Day 7

No collection would be complete without reflection and dedication. As day 7 of the 2018 Prefrontal Tour comes to a close, I feel it's long overdue to dedicate this story to someone whose support and concern has been key to its success. My long-suffering wife has been monitoring our progress with a concern and caring that exceeds my own, and I dedicate this story to her. The morning started out in Joplin, Missouri with a fog so thick it would have done DownEast Maine with a coming tide proud. We quickly detoured about a mile off the highway and turned around, just so we could say we rode in Kansas, and then we continued in heavy fog for at least another hour. Oklahoma gave us the first sign that somewhere in America doesn't just have hardwoods and shrubs, as the foliage turned to scrub, tumbleweeds and cotton fields, and the land flattened out. At one point the shrubs smelled like a resin that reminded me of a freshly opened box of Band-Aids. Eventually even those gave way to vast open fields and the earth just fell away on both sides as if by some Seussian trick you could see as far as you wanted to, and back again. We made it all the way across Oklahoma and half way across that little thingy that sticks up at the top of Texas, to the City of Amarillo. During the ride, I made a mental note that the state flower of Oklahoma and northern Texas appears to be the wind turbine. The temperature rose to about 72 degrees while we stopped in Groom, Texas to turn onto Route 66 and get a photo. It felt fantastic after a week in the forties and fifties. I let Jim lead into Amarillo, and he headed for the worst possible part of town, and pulled into a no-name burger joint to get a bite to eat. We sat munching nervously, watching the bikes and a friendly farmer walked up and said "You ain't from around here?". We told him about our trip and his next words were the quote of the day. "Well you don't want none of these hotels here on the Strip. They're all fleabags and whores." Delightful. I chewed faster, then navigated to a better part of town where hopefully we'll be able to sleep without losing our bikes or gaining new six-legged hitchhikers. Which reminds me. Last night when Jim went to get the refund at the Tara Motel, the woman went in the back to ask permission from someone and Jim heard a man's voice shouting angrily that we had better not have done any damage to the room. The woman then came back to check on us and the room itself, although I'm not sure how we possibly could have made it any worse. My point being, we never saw the man, and for those of you who watched Psycho or Bates Motel, I'm left to wonder if the man exists, or...! Until tomorrow, dedicated readers. Onward and upward.

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