I rode a little farther than I had planned today. Sometimes I'm in the groove and I just want to ride. Panama doesn't have very many roads that run east-west so it was hard to be creative in creating a route. I thought the Pan-american Highway One would be boring but it turned out to be a nice ride. Not exactly a super-slab, it is a divided highway. It goes through a lot of towns and there was a fair amount of traffic. There were a lot of motorcycle police with radar guns but I always knew where they were because oncoming traffic would flash their lights. I think the hardest part of Central America for me has been the heat and humidity. Everything I own is damp and no matter how long I put it out in the sun, it stays damp. Every night I hang up all my clothes so that they don't mildew in my panniers. Today was 95º with 88% humidity but I was doing pretty well. I had my jacket vented in a way that allowed air to run up my sleeves and out a vent on my back. This was keeping me fairly comfortable so long as I kept moving. I had planned to stop in Penonomé but having I arrived there about 2:30 and feeling pretty good, I thought I would press on. I stopped for fuel, a cold drink and a snack. I decided to splurge on a nice hotel (with air-conditioning) right by the Bridge of the Americas and the Panama Canal. My GPSs showed that I had plenty of daylight and that I should arrive at 5:30 with sunset at 6:00. It was a good plan until it wasn't. About 15 miles from Panama City I hit a construction zone and traffic came to a halt. Tiggrr's radiator fan kicked on almost immediately and I could feel the hot air blowing on my legs. Without the airflow in my jacket I could feel sweat running down my back. I started to feel a little claustrophobic so I opened my helmet and started lane splitting. That was a good strategy for bit but then inexplicably I (and everyone else) was routed off the highway onto surface streets which were gridlocked. I got a glimpse of Highway One (which goes over the Bridge of the Americas) and they had all six lanes routed westward. I needed to go east. My GPSs were doing their best to route me back onto Highway One but every time I got to an entrance ramp it was blocked with traffic cones. This was futile. I stopped the bike and asked a young man to help me. He suggested a way around but when I tried to use Google Maps or ether of my GPSs they weren't having it. They could not find a route and kept trying to put my back on Highway One. Finally I switched to Waze and it gave me a route. I went to shake the young man's hand but he preferred a fist bump. It was getting dark. I fired the bike and started following the Waze route but it soon turned into an unpaved road. Great! Dark and unpaved! My favorite. Two miles later, Waze routed me onto a road that was blocked due to an unsafe bridge. I wasn't the only one in this mess as several other cars stacked up behind me. I went back to my GPS, threw in a few waypoints that I thought would get me over the Centennial Bridge (further north). It worked but it was well out of my way and riding in the dark was making me very tense. It's not that I can't ride in the dark, it is that I know that my risk becomes exponentially higher and it is hard enough to navigate an unfamiliar foreign city without having to worry you are going to ride into a bike-eating pothole. I did ride along the Panama Canal for about 15 miles (though I couldn't see much in the darkness) and safely arrived at my hotel... a little frazzled and overheated. It had taken me almost three hours to ride the last 18 miles of the day. I'm sorry but I didn't shoot a single picture today as I was dreaming of the amazing views I was going to have of the canal this evening. Oh well. All part of the adventure and tomorrow is another day.