RUN FOR THE WALL Jean and Larry: May 11, 2016

For those that did not see the comment on yesterday's post from Jenny, here it is:

For our non motorcycle friends, the motorcycle won't start without the key fob... quite an important item to keep track of. If you zoom in on our picture, you will see where Ken laid the key fob....right in front of this cooler. Interesting fact...a key fob was lost last year on then trip to DC....common denominator....Larry and Jean. Hummmm. Just saying....

So here is the picture and yes the keys are on the seat. Sooo I have learned my first lesson this trip, do not interrupt Ken and take him out of his routine. I guess that means this is MY fault. HaHa

We walk out of the hotel and Larry yells, rain is back "gear up".

This is getting old. We road in it the first 80 miles then the next 80 if rained off and on. At least it was not 40 degrees. It was 68 when we started.

We then get into Kansas. Can you say "FLAT" and "WINDY".

This is what we saw for MILES!!! Gray sky and green grass.

Every now and then you would see a little hill. Still there is nothing there. You see cows but no farm any where around. Very few trees.

So not much to take pictures of so Ken and Jenny got their pics taken.

"Catfish"

"Lady Jen"

Then we were met with a lovely aroma. For those that cannot tell this is a semi carrying cows.

We passed Fort Riley. Only got a few pics.

The day then started to brighten up and over the next few hours, we finally got blue sky. You can see the blue more and more in each picture. Blue skies nice but the wind got stronger as the day went on. It was a head wind at about 1:00. Tough on everyone.

Finally some beautiful colors but still flat.

Take a look at the American flag in the picture. Out in the middle of no where. It reminded me of one of the reasons why we were taking our trip: Riding for those the cannot.

We saw a herd of bison.

Pretty cool. Check out all the flags.

If you can, look at the flags on Jenny's bike. The POW/MIA flag flew forward and the US flag flew backward. It was like this most of the afternoon. Kind of weird. Yesterday both flew same way, backward like you would think. (You may have to double click the picture to make it bigger to see it)

Then we hit a "wind farm". There were hundreds of them. So I was thinking, they just look like they are put out the randomly. I googled it, for fun:

The simple answer is that wind farms are built in places where the wind is strong and steady

Wind forecasters look at two kinds of data. First, they take wind measurements at a potential wind farm site for a year or so. Then they compare that data with long term measurements in the same region going back fifty years or more, using information gathered by weather balloons, satellites, and observations at airports.

They feed all the data into powerful computer models that provide an accurate and detailed portrait of the site’s wind resources past, present, and future.

Accuracy Is Key!

The more accurate that portrait is, the better. Because wind is extremely sensitive to changes in temperature, terrain, humidity, and dozens of other factors. A change in elevation from one part of an area to another can make a big difference in wind speed.

So wind forecasting computer models need to take into account as many elements as possible, including potential changes such as climate change, loss of trees, and land development.

No model is perfect, but wind forecasters have become very good at telling wind farm developers how much wind they can expect, and how much energy their turbines will produce