I don't remember what the occasion for the trip was, but I do remember that I had been planning for it. It was a while ago. I wasn't married, had no kids, but I did have a cool car and a cool motorcycle. My car was a 1971 Mercury Capri (made in Germany) with a 4-speed, a sunroof, and an 8-track. It was forest green with a tan interior. I enjoyed driving around in that car with the sunroof cranked open and the music cranked up until I bounced it off the back of a 1968 Cadillac after digging it out from the blizzard of '79. But that's another story.

My motorcycle was arguably even cooler than my car. It was a 1973 Yamaha 650 with a custom seat and a purple metalflake paint job. When that bike came out it was the fastest thing on the street. It was cool. A friend of mine had cracked it up and taken it apart to fix it, but in the meantime bought himself a 1976 Bi-Centennial Sportster. The Yamaha was in pieces in his garage when I bought it for $500 and put it back together.

When I first started riding the Yamaha, I got a couple of surprises. I had been riding a Honda 150. It was fun to ride, but not a lot of bike. It took a while to get used to the added weight and power of the 650. When I first put the bike together, the speedometer didn't work because the speedo cable was broken from the wreck, and I hadn't gotten around to getting a new one. So I was gauging my speed based on my gear and engine speed (keep in mind that I was used to riding a 150). I forget whether it was before or after I got the speedometer fixed, but somewhere about this time I got a speeding ticket for doing 50-something in a 30. I remember thinking that the bike wasn't really running that well when I got the ticket, which probably was fortunate.

Like I said, the bike just wasn't running that well, and I determined that it seemed like a fuel problem. So I took the carburetors apart and rebuilt them (I hadn't done this when I put the bike back together). There was a spider web blob inside the left carburetor. I'm not sure if this means I had only been running on one cylinder, or whether the left cylinder had just been anemic due to a lack of fuel. But I am sure that the first time I got on the bike with the newly rebuilt carbs, kicked it into 1st, and cranked the throttle, that the damned thing nearly shot out from between my legs! The power was exhilerating. I think it was soon after this that I started noticing that after leaving a stoplight, the car that had been sitting next to me at the light was suddenly a tiny speck in my rearview mirror. I figured maybe it was time to get that new speedo cable and see just what I was doing.

Well. I got it fixed. I had been riding it like my old 150. Kick it into gear, wind it out, do the same thing for a few more gears. With the speedometer fixed I learned that I could be doing 60 in 2nd gear. It was about 1978 and I remember thinking that I couldn't even legally use 5th gear anywhere in the country since it didn't kick in until 60 mph and the national speed limit at the time was 55. Oops. I guess that explained the tiny specks in my rearview mirrors.

I don't remember if it was in the spring or in the fall (details...), but it was at a time of the year when the weather could change drastically from day to day, or even hour to hour. So I had been paying attention to the weather the week or so before I was leaving, trying to get a feel for how things might be for the trip. I wanted to take the motorcycle, but I didn't hate the idea of driving my car (they were both cool). I was planning to go from Chicago to St. Louis without getting on the interstate. I just wanted to take a leisurely trip and enjoy the ride. I had made the trip many times before on I-55, but this time my objective was the trip and not the destination.

So the day I was leaving the weather was iffy. It was maybe 50 or 60 degrees, clouds in the sky, the wind a little stronger than usual (hey, it was Chicago). I'm looking at the skies figuring it could go either way: the winds could blow the clouds away and it could just be a banner day, or they could whip up a storm and make my trip miserable. I'm standing there looking at my car and my bike not sure what to do. Since the facts weren't giving me a clear answer, I was forced to wander into the uncharted and dangerous world of feelings. Not the odious and perilous world of girl feelings ("How do you feel about this?"), just the somewhat nebulous world of how-does-this-feel-in-your-gut. Well, the last week or so I had been riding my bike to and from work, and it just felt kinda joyful and peace-filled (I'm getting a little carried away here...). So I went with the bike.

The route I had charted involved taking Mannheim Road (route 45) south past I-55 somewhere into the cornfields of Illinois. I had a tentative plan laid out from looking at a map that seemed like it would eventually get me where I was headed without forcing me onto the conventional wide expanse of concrete that would be the default route to St. Louis.

After packing my stuff into the motorcycle luggage (a backpack) as opposed to the car luggage (the back seat), I took off from Oak Park headed generally south. I think I took Ogden Avenue to Mannheim (or whatever route 45 is called at that intersection) instead of the Eisenhower in keeping with the whole keep-me-off-the-interstate theme of the trip. The weather was not really cooperating, and I kept looking at the sky wondering if this was such a good idea. The clouds threatened, the winds were cold and blowing across the road, and splashes of rain occasionally hit me along the way.

Traffic was typical for Chicago: heavy and congested. I made it past I-55 and continued south on route 45 with the day showing no sign that it might change its cold, grey, wet disposition. I was fighting the wind, the traffic, and the despair that this trip was going to be a total disaster. As I began to emerge from the almost interminable expanse of suburbs, the only thing that changed was that the winds grew stronger and the clouds darker. I was seriously considering bagging the whole trip and cutting my losses, but by now I was out in the middle of nowhere and couldn't find anyplace to hole up until things looked brighter. So I'm continuing down the road I'm on, not in a particularly good mood, when there appear ahead of me big orange signs: ROAD CLOSED AHEAD. DETOUR.

Almost immediately I'm confronted with orange and black striped barricades, blinking lights, and arrows directing me onto... I-80 westbound.

So now I'm travelling in a direction I don't want to go, on a road I don't want to be on, with a 40 mph headwind, skies spitting cold, wet, hydrous rocks in my face, and no sign anywhere hinting just how or when that detour is going to bring me anywhere near the road I had been on. I'm leaning the bike against the wind, cussing out the Illinois highway department, the national weather service, road construction in general, that stupid feeling that made me think this might be a good idea, and numerous other things that escape me at the moment.

Just when I'm beginning to find my word usage limited and repetitious, a rest area emerges in the desert (cold and wet though it may be). I pull off the highway, park the bike, and go inside. Without the wind and rain pummelling me, things don't look quite so bleak, but I am feeling rather dejected. I look at the map hanging on the wall and try to figure out where I am, and where to go from here.

I don't know if I'd just missed the detour signs or if they really were somewhere in Iowa, but it seemed that from where I was, going back where I'd come from wasn't really an option. Not to mention that with all the fun it had been, why would I want to? So with a marked lacked of enthusiasm, I found a new route from where I was now to the same destination. I don't remember the numbers, but it involved taking I-80 yet further west to some other secondary road and hanging a left.

As I went outside to begin the new journey I could see the line of storms through which I had passed. The sun was out and I took off my jacket and stuffed it into the backpack strapped to the motorcycle. As I headed west on I-80 the sun warmed me and the wind kept me cool. In a few miles I found my new byway and spent the rest of the day zigzagging my way across the plains. I don't remember the roads I took or the towns I visited.

But I do remember leaning back on my bike which I had parked on the center stand under a tree beside a two-lane road next to a field of corn (okay, it must have been the fall...) thinking, this is not the road I had chosen, but it is the trip I had envisioned. Had I stayed on the path of my choosing, it's not unlikely that the entire trip would have been cold, wet, and miserable. But instead a road was closed and I was forced to take a detour.

Seems that when God and I agree on a destination, I should let Him lead the way.