Friday's leave-taking didn't quite happen the way we'd envisioned it. I took the dog to the boarder over lunch to save some time there. Coe Ann and I were going to try to get out of town by shortly after 5. In the afternoon, I had several new machines that (suddenly) had to be set up and configured...which cascaded a couple other machine setups... and I was beginning to wonder if I was even going to get out of the office on time. Coe Ann wasn't having any better luck. Although she had cleared with her office to leave at 4, she ran into snags and SNAFUs that kept her there until after 5. We finally got out of town around 6:15.
On the interstate, just before the east mixmaster, I saw Coe Ann's bike start to fall off the rack. I pulled over and stopped as fast as I could. It turned out that the little wing screw that keeps everything in place had fallen out and the end cap and mounting doohicky had slid off of one side. Luckily, the other side held so the bike didn't go careening down the interstate. We put the bracket back on (it was still attached to the bike) and were puzzling over what to do about the screw when we decided to just bungee the bike to the rack and not worry about it. That worked just fine for the rest of the trip.
We drove acrosss Iowa and part of Illinois, passing the time by chatting and playing word games (Tri-Bonds and Hink-Pinks). Somewhere along the way, we stopped at a gas station to use the restrooms and have supper of bagels, cheese, beef jerky, apples and whatever else we felt like eating that was in the cooler.
By midnight, we were rolling into Rockford, IL and both of us were dead. We found a Super 8 but they were full. We went up the street to a Comfort Inn and got their last room. Apparently, there was something going on in town and rooms were scarce.
It was a bit more money than we'd planned to spend ($60) but we slept great and had a hot shower in the morning. We were up and back on the road by 8.
