Ben Sparks

This Ben. He is from Brown County IN. I ran into Ben last night while looking to take cover from the storm. He had checked into a room and offered to split it with me. Unfortunately, we were being somewhat harrassed by some individuals under the influence. Ben showed me his room number and told me to look him up, then walked away. As I was trying to park my bike, the unsavory fellows did not want to leave me alone. I don't think they were bad guys, just extremely annoying. I wasn't in the mood and just wanted some quiet time. I started it back up and left, continuing on down the road for another 40 miles or so.

Today, Ben caught up with me at a Rest Area. I was partially unpacked, looked for my lightweight 'spare' rain jacket. I had also stopped to tinker with my GPS. The only thing that I accomplished was catching the GPS power adapter on fire. I'm not kidding.

Ben asked if there was anything he could help me with or anything I needed. There wasn't much that could be done. So as I packed everything back up, we swapped travel stories. I explained my plan, but how things actually panned out. He smiled and said "I've gotta show you something" and handed me his smartphone. There was a photo of him in front of the Arctic Circle sign. He had been there a couple weeks before. He had left on his travels early July. He told me how bad the roads were (something I've heard several times now from people along the way).

We swapped contact info and continued on our seperate ways.


Sent from my BlackBerry.