It was still raining when we got up at 7:30. We went down to the breakfast bar and was greeted by Eleen, the nice gal who checked us in last night. She was the first person to tell us about the Holiday Inn Rewards Points program, which she got us signed up for. I gave her a couple of business cards last night to tell her about the web site. She asked me for more first thing this morning. We spoke to the gals from last night who dropped off their husband & boyfriend to report for duty to be shipped out to Iraq. They were trying to put 200 lbs of luggage in the back of their truck under the flat top cover, which looked like it was made for 150 lbs! We met a gal named Donna, who talked to us for a while too. She works for a government contractor, and was getting ready to debrief a unit of service people just returning from Iraq. She was very interested in learning more about the NVAR ride that we were telling her about. I gave her a card with this web site on it, and she said she will share it with the returning soldiers, as a lot of them ride too. We hung around the motel for a while longer while getting on our rain gear.
Yesterday afternoon, at our lunch stop, I called Danielle back home, and asked her to get on Yellowbook.com. I wanted to know if she could find a phone number for a cousin in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1980, while riding the same bike around the states, (before rat status), we stopped in to see my great aunt Tillie. Her grandson, Roy Hillstrom, is also a rider. He still has the same 1967 Shovelhead that he has been riding for almost the last 40 years! At that time, he helped me with a battery post problem, and rode with us on the way out of town. That was the last time I saw any of the St. Paul relatives. Danielle found the number for Roy. When I called, I wasn’t sure if I was going to get Senior or Junior. I asked Roy if he had a relative named Tillie. He said that Matilda was his grandmother. I told him who I was and that we were riding around the states. He said, “Again”? I said, “Still”! He told me to come on by for a visit.
After we got fuel, we headed to St. Paul. 135 miles later, with very little rain, we got to his house. He looked pretty surprised to see the rat bike pull up in his driveway. He was out in the garage waiting for us. I told him that this is the same shovelhead that I was on when I last saw him. It just has some ‘extra’ stuff! That trip in 1980 was directly responsible for me riding a rat bike today. After I got back home in Tenmile, Oregon, I took the bike to a car wash in Roseburg. It took 45 minutes for it to start after that. I said, “I am never going to wash you again”, (talking to the bike). So the saga of ‘Milo and the rat bike’ had begun, right then and there back in 1980!
Roy is ten years older than me, and has a few more years on a shovelhead than I do. We had a lot of stuff to talk about. His wife, Shirley, came back from bingo about an hour or so after we got there. We talked for quite a while and then we walked a couple of blocks away for an Italian lunch. Carley did an excellent job of serving us a super meal. It was so good, it is still lasting us, as we don’t need dinner. We walked back to their house and they asked if we wanted to spend the night. It was after 3:00 by then, so we said, “135 mile day is good enough for us” especially with such great company!
The bath room is upstairs in their home, and Joni didn’t think she could do stairs very good, so we got in their car and went to check out a motel. It is a small, old, in town motel, so Joni wanted to see the room first. It has a clean room and we said ok, and registered. While we were in the car again, Roy drove us around town to show us some of the sights. The Capitol building is a very old and elegant building, with a bunch of bright golden horse statues on the top section of it. We saw a lot of older, classical buildings all around town. Street after street, we were amazed by the architecture of the old beautiful buildings. He took us to the Ford plant, where he retired from five years ago. Henry Ford built an electricity generating plant on the river in the 1920’s or 30’s. It is still generating today, with more modern equipment of course.
After our great guided tour, we went back to their home. We told each other stories of our past for more hours, until it was time to go to our motel. We are to go back there for breakfast tomorrow morning. We will see if we can get farther than 135 miles! We are both real glad that we were able to spend as much time with Roy & Shirley as we did. They are good people to be around! See you tomorrow…
