Day 10 – ‘Say something else’.

MORNING !!!!

Total miles- 1,464

Today started well,the sun was shining in Chicago when I woke up (it was still really cold though) so I had another omelette for breakfast and made my way back to Scooterworks to get my battery looked at.

The view from my hotel room.

My hotel –

When I arrived (yes I arrived without crashing,getting lost or mugged) I noticed a shiny blue scooter outside. When I went in to say hello to Ryan he introduced me to a guy called Rob. I have been talking to Rob online for a few years now starting from back when I first thought about doing this trip. Rob also like to take long trips on his scooter,in fact Rob like to do lots of things to keep himself busy during his retirement. He has a aircraft hanger full of cars and bikes and also has his pilots license.

Robs scooter has done 10,000 miles but looks like it has just left the dealer. It is still using the original speedo cable which anyone who knows scooters will know is a miracle.

While the guys at scooterworks were busy sorting my battery out (turns out the live cable on the starter motor was loose and the earth was completely disconnected)  Rob was telling me the story of when he and his friend dropped a couple of bowling balls out of their planes to see how far they sunk into the ground when they landed (about 8 inches).

After trying to plan my route out of Chicago on map quest and my brain getting confused with all the street names,numbers,north south east west and all that kinda stuff Rob offered to escort me out of the city.We hit the road and passed through the 100s of traffic lights that every American city seems to have and then pulled over at a gas station to bid farewell to each other.

As we were saying our goodbyes three girls heard me speak and were very excited by my accent they asked me to ‘say something else’ so I explained what I was doing and as I talked they seemed mesmerised by the English charm which I obviously exude like a cross between Hugh Grant,Jude Law and the queen.One of them wanted to show me her English accent so I told her to say ‘I am going for tea with the queen’. Her accent was about as good as my American accent is and could of done with more practice. They told me I was cute and I gave them the address to this blog (hello if you are reading this !) and then I headed back on the lonely road to DeWitt Iowa.

The girl on the left is the ‘English one’.It looks like the one in the middle only has one leg !

Rob saying goodbye to Fake Franco –

The rest of the journey to Dewitt was pretty straight forward,lots of straight 2 lane highways and the miles quickly ticked by until it started pouring with rain. I thought it would pass pretty quickly as it had before so I didnt bother pulling over and putting my waterproofs on but it continued for a couple of hours and by that point I was already soaked so there was on point in putting them on.

I pushed my way though the rain and eventually arrived in the tiny,slightly odd feeling town of Dewitt Iowa. I am now in a Super 8 Motel,my first non fancy hotel of the journey and its not too bad really. Nicer than the Travel lodge in Beckington. I would tell you why I stayed there but it would get me in trouble so I wont.

Tomorrow I continue making my way across Iowa to Nebraska stopping off at the worlds biggest frying pan and concrete gnome along the way before spending the night in Ames.

Tomorrow I will moan that it is too hot.

Thanks for reading,thanks to Graham,Rob,everyone at scooterworks,Syd,Ande and Robby and everyone who has donated so far.

https://www.justgiving.com/Matt-Tipper1/

Night.