Hannibal to Kansas City

JUDGE. - " And what has this gentleman been doing?"

SPEED COP (producing notebook and reading therefrom). - "Driving a motor-cycle in excess of the legal speed limit, namely at forty-five miles at hour."
-C.K. Shepherd (relating an experience in Hagerstown, MD)

Somewhere in Missouri we were executing what I thought were safe, even skillful, passes on a two lane stretch of highway, when it occurred to me that the drivers in the state weren't very good at being passed, speeding up right at the wrong time, that sort of thing.
Apparently the feeling was mutual, as someone called the law to report two motorcyclists executing "bad passes." This is patently false, as I have never made a bad pass at anyone, but it was enough to bring a state trooper, who wrote us up almost apologetically for exceeding the speed limit (for the record, we were doing 60 at the start of a 50 mile per hour construction zone). She was a rider herself, and wished us luck on our trip. I promised her we'd stay under the limit, and we continued on, chastened, to Kansas City, with every truck and RV passing us by. It is a very low sort of person who would report something like this to the law, and in my opinion they probably hate us for our freedom. Like terrorists.
Regardless, we made it to Kansas City, were we met up with my friend Ross, motorcycle racer, master mechanic, expert machinist, and co-owner of Blue Star Motorcycle Co., the finest independent motorcycle shop in the mid-west.
Ross and his wife Kelly took us in for the night and fed us, and we all passed the evening on their front porch talking and drinking beer with their friends. They more than made up for Missouri's earlier unkindness.



Now on to Kansas, and possibly the Garden of Eden.