01/08/02 Kenosha (WI)-Lincoln (IL) / 363 km

I (Kepa) was living some months in Kenosha so it was really there where our journey started. Before the journey we visited Chicago. The Chicago art museum is very nice and you will enjoy it if you are fond of art. Just in front of the museum you can find the plate that indicates the beginning of Route 66. At the end of the street you can see the Sears Tower, the highest building in the US (see photograph). It is very popular in Chicago “The Loop”, the business district and a mile full of shops. You can go to the top of the Sears tower but it is better if you go on a clear day, so that the clouds will not spoil the view of the lake (what happened to us). Around the Navy Pier you will find a lot fo restaurants, amusements for kids and the departure points of the boats the go around Lake Michigan.

The first day we planned to set out very early. To go out of Chicago in a working day can be a nightmare. Even if the motorways are very big and good, the traffic is really heavy and it is usual to find traffic jams. The previous days the weather had been good but the night before the starting day it was getting cloudy…

When you plan to do such a long trip along the US you can be sure of one thing: sooner or later to will be in the middle of a storm. But that happened to us the very first day. As soon as we got up we looked through the window and we saw it was drizzling …good start!

As it was the first day it took us quite a long time to put everything in the motorbike. We could not find a Givi type case for the motorbike and it took us a few days to find the best way to fit everything in the motorbike in a secure way and leaving us the maximum of space to be seated comfortably. Besides, everything had to be covered in plastic due to the rain and well wrapped with tape. We put on our rain suits and plastic bags on top of our shoes. So, we started our adventure in the rain and quite uncomfortable.

If that was not enough it was already seven o´clock by the time we arrived to the motorway and we joined everybody going to work. Even if we had got up at four thirty, it was not before ten o´clock that we left Chicago behind and get into the real Route 66 at Jolliet. At the beginning it was drizzling but afterwards it started to rain more strongly and in two hours it was raining cats and dogs. My rain clothes were not as effective as I had expected, and I finished with my feel and body soaked. Josune´s clothes were a little bit better but they were soaked too. We wanted to get out of that bloody storm as soon as possible. In Jolliet the rain had stopped.

We had good references for the journey, taken from many books that we had red but in Illinois they were not necessary since in every crossroad there were signs of the Route 66. For a while, the road has no number and it goes in parallel to the rail track.

As things can always go worse, as Murphy´s law teaches us, at midday, one mile before arriving to Pontiac, i started to feel something strange in the rear Wheel. We stopped to see what was going on and we saw we had a puncture…this was not the way we had imagines we were going to star our exciting journey. All this time Josune kept her spirit high, I was quite downhearted but she kept the team spirit.

I had thought that something like that could happen so I bought some insurance with AAA. If you sign the Premium insurance you get assistance for the motorbike. The price for a whole year is around $70, and if you discontinue the contract before the year they give you back the proportional part. The service you get with AAA is different in different states. We bought it in Wisconsin and we have to say the service was of the very best quality.

Going back to the puncture, as we did not have a mobile phone, we stopped the first police car that we saw and they helped us. They called the garage in town so that they would come to pick us up and in 15 minutes they were there. The AAA telephone was busy all the time so we had to pay for the repair ($80) but we got a reimbursement afterwards. In the US the motorbikes are used to go for a ride on Sundays but they are not used to travel so it can be difficult to find a place where they have a new tire and where they can fix it. We were lucky this time because even if Pontiac is a small town there was a bike store. They put our motorbike on a truck and they took us to this shop. We asked if the tire could be fixed, they said no and they sold us a new one. We were happy on this as well since it may happen that they do not have the type of tire you need, but they had it. We paid $230 for the new wheel, and while we were waiting, we put out coats on the floor so that they could get dry thanks to one or two sun rays that had appeared. We sat on the floor as well so that our trousers could get dry in the sun.

Things like that, we continued, tired, but a little bit drier. It did not rain in the afternoon and at last we could get to the end of our first stage: Lincoln. Things like that, we continued, tired, but a little bit drier. It did not rain in the afternoon and at last we could get to the end of our first stage: Lincoln. We went to the campsite. It was very small and there was nobody at reception. We choose a place, we mounted the tent and we took our clothes out of the saddlebags so that they would dry on the grass. Apparently or plastic bags weren´t waterproof. When we were ready to relax (see photo) we saw some black clouds in the sky. Even if Josune had kept the nerves up to then, she started to pick all the clothes from the floor and to yell that we should get out if there. After such a day she was not ready to spend the night under the rain. I was listening to a small radio that I had carried to be able to listen to the weather and they were saying that a storm was coming to us. So we put everything again in the motorbike, what a day! and we went to one of the dodgy motels in Lincoln (Crossroad, 1305 Woodlawn Rd // $33.50). It started to rain very soon so we were glad that we had gone to the motel.

After such a day we deserved a nice dinner so we went to do some research in the restaurants around. We went into one that looked nice: Bonanza. We realized immediately that even if it looked like the typical American restaurant it was really a franchise, all with the fake decoration and stuff. Anyway, the dinner was fine. In the last years there is a tendency in all American restaurants to offer “free refills”. What is this? That you can drink as much as you want of non alcoholic drinks. Due to that when we went out our belly was full up of food and drink. Back in the hotel we put the weather channel and the man said that we were having rain again the next day. From this day on I became crazy about this channel, a regular, and Josune used to make fun of me.