Day 2 & 3, rain, rain and more cold.

Even after giving the weather a night to sort itself out, I woke up the next morning to look at the radar and see . . . another epic band of rain and snow.  I was just south of St Louis and had to be in Austin in two days, so I couldn't just hole up in the hotel and wait it out.  So on went the rain gear, and I kept making my way south through a giant, nasty storm front.  It was in the high 30s, low 40s if I was lucky, and when it wasn't pouring rain it was drizzling.

This was motorcycling at it's most miserable, which I suppose isn't the worst way to start a trip.  I mean, it's not like this could get any worse, could it?

Oh, dammit.  Snow.  Not much on the pavement, but it had piled up in various places and it was cold enough that it was sticking around.


I really need to stick to a budget on this trip, but by mid-day I was so frozen and miserable that I stopped in at a KFC for their AYCE buffet.  Yes, it's crap GMO billion-calorie fast food, but I don't care.  And it was only $7, which made it even tastier.

They did have some green things on the salad bar, but why would I bother when I could just eat more dead animals?

I also took advantage of their plastic bags to give my feet a bit of waterproofing.  My boots are water resistant enough to light rains and sprays, but if they're getting wet for hours on end they soak through.  Some nice thick dry socks, along with some plastic bags promised to keep the toes from freezing quite as badly.

I kept pushing south, and while occasionally the sky would try and look optomistic off in the distance, I was in rain for almost the entire day.

I made it as far as Fort Smith and got another hotel for the night; I was feeling really bad about blowing through this much money this quickly, but I was quite frozen and in dire need of a hot shower and warm bed.  At least I saved a bit of money by using the room's ice bucket to microwave myself some chicken pasta.

Or pasta with chicken-flavored goo on it.

The next day didn't dawn any nicer; yet again, 40f and raining.  Once again on with all the rain gear, and I kept heading south.

I FINALLY caught a break sometime around 3pm I found the edge of the storm front, and rode out from under the storm.  Within the space of less than 30 miles, it went from high-40s and raining to low 70s, and mostly sunny.

Oh god, I needed this.

I stopped off in some small town in Oklahoma (Drury?  Durrant?  Something like that) and stopped in at this place for some lunch.

Pork Tenderloin with what I thought was going to be a side salad.  Not that I'm complaining, I'll eat almost any amount of anything that's put in front of me.

But there wasn't much else interesting that happened today; I was so glad to be out from the storm that I just super-slabbed it most of the way down to Austin, where I currently am.  I'm staying with a friend here for the night, and then tomorrow heading off into Texas's Hill Country, and hopefully FINALLY getting some actual camping in.