Back on the road, but not without bumps…

Hit the road out of Austin this morn­ing, about 7am. it was already warm and humid. Very quick­ly, I noticed some­thing odd about the bike- rather than less vibra­tion fron the front wheel, which i expect­ed from hav­ing new tires, i had more vibra­tion. i pon­dered this through the fri­day morn­ing Austin com­mute traf­fic jam, and when i stopped for gas north of Tem­ple, i took a close look at the tire, look­ing for bead-seat­ing prob­lems, etc. While inspect­ing, I had a sink­ing real­iza­tion: I had put the tire on the rim in teh wrong direc­tion. DOH. That’s prob­a­bly the prob­lem. I rea­son that it’s not going to be instant­ly dis­as­ter­ous, and con­tin­ue north­ward, pon­der­ing my options. One: ride it to Des Moines, get Shawn to help me swap it. Two: swap it myself at the hotel this evening. Three: find a motor­cy­cle shop along the way and get them to change it for me. So i stop at a con­ve­nient McDon­alds, use their WiFi to search for motor­cy­cle deal­ers in Waco. Waco Motor­sports get’s a shout out here: I found them, and they got me in and out in 45 min­utes, includ­ing my work to pull the front wheel and put it back in place. Thanks for Ash­ley and Cory for their great work.

After the tire was installed cor­rect­ly, my bike went back to it’s nor­mal self. The rest of the day’s ride was a bor­ing slog up I‑35 in some very dif­fi­cult weath­er, at least for me. 92 degrees F and about 85% humid­i­ty. Real­ly a strug­gle to stay cool.
Did­n’t get any pic­tures; noth­ing real­ly worth tak­ing pic­tures of, and lit­tle will­ing­ness to stop and get even warmer. end­ed the day in Nor­man, OK. Tomor­row hope to get to teh Kansas City area, which will put me with­in 3 – 4 hours dis­tance of the Des Moines area, to replace my phone, and vis­it fam­i­ly nearby.