After another easy morning, rising late and enjoying a home cooked breakfast we bid our goodbyes to our hosts and started down the road again. No maintenance this morning after the marathon session of the previous day. Our time at the Heggie's was a nice break from the road and the bikes seemed to appreciate it as well. The new chains were quiet and smooth and I no longer feared the damage that they might wreak if they broke at speed. We cruised around some of our old stomping grounds and rode to the outskirts of town to see how our old house was fairing before heading back into town for coffee with another old friend. The bikes were parked on 9th Street, a fairly busy street, and we could see them from our table. We smiled at the many passersby who paused when they spotted our steeds and their Oregon plates. At least three people took multiple pictures with their cellphones, but we were enjoying our coffees too much to visit with them.

Jazzed on caffeine, we soon set out for St Louis. The bikes were purring right along, enjoying the lower altitude, smooth roads and relative lack of hills. We marveled at how silent and smooth the new chains were; the clutches were still very grabby, though. It is approximately 120 miles from Coulmbia to St Louis on I-70 and takes less than 2 hours. We, on the other hand, couldn't take I-70, so once again we found the “scenic route” and headed south to ride east along the Missouri River. It was a pretty ride- we'd forgotten how picturesque the town of Hermann was. While it was a nice ride, it also added about 40 miles to the trip and took nearly 4 hours as we soon found ourselves winding our way through the St Louis suburbs on surface streets during rush hour. We spent the warm afternoon idling in traffic and were quite happy to finally make it our destination for the night. We stayed with Michael, another old friend we knew from our days in Raleigh, NC and St Louis. We spent the rest of the evening catching up on life and love and business over Racanelli's pizza and Schlafly Kolsches. We were up well past 1am and finally collapsed into bed for the night.

159 miles in about 6 hours of intermittent riding. The bikes are running good with exception of the clutches.