June 13th - St. Louis, Oklahoma (BST -6hrs)

The alarm clock went off at 4.30am but, truthfully, we had both been semi-conscious since 3.30am. Though it was still dark, we could see that it had rained overnight. Even at this hour, there was activity in the car park as participants dried off their bikes and stowed their belongings. The promised hot breakfast consisted of hard boiled eggs, coffee, waffles and toast. I couldn’t complain that it wasn’t “hot”, but I am more of an eggs and bacon type.

At 6.30am sharp, George put on his helmet and tooted his horn and the 15^th Annual Mother Road Ride/Rally was under way: George’s first as Rally Master. This year we had a police escort to ensure that we all made it through the first set of traffic lights and on to the Interstate.

We rode with the group into Chicago for a wet photo opportunity on West Adams, now officially recognised as the start of Route 66, and stuck with them all until Wilmington. This year’s group seems enormous, compared with past years. Doug and Joanne caught us up at the Launching Pad Drive-Inn, so we let the others go ahead and trailed along a few minutes behind. Somewhere outside Gardner, we noticed we had picked up a tail. It was only mid-morning, but Jim had broken down in Chicago, found a Harley dealer 50 miles south of the city, had his bike fixed, and still managed to catch up. He stuck with us as we visited the old Sinclair filling station at Odell, Funks Grove (where I bought a little bottle maple “sirup”), and the Route 66 Museum in Pontiac, then rejoined the main group after lunch.

We temporarily abandoned the itinerary to see the Lincoln memorial in Springfield, where we rubbed the great man’s nose.  (It’s good luck, apparently.) Then we stopped again outside Chatham to ride an old section of brick road that George had added for the first time this year. After that, we hit the Interstate for the next 80 or so miles for an extremely rare opportunity to ride across the original Chain of Rocks Bridge that spans the Mississippi. There were about 80 of us, and it was quite a sight – especially for the pedestrians who thought that the bridge was closed to traffic, as we weaved around the permanent picnic tables and reproduction vintage fire truck!

Our overnight stop was unspectacular. There is nothing whatever to recommend the Red Roof Inn in St. Charles. In 2006, we opened the door to our room to find an unmade bed … This year we couldn’t open the door at all. We had to wait an age in the hot sun before the unfortunate duty manager was able to fix the lock. Even then, the bathroom was so small that you had to raise the loo seat in order to shut the door, and the alarm clock (conveniently pre-set to 6am) seemed to have no “off” switch.

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