the already waterlogged ground. It was coming off the roof in torrents and the car park and surrounding area was filing up fast. The TV in the background was already warning of further flooding and warning families to ‘get out’ and to higher ground.

The water had already entered 3 rooms to our left and we’d quickly put our kit and bags up onto one of the beds, should the water break past the high point of the doorway’s lip. In the end it crested 3-4 inches from the lip of the door.

Outside and the lightening storm was, well…breathtaking! A ceaseless show of white hot cracking light illuminating the heavens; as dangerous and it was beautiful.

We did our best to take some video and our best to protect the bikes.

We’d loaded the bikes, turned out of the car park and taken a right and within 200 feet been brought to a stop. The barriers and police seemed a somewhat mute point considering that the whole street was sunken. The water level so high that it had submerged many shops and homes almost completely.

We’d find this same scenario 4 times before finally getting directed to a high point that would allow us to cross the water and get over to Gina’s BMW on the other side of town.

Gina’s was on high ground and easily found across from the slip road off the highway.

With the bikes parked up out front, Gina was already heading over to greet us like old friends before our helmets were even off. Hugs are always a good way to meet someone for the first time. We headed inside to meet Julias (Gina’s husband) and their staff.

And so we set about meeting her clients, and generally being made to feel very welcome. Lisa had even spoken with Gina and soon enough her faithfull F650GS was up on a ramp and the oil leak that had been troubling Lisa for some weeks now was being taking care of. We’d nervously considered, once again for the problem to be the main crank case gasket. A $16 part to replace but $1,500 in labour to get to it. That would be bad. The problem turned out to be a faulty clutch case gasket, far easier to get to. Lisa even had her indicators taken care of as they’d stopped working a few weeks ago and on the interstate, although no one takes any notice of indicators – its still nice to have them!!

With the close of business drawing in, we picked a few bags up and gratefully accepted an offer to spend the night at Gina and Julias’s home. We’d leave the bikes here and get a lift in one of the pickups.

It felt great to sit with Gina and Julias on the porch of their beautiful home, looking out over the rolling green hills that surround their property and just sipping on cold beers and cocktails!

By the time we arrived at the dealership with Julias, Gina had already been at work for an hour and a half.

In the workshop and Jerard was finishing off Lisa's bike and checking on the work done yesterday. All looked good. He finished off Lisa’s bike with an oil and filter change. I’d swung in there about mid-day and taken off the front rim and ordred new rubber to replace the very badly worn front tyre of my 1100. It was close to blowing!

The weather was closing in again and so by 4:00pm we packed our gear and had followed a few bikes over from Gina’s to the Iowa Fairgrounds where the Pure Stodge Touring Association’s 32nd Rally was being held. Our presentation was going to be at 7:00pm and we needed to get the tent and our gear set up well in advance, especially if the weather worsened.

We had a few complications as the band had also been booked at 7:00pm. Graciously they’d allowed us to go first and so without further ado and to a full house we launched into our show and the telling of the amazing journey that had brought us from the UK, through 58 countries and all the way up to Iowa City.

We had a great time and the audience was fun. With questions and answers to follow all washed down with a few cold beers, it couldn’t have been better. Well that said, of course it could have been better. The weather had impacted the whole area so devastatingly. We’d spoken with the rally organizers and they’d confirmed attendance was a fraction of what they’d been expecting, prior to the bad weather.

Lisa and I had even discussed with Gina whether the presentation should go ahead, as we wondered if it was appropriate to be talking about how ‘good’ life can be on the road, talking about our thrill at what we’d accomplished and what still lay ahead, whilst families and businesses just a short few miles away watched their entire lives and belongings get washed away. We didn’t want to be thought of as ‘inappropriate’. With the conversation mentioned the decision was to go ahead as with so much ‘bad news’, some optimism and some levity might be just what the doctor ordered.

In fact, Lisa and I were really impressed by how many hardened bikers had still made the monumental effort to find their way around the rising water and get themselves to the rally! That was no small feat.

We joked about the fact that at next years event, attendees would talk about in a hushed whisper of reverence about the brave few who had made it to the 2008 rally. They were the real heroes!

By 11:00pm Lisa and I were facing a loosing battle with our eye lids and headed for the tent. It had been a great evening.

Last night hadn’t been the blissfull respite we’d hoped for;

We’d been woken around 3:45 as a huge storm had circled close by. I’d lain in my sleeping bag and had wondered if that was in fact a very bright light flicking on and off for a full 10 minutes before getting out of the tent and realizing that it was in fact the largest electrical storm I’d ever seen. It simply didn’t end. The sky had been lit white for 20 minutes now. I’d strained my eyes to see if there was an end or an edge to the vast black mass that was now overhead.

Worryingly I could see many others up and about and already packing up their gear and looking to make a break for it. The strong wind that had ushered in the storm and was so badly rattleling and flapping our tent was at last subsiding. The storm had been close but amazingly had left us unscathed and not even wet. We breathed a sigh of relief and headed back into the tent.

I’m pretty sure we were amongst the last to leave and with our bikes loaded and heavy we set off for what should have beena short ride

Rode from Morengo to Platteville. An hour of going back and forward trying to cross the river and get over to the other side. Eventually we found a road open and made good mileage. We managed to find a plce just off the interstate and stayed at the Mound View Motel in the small town of Platteville.

By 3:30pm we’d passed the town of Fond Du Lac and had followed the 23 on to the 43 heading South and had picked up the signs for Kohler-Andrae State Park where we’d make camp.

With engines off, Lisa and I had stared at the notice board and then at each other, that couldn’t be right? Off the bike and I was inside the main office trying to get the correct price for camping. Someone had obviously made a bit of a mistake when they laid out the small crèam letters into the stick-up board that was now telling us it was almost $40 for the night!

The young girl confirmed that, in fact that was the price. This was ridiculous! Do we get a free oriental back massage and all over body wax with that price, or is it a free TV this week, I thought in my head as I tried my hardest to contain my sarcasm.

We’d been so looking forward to a few nights camping prior to the Milwaukee presentation, a chance to just undwind and relax a bit before Saturday. The young ranger girl had handed me a flyer with a dozen alternative private campsites on and I’d called half a dozen of them, only to discover they were the same price or dearer!

Lisa was feeling pretty tired and the last week had caught up with her to the point where she admitted to me that she was sore. Trying to laugh the whole thing off we handed over an obscene amount of our limited cash and headed down to space 57, that would be our new home for the next 3 nights. All in all it had cost $103 for 3 night’s camping for a basic pitch, no electricity or water on the pitch. WOW. This could be Switzerland!

Once in the tent – after Lisa having the heebee geebees over the really long-legged spiders that she said reminded her of sci-fi spiders – we realized just how much we enjoy our ‘home’.