[smileyman]

We picked up in Missouri off of Hwy 125 and followed Hwy 160 (a great stretch of road) towards Mirriam Woods and picked up Hwy 76 over to Cassville. A great road once again and we had a blast in the beautiful MO highways until cold and darkness enveloped us in its icy grip of misery!

Tired and stunned we did our best to warm ourselves and regroup for the final push home. Heating our hands in the Shell Station bathroom, hogging down cheese sticks and beef jerky we faced another 2 or 3 hours of dark mystery ahead.

Of course I had planned ahead choosing my KBC helmet with the smoke tinted sheild which made night flying very dangerous. I ran with it up part way but the wind chill froze my cheeks and made my eyes run. That froze my contact lenses in place, so I would have to lower the shield, turn my lights back to bright and feel my way along. My buddy led me on the Ducati and gave me a tailight to chase, but with the visor down and fogging up profusely I would have to open it again a few miles later.

Fortunately I brought my eyeglasses as a back up and was able to ditch the contacts and dodge alot of the vision issues the rest of the way home. Still we had to stop twice more to warm our extremeties and steel our nerve for the short blast down I540 and home.

We reached the warmth (relative) of my garage a full 12 hours after we had left, covering somewhere around 410-420 miles. Most of that time we spent at full chat without even getting off the bikes for gas. My tendons in my clutch hand were almost inoperable, our backs and necks suffering from the sporty hunch we had crouched in all day.

We had a blast, vowed to do it again soon in reverse (Missouri roads were that nice!) and had a wonderful Valentines supper at around 10:30 pm!