Day 42

It was raining hard when I woke up. That was not good, being that we had to leave for home that day. But first, we tried to pack up a little. We got most of our things ready, but there were a few details left after we had to go to church.

Dad preached another good sermon, even though it lasted until
nearly noon.

Afterwards we had lunch in the Pastor's house. We had a good time and when it was time to leave we said goodbye. After that we finished packing for the trip home. We put on our rain gear and got on the bike. The trip home had begun.

It was cold and raining hard. Our rain suits kept us mostly dry. We stopped for gas not long after leaving. We did not spend much time at the stop. We had had a late start to the day and we wanted to make some good mileage before the night came. As we rode, the rain started to clear. Blue sky peaked out of the gray and black clouds and we took off our rain gear.

In one leg we crossed through Vermont. We saw the Battle of Bennington Monument again and we got to see the Hubbell Homestead as well. When we stopped again we were in New York. At the big truck station we fueled up and got dinner. It was already getting late in the day, so we rode on for one more leg.

It went by fine until the end. We had just gotten off an exit and passed through a toll booth when something went wrong with the bike. We came to a sudden stop with some quick jolts and bumps. Dad broke out the tools and tried to see what was wrong. The problem was too complicated to fix right then, so we tried to get the bike to run a few more miles to the gas station. We barely got it there. Dad called to see if we could get towed to a motorcycle shop, but he decided it would be better to try and go to the nearby hotel--pushing the bike there if we needed to. Luckily, the bike started up one more time and we somehow got to the hotel. It completely stopped right in the parking lot. We had somehow made it. Even though the room was expensive, we spent the night there. We had no choice--there was nothing to take us anywhere else.