Just passed my 1 year anniversary of motorcycle ownership and wanted to celebrate by playing hooky from work and go for a long ride Friday. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate, and so I pushed my trek to Saturday. A friend of mine suggest we ride to the Illinois border and have lunch at The Beef House in Covington, IN and try their famous steaks. Sounded great, so I mapped out a route via the interstate to The Beef House and the country roads back to Indianapolis.
The air was chilly, but it was sunny (temps ranged from 50-65). We took off around 10:00 and arrived for lunch at 11:30. As luck would have it–closed. Not for the day; not for lunch; but until 12:30. Huh? I could understand not being open for lunch and opening around 4:00, but why 12:30? Anyway, I needed to be back by 3:00, so we took off for the country roads and planned to find lunch on the way.
From I-74 we turned onto US-41 and enjoyed the scenery of gold, red, and brown trees as we headed into Rockville. After fueling up we decided lunch would not include steaks; we settled for Subway. Now I like Subway as much as anyone, but when you’ve been planning on a steak house for three days, a tuna salad sandwhich leaves one a little wanting. The good news was that the quick lunch looked like it would allow me to get home by 3:00.
I forgot about the Covered Bridge Festival (http://www.parkecounty.com/events/annualEvents.asp?id=1).
We turned east onto US-36 and came to a dead stop. Thousands of people had descended onto this little burg for the start of a 10-day celebration of food, arts/crafts, and flea markets. All I was thinking was that I wasn’t going to make my 3:00 deadline; all my buddy was thinking was that we ate Subway when we could have had grilled kielbasas and elephant ears.
It did take us a while to work through the crowd and on our way. Despite the crowd, it was a beautiful ride: high sky and vibrant colors. We zig-zagged our way back to Indianapolis (US-36 to US-231 to US-40), and I surprisingly arrived home at 2:55.
Final log: 200 miles; 4 hours 45 minutes; beautiful fall color scenery and scents; no steak; but one big, goofy grin!
.
