Just like NASA space flights, we begin each day with a plan.  Today's clever and well thought out itinerary was to leave Galveston around 9am, ride about 30 minutes north to the Johnson Space Center, spend a few hours looking at burned out rocket engines and pictures of famous astronauts, eat lunch and then motor three hours north to Sherevport, Louisiana and by 3pm be laying around the pool drinking beer.  Lets just say that it didn't work out quite that way.

As soon as we left Galveston it started to rain.  Not just rain, but RAIN!  In some cases we were caught in the open and just had to ride through it and other times we could seek shelter under an overpass, or in a gas station.  It took us three hours to go 40 miles (for once - we're not kidding!).  We stopped at a Harley dealership to get pontoons for the bike, but they just laughed at us and called us, "Stupid Californians." We blew off the NASA tour, rode north through downtown Houston and ultimately sought cover again in a McDonalds where, Kirk, a friendly Big Mac eater (OOPS! - Forgot we weren't supposed to say that because his wife will kill him if she finds out he ate a Big Mac), had his wireless laptop and we could check out Doppler Radar.

Instead of heading northeast as planned, we headed northwest to try and get west and above the rain.  Yeah right.  Here's the deal about Doppler Radar - IT SUCKS!   By day's end we were soaked - along with everything on the bike.  They say the human body is 90% water and we had more on the outside than on the inside!  What should have been a four hour cruise to Shreveport turned out to be a ten hour white knuckle killer - AND WE STILL DIDN'T MAKE IT!  We finally threw in the towel (a very wet towel) in Marshall, Texas about 35 miles west of Shreveport.  Troy, the manager of the Hampton Inn there took pity on us and gave us a room.   He's been so nice to us we feel real bad knowing that we'll be gone before he realizes it was bogus credit card we checked in with.  Oh well, at the end of the month we get our disability check and we can send him some money.  Tomorrow, it's back on the road heading north and east to...

     
Doppler Radar - Nice BLOB!                                                             One of many gas stations refuges we sought.

    
Ten hours straight of this wonderful sight!                                Our room - with the heat turned up to 95 degrees!