I originally was planning on making a trip to see Canders over 4th of July weekend, but it came up so fast and I neglected to ask off for that Monday, so I made the decision to take the trip the weekend after that. I also found out that Candy wasn’t doing so well with pneumonia and that her sister, Carrie, had a stroke on June 13th, and it wasn’t looking good for her. Also, Candy informed me she wasn’t going to the hospital and that hospice had stepped up their visits with her to every day.
With that said, my brother Steve and my sister-in-law Cindy also planned to go see her the same weekend with my nephew Nicholas. They arrived that Friday and I did not head out until Saturday morning. And, since the weather looked very promising, I opted to take the bike with a pretty direct route there. I only ran into one construction snag just before Montello on Hwy 23 because they had it down to only one lane in two spots, including the crews were also working on the resurfacing that day as well. This added at least a half hour to my travels with being stopped twice. Then after fueling up in Sparta, I had a brief loss of engine power twice. Just engine and not electrical, but it didn’t happen again for the remainder of my trip there.
Steve and the family arrived at Candy’s shortly after I arrived and we had a very nice visit before dinner. We already were pretty aware that Candy had been feeling much better, but unfortunately, here sister Carrie had passed away the Saturday prior to our trip.
On Sunday morning Steve and the family stopped by one more time before heading home, and I took the bike to visit Dadder’s resting place at Preston Veterans Cemetery and I had the same exact loss of engine power between Stockton and Lewiston. Nothing on the way back, but I opted to stick with the same route back since it wasn’t through too many remote areas.
Since it was supposed to be extremely hot on Monday, 90s, including becoming very windy, I left right around 8 a.m. to head home. Low and behold, my loss of engine power started again while I was on Hwy 61 just before the Interstate. So I got off in Dresbach and she was fine, but I had to get onto the Interstate to get across the river and right after I got back on she kept doing it and I could only go around 67 mph. So, I turned my flashers on and hugged the right side of the slower lane. Luckily the exit for La Crescent wasn’t too far away and I took it. Right after I got on the off-ramp, my problem stopped and I crossed the bridge into downtown La Crosse and then took Hwy 33 all the way through Wildcat Mountain with a stop in Cashton prior to that to use the bathroom and once in Hillsboro to call Kevin and let him know what was going on and where I was at. After that I was forced to take Interstate 12 into Baraboo because Hwy 136 was closed due to construction, but I missed the Baraboo exit and ended up in Sauk City. So it was onto Hwy 60 to 51 into Poynette where I then took a bunch of back roads, including Hwy 22 to get into Cambria. Oh and I ventured through Rio, a town I don’t think I’ve ever been to before.
By this time it was getting extremely hot and already was pretty windy. I thought about stopping for lunch at Karen’t Hip Hop Diner in Fox Lake, but they were closed. So headed home through Waupun and then back roads around the north side of Horicon Marsh to avoid the wind in the open stretch of Hwy 49.
It took my 5 1/2 hours to get home and I was so glad to be home, and that I didn’t have any more issues with the bike. After unpacking and starting some wash, I hit the pool at my place and it felt oh so good to just float with my noodle!
