Phase 1 of the adventure is done. I arrived back home today on the red eye flight from Calgary. 2,900 miles in a week and never spent more than an hour all week on the interstate. We had a damp/cool day or two and a stinking hot day or two but the weather was mostly just fine the whole way. Along the way we caught a couple of minor league/college baseball games, visited the Field of Dreams and the Little Big Horn National Battlefield. We camped only once due to heat or evening storms and the one night we camped we almost breifly got blown away but it was short lived and the night time temp was perfect for that one camp.
So we're 45 miles from the Canadian border so we got out our passports to make them handy for the checkpoint. I hear my friend Phil go "ut oh" and he turns pale - he brought an expired PP instead of the valid one. A bunch of phone calls yielded nothing useful so I convinced him to just ride up and try it while his wife was figuring out how to FedX the good one to us. We rolled up to the border, me first, and after taking care of making sure I wasn't doing anything I shouldn't I mention to him Phil's problem. His reaction was "meh, no problem." No delay at all coming in to Canada on his expired PP but now he's got another problem - how to get home. His wife sends the valid PP overnight to our hotel in Calgary only the next morning he gets a call from UPS saying due to a plane mechanical he's not going to get it for several days yet - and we have a flight home that night. He's pondering the hotel bills and being left behind when I suggest to go crash the US consulate in Calgary to see if they can work some magic. He spent half a day in the bowels of the consulate and left with an Emergency US Passport good for a year and was able to make the red eye flight with me back to Atlanta where I connected and got home about 1pm today.
We got the bikes stored in a 10x10 drive up unit near the airport and we'll be flying back up to fetch them to continue the adventure in about 3 weeks.
First b-fast in Romney WVa at a locals hang out for old men. "Where ya head on your bike?" "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Obligatory food porn in Champaign Ill (650 mile day to overnight there):
Home and gun shop of Browning in Nauvoo Illinois:
"If you build it, they will come"
Blue Earth Minnesota (home of the green giant):
Rode through Sturgis and Deadwood:
where the politics were pretty plainly stated:
Little Big Horn Battlefield:
In phase 2 of this adventure up to Tuk, these guys (grizzlies) are on our minds:
And finally, chilling in Calgary waiting on Phil to resolve his passport problem:
It was a great road trip but the real fun begins in phase 2 late July.
The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why. - Mark Twain
and other irrelevant chit-chat 
