We had a nice relaxing breakfast lingering over that last cup of coffee and just enjoying the morning. Niles and Deb took the lead when we left the restaurant and headed south on State Route 39. Traffic was light and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We passed through Lizton, Danville and after a short detour for construction, Monrovia. The road in this area becomes more hilly and has some nice "twisties" that motorcyclist love so much. We soon found ourselves in Martinsville and stopped to gas up and take a much needed bathroom break. That coffee came back back to haunt us! :-)
We really didn't have a destination in mind and just continued south thru Bloomington and around Monroe Reservoir. This is Indiana's biggest lake and is very popular with the boaters and we saw several sail boats mixed in with the speed boats and fishing boats.
Niles led us over to the Lawrence County Recreation Park where ABATE of Indiana owns several acres of ground. They have an ATV track thru the woods and there was a large crowd of people enjoying the trails. We came here to visit the Indiana Motorcycle Safety Memorial.
Here is what their website has to say about it:
"The memorial, located at the entrance of the Lawrence County Recreational Park, celebrates the memory of those who have advanced motorcycle safety in the state of Indiana."
"The memorial stone itself was cut from the same vein of granite in India from which theVietnam Veterans Wall in Washington, DC was made. The eight foot tall stone weighs over four-and-a-half tons and is etched with an American flag, a flying eagle and a road scene that snakes around three sides before fading into infinity. Wearly Monuments of Muncie personally oversaw the cutting and placing of the stone. The gleaming black stone sits atop a marbleized, illuminated base and is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year"
There are several names on the memorial itself, two of which were personal friends of ours. Gary Stevens and Brad Meadows. Both of these fine men were active in the safety/education section of our Goldwing group. Gary was a Fort Wayne police officer and was the lead instructor at my first experienced rider course way back in 1990. Brad was a self proclaimed "master craftsman from Southern Indiana" and was a great guy. He was the lead instructor for my second experienced rider course in 2001. Both men dedicated themselves to promoting safe motorcycling and are greatly missed.
We left the memorial and headed out into the countryside working our way back to the north and west. We began looking for someplace to eat not knowing how hard a task that was going to be. We went to Bloomfield and as we were pulling up to a restaurant the owner was shutting off the "open" sign and locking the door. We headed on to Worthington and pulled in to the Front Porch Restaurant at 2:05pm only to find out they closed at 2:00!! Back on the bikes and onward we rode to Spencer. By this time I had started chewing on my leather glove. It was little dry and chewy but I was hungry :-).
We pulled into Chamber's Smorgasbord at 2:25 and the sign said they were open until 2:30 so we rushed inside. They still had plenty of food and after seeing us knocking each other (and anyone else in the way) down to get in they decided they had better feed us! :-)
We left Spencer happy and well fed. We headed north on US 231 and were soon back home in Crawfordsville. I decided to try the motorcycle lift again thinking that maybe the batteries on the truck might be causing the problem. I have noticed that the truck has been hard to turn over lately and this made me think the batteries might be going bad. Rudee and I got everything set up and like before the winch would stop about 1/2 way. I hooked up some jumper cables to the the pick up truck and then to the winch. This helped some but I could not get a good contact with the jumper cables. The test convinced me that the batteries may be the problem so we are going to have them replaced and see of that takes care of the ramp issue. I'll keep you posted.
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