Just got back from a late-night cruise on the Strom, something I don’t do nearly enough of. Headed west on U.S. 30 towards Merrillville, not too bad traffic wise, as it was after 9PM. I was kind of hungry and since Broadway Café closed I’ve been hitting Steak and Shake a bunch, nice people and good coffee, but burgers and fries are getting old. What I needed was breakfast.
Nothing jumped out at me along the 30 corridor, just a big slice of corporate American pre-packaged and boring. I swung north on U.S. 41. My how Sherriville and Highland have grown. I can remember back in the eighties, when that strip of Indianapolis Boulevard was a ghost town. The same could be said for much of Beautiful Northwest Indiana during those bleak years. Since I was getting close to Hammond, I thought I might as well stop at my favorite Mom and Pop diner in the area, Top Notch. A twenty-four-hour operation, they feature good coffee and reasonably priced food. I had the $6.00 Top Notch special, pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausage. Figure I got my quota of nitrates for the week, but it tasted good.
For the ride home, I jumped on the Borman Expressway, one of the busiest roads in America and one that will keep you on your toes on a bike. I’ve used that stretch of I-94 many times since I got my license in 1974. Tonight, was one the few runs over those forty-four years that it was construction free- it is in fact, all the way to U.S. 421 in Michigan City. I’ve often thought that some construction worker’s entire career, from apprenticeship to retirement, may well have been logged at the I-94/ I-65 interchange. Probably an exaggeration, but not by much as that project took the better part of two decades to complete.
Tonight’s sixty-mile loop was therapeutic. Sometimes it’s nice to hop on the bike and ride nowhere in particular. 94 was a pleasant surprise, particularly dialing in the throttle lock and cruising at a constant 75 MPH for most of the twenty-five miles between Hammond and Chesterton, an event that is about as rare as Haley’s Comet. Like I said at the beginning of this little piece, I need to do it again, soon.
