I took Friday, September 7th off to make a trip to spend the weekend in Winona and to celebrate our Dad’s 82nd birthday. The weather looked to be perfect with absolutely no chance of rain and low dew points, so I opted to take my bike. Dew points were so low that I had to bundle up for my morning ride there on Friday. Had goosebumps several times along my way there, but what an awesome change of weather! I stayed on two lane highways most of the way there north of Hwy’s 23 and 82. When I arrived I met Candy at the house before going over to meet Dad. When we arrived by Dad he was in his room with the TV on. He seemed pretty tired so he layed down but was very fidgety and never really slept before we left. Candy and I decided try Sammy’s Pizza for dinner. Last time we were there it took over an hour and half to get our food. This time they completely redeemed themselves. We both ordered personal pizza’s and they were awesome!
Saturday I visited Dad in the morning after his breakfast and he was cruising the halls when I arrived. I took him outside on the terrace for a while to get some fresh air before bringing him back inside before lunch. I took a walk around one of the lakes at the park after that before heading back to the house to meet Candy for us to go back by Dad. Lori and the girls were there when we arrived still waiting for their hotel room to be available. After that we all went to the house to have a planned spaghetti dinner. Dinner was excellent and after Lori and the girls left Candy and I watched a bit of TV and chatted.
Sunday was Dad’s birthday and we all planned to meet up for his birthday celebration around 1:00. I got up early for another walk (twice around) the small lake at the park again before heading back to the house to make breakfast and await Kevin’s arrival. He was camping with his Honda ST group in Spring Green WI over the weekend and planned to come up to Winona to celebrate Dad’s birthday and ride back with me on our bikes. Well he also ended up having to come help me with tightening my chain (again Grrr!) on the bike. I make breakfast for us and then we met up with Dad. Lori picked up my DQ ice-cream birthday cake for me. When we arrived to see Dad he said he didn’t want any presents and seemed grumpy or depressed. As soon as I showed him his ice-cream cake his whole attitude took a 180. Who doesn’t love ice-cream, right?! It was so nice to see him perk up and smile. He even had seconds on the ice-cream cake. On our way home Kevin and I didn’t venture too far for our ride back due to time constraints and lots of roads we would usually take were closed south of the Interstate from flooding. We could see the remnants of all the flooding aftermath from the past several weeks in the areas we did ride through.
I did not track my route there, but Kevin did on his GPS on our way back home. So good to spend time with family and to be back on the bike. I wished I could have kept on riding!
