Although it wasn’t raining while I was at work, the forecast was for heavy rain in the afternoon. I left work at 2:30, stopping by the bank and the grocery story for cat food, and then headed home. It sprinkled on me, but I hoped that would be it. I packed quickly (using only one saddlebag liner this time!) and went out to the garage to put the camera gear and a few other things in my tourpack. It had been raining off an on and was quite wet when CrowDog pulled into the garage from work. We went inside and he packed while I watched the Weather Channel. It looked like we were going to be right in the middle of the heavy rain. Damn! By the time we were ready to leave, it was pouring. We suited up in our raingear and headed out at about 4:45 PM.

We gassed up and were on our way, hitting rain off an on. I had a bit of excitement when a woman decided to make a left turn in front of me, but other than that, the ride was fine. Except for the water. I noticed that CrowDog seemed to be getting a lot of water in his face, so I pulled over to give him my purple bandanna to tie around his face. He said it helped a lot, but it came undone a few miles down the road. We stopped on the on-ramp for the Interstate and I tied it in about six knots--that did the trick.

It rained off an on as we headed south towards Janesville, but once we hit the Illinois border, the rain didn’t let up again. We paid our 80¢ toll and pressed onward in the cold. The temps were in the low 50s, but I wasn’t cold yet. The worst part was removing my rain gloves so I could fish out change for the toll booths--at the one at Rockford where I had to pay 30¢, I ended up dropping my nickel. I said, “screw it” and rode on through anyway. They could pick it up.

From that point on it was steady rain, high wind, and cold. I was anxious to get that first 120 miles on so we could stop and gas up at the Petro station in Rochelle. CrowDog had to use the rest room, so I stood around inside and waited for him, garnering a few looks from people. I guess they’d never seen anyone drip that much before. They had some cute glass figurines in a case. I especially liked the flowers and cute kitties. When he came out of the restroom, we hurried back outside, not wanting to get warm.

Back on the road for the last miles to Mendota. I was never so glad to see that exit sign. It was about 8:15 and I was pretty cold. We pulled off the rain suits in the parking lot so we wouldn’t flood out the place and went inside the restaurant to eat. I took a neat picture of CrowDog wringing the water out of his gloves--it shows how wet we were. I was hungry and the buffet was good and filling and warmed me up some. While we were eating, I glanced outside. It was coming down in buckets! We were so glad to be off the road. The Comfort Inn was just on the other side of the parking lot, so we debated if we should don the raingear again or not. We decided “not” and scooted over there as quickly as we could. We parked the bikes and skipped adding the Cobra link because it was raining so hard. I grabbed stuff, locked up the bike’s ignition and bags, and went in.

This was the easiest check-in I’ve ever done at a hotel. She had everything ready for me! I just signed, she gave us a key card, and we went to our room. On the elevator we met a couple that had seen us at the restaurant. They couldn’t believe we were on motorcycles in this type of weather. I told them that insanity helps. We found our room and it was very nice. The extra furniture came in handy for drying all our wet gear. Surprisingly, I wasn’t all that wet, mostly along one pant leg and around the neck of my sweatshirt. I’m glad I decided to splurge and not stay at the Super 8 across the street we’d stayed at previous years. This place was much nicer.

I headed into the shower to warm up while CrowDog watched TV. The hot water felt so good. When I fell into bed at 10:00, I was exhausted. The rain is supposed to stop tomorrow. I hope.