Don't think I took any pics. Saturday, we stayed around the house because we've been ignoring it all summer - riding instead. I hadn't mowed, trimmed and edged in quite some time (didn't really need it, it's been pretty dry), so I spent most of the day and evening on the yard.

I'm not working right now, so having a "day off" on the weekend isn't quite so important - we get a lot of riding time in every day.

Sunday, we went to my nephew's new house. He just got a place on the river in Wilmington, IL. He's got a jet boat, some kind of jet ski thing... it wasn't a planned party, but, it ended up there were quite a few people there eventually. Spent the day blasting down the river in the boat, drinking, burned a couch & some other stuff - so we had a HUGE bonfire... drank some more, sat around & BS'd, listened to music, drank some more. Very cool house in a very cool location. Good times. Took the long way, through the back roads and boonies going there. Very nice ride. Took the interstate going home.

Sunday, we rode WAY out to the boonies - to Mendota, IL - to the Tri-County Fair. *Really* small event, but, they had a demolition Derby, which was fun to watch. People in the front rows caught a lot of mud. One dude got slammed by two cars at once while he was up against the wall (huge cement blocks). His head and upper torso flew out the window, and he slammed his head on one of those cement blocks, then bounced back in the car, laying across the front seat. He had been clowning around during the heat, so, at first, I think a lot of us thought he was clowning around then. He wasn't. He got his bell rung pretty good - but he was pretty much OK. They took him away in an ambulance. Kind of took the fun out of it. ... for him too, I'm sure.

Mendota is a *seriously* rural town. Some seriously redneck, real simple folks there. Almost every time I overheard a conversation, I was laughing. Somehow, my wife & I stood out enough that we got "looks" from almost everyone. Just wearing standard biker gear - jeans, T-shirts, that I don't think it was the way we were dressed. Perhaps it was just that we appeared to be married, yet looked sufficiently different it was obvious we weren't related to each other before the wedding.

One of the funniest things I saw was this pasty white, freckled, chubby Pugsly looking teen, wearing a t-shirt that said "Genius by birth. Slacker by choice." ... and it was everything I could do to NOT stop him and ask if I could take a picture.

Took I-80 to 39 going there, because we left a bit late. Nice ride, but I don't really get as much pleasure on the big slabs as I do on the back roads. Took 52 all the way home. That was a nice ride - just stayed very alert for critters.