I know, I know—I'm a couple days late on the blog. Sheesh!

Gillian Welch was fabulous, as was her sidekick David Rawlings. I don't know why she is the only one getting billing publicity. I think people come just as much to see Rawlings, and he's got his own CD out now. He did one cut off of it, and the rest were off her CDs. But they were great! I had a pretty good seat up in the first balcony, but when I got there it was occupied by a guy who wanted to sit next to his friend. So he offered to trade seats, and I ended up downstairs right in the center about 15 rows back. Perfect seat and a wonderfully appreciative audience. Good evening all around.

The morning of concert day I spent washing the bike and roaming around Wichita's Old Town...To tell you the truth, it's pretty (albeit a bit ragged at the edges and with construction going on), but there ain't much “there” there, to steal Gertrude Stein's line about Oakland CA. There are a couple of lively bar/restaurants, but that's about it. I had a cup of coffee and spent about an hour chatting with a nice guy named Darren from Australia who is riding is Harley Heritage Classic from Pennsylvania, where he bought it, to LA where he will have it shipped to Australia. After all the duties etc, he will still come out ahead, even counting the cost of the trip, compared to buying the same bike in AussieLand. Anyway, we had a great conversation about biking across America—he's having a great time, and says everything they're fed down under about Americans is dead wrong: He has found nothing but friendly, helpful people here. (So who is it that's feeding them all this info about the Ugly Americans? He sounded very genuinely surprised about what he found here.) So I told him if he really wants to see the country, he had to go through New Orleans (from Wichita) to get to LA. I think he is going to do it!

After leaving the Aussie, I decided to find the local Harley dealer and look for a cool t-shirt. I also had a broken latch on my tour pack (the “trunk”), so I figured I'd get that fixed. Once I got there, I had them check the front end to make sure it was still holding up after being adjusted in Carson City. Well the latch got fixed, and the front end checked out fine, but the service manager came up to me and said he thought he heard something funny when the bike was shut down: he asked if it had been shifting and running smoothly. I allowed as I had intended to ask them to look at adjusting the clutch, as it seemed not to be starting out in first very smoothly. “Aha!” he said-- (don't you hate that!?) “I think its your compensator assembly. Hopefully, your compensator nut just needs tightening.” No such luck. The entire compensator assembly was out of spec and needed replacing. So I spent the entire 4 ½ hour afternoon before the concert lounging around the dealership while they got it done—all, of course, under warranty. Bike runs and shifts now like a dream.

Thursday I packed up and had breakfast for the second day in a row at the Town and Country Restaurant. I know a lot of places get touted as great “old fashioned diner restaurants”, but this one is the real deal. If you're ever in Wichita, do NOT pass up having breakfast at this place. Other meals are probably good too, but the breakfasts are superb. Great waitresses too! (Age 65 is, I believe, the threshold age for starting there.)

Thursday I tooled up the road to Kansas City, checked out the old neighborhood (everything looks pretty much the same) and then headed over to Topeka to meet up with my high school buddies Bob Lohse and David Graham (dentist and doctor, respectively) who were the other members of my high school folk trio (the No Name Three). Fortunately, I didn't need their professional services for anything, so we had a good dinner and then retired to play music, which we proceeded to do until the wee hours of the a.m. Thanks to Bob and Kathy Lohse for their great hospitality:  I had a comfy bed and hot shower in their beautiful home, and then got up this morning, was fed a healthy breakfast, and rode 544 miles into Denver. Tomorrow its Salt Lake City and a visit with riding buddy Burt Mitchell and his wife Diane, if I can get there in a timely fashion. Burt had a major health setback, but is progressing well.

A note about the topography here abouts. On my way to Kansas City from Wichita several people mentioned how lucky I was to get to ride a motorcycle through the Flint Hills. --Ahem.-- A Kansan's idea of what constitutes a “hill” needs some work. I was well into them before I realized where I was (due to a sign that told me I was now in the Flint Hills). It was as if Mother Nature had given a little burp, and then said “Excuse me!” “Gentle, Rolling..etc” would vastly overstate the case here for the presence of “hills”. That was –at least-- my impression yesterday. Now, having driven through Western Kansas and eastern Colorado, and presuming that the Kansans probably migrated north from the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma --the absolute flatness of which I am also familiar with-- bringing with them their sense of topography, I am willing to concede that relatively speaking , eastern and southeastern Kansas does exhibit some sort of contour, much like that of a very hopeful 11 year old girl. (And it's just as sweet and pretty, too!)

Bye for now!