Friday evening I took the Heritage southeast for a change, down through Triune and out toward College Grove. That road quits pretending it has anywhere to be about the time the last stoplight falls behind you, and after that it is fence line and hayfields and whatever the light feels like doing.
Somebody had cut hay that afternoon and the whole valley smelled like it. The rolls were still sitting out there throwing shadows twice as long as they were. I rode slow on purpose. No sense hurrying through the one part of the week that isn't asking anything of you.
Pulled in at an old auction barn where a few trucks were parked with the doors open, sale long finished but nobody in a hurry to leave. Two fellas on a tailgate arguing about rain that's supposed to come Sunday. One of them looked the Heritage over and asked what year it was. I told him, and he said his brother in law has one just like it, rode it to Sturgis and back and complained about the seat the entire way, and they both laughed like that was the punchline they'd been sitting on all afternoon.
I stayed long enough for the engine to quit ticking. Somebody's dog wandered over, sniffed the front tire, decided I wasn't worth the trouble and went back under a truck. That was about the extent of the excitement.
Headed home in the last of the light with the bugs coming up out of the ditches, back in town right at dark. Twenty five miles of nothing in particular. Best kind of Friday there is.