Day 3: Trickster
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy
Since we have only a 320-mile Interstate day, we lounge around at breakfast and it’s nearly 10:00 AM when we say our goodbyes to the hotel staff. They have been most helpful and accommodating way beyond reason during our enforced two-night stay. To offer shelter from the storms, the general manager has had me park Crusader and the trailer obnoxiously right in front of their lobby, just so the lobby doors cleared the front wheel; they’ve offered us cookies and given us tips on eating without having to ride to a restaurant. It has been much appreciated.
After I take a minute to generate the new Interstate route on the bike’s on-board GPS unit, we pull out of the parking lot and I notice the GPS shows an estimated arrival time of 1:15 PM. What? How can that be? That would be almost 100 miles per hour. I quickly zoom out to see if I’ve chosen the correct destination, and see that I have. Then I remember that this GPS is time-zone aware, and displays the estimated arrival time as local time in the new time zone, which is Central Time. We will “gain” an hour this day.
Having scanned the weather radar, it appears we’ll be skirting the edge of some residual rainy patches just north of I-59, but doesn’t appear to be anything we’d need rain gear for. It’s 69 F as we hit the Interstate under heavy clouds and a few miscellaneous sprinkles. About 30 miles later, as predicted by the weather radar, rain splatters on the windshield in Chattanooga as we round the great sweeping arc where the Interstate curves tightly along the Tennessee River. “We should be out of this in about 20 miles,” I tell Kitty on the intercom.
And 20 miles later, having run through on-and-off rain, mostly light, the radar shows we are exiting the patch of rain. It’s somewhat foggy with low-hanging clouds, but according to the weather radar we should be well clear of the rain. Yet new water droplets keep appearing on the windshield as if by magic. I’m mystified as to how this trickster weather system is showing us clear of the rain.
We cross the northwest corner of Georgia and into Alabama, where the on-board clock unceremoniously switches from 10:58 to 9:58 as the GPS senses the new time zone. About 50 miles later, having navigated 43 miles of unrelenting Alabama construction zone speed limits, Kitty is getting cold and we decide to stop to put on rain gear. This is not so much for rain protection, as on a Gold Wing you can pretty much ride through moderate rain on the Interstate without getting wet. But rain gear offers a significant measure of protection from the wind, so the body feels much warmer. When we stop, I think I understand how the Trickster has tricked my weather radar: In the fog and mist, a fine and constant drizzle fills the air, and I believe the water droplets are too small to have been picked up as rain by weather radar. Thus the mystery is solved and I have learned one more thing to file away for the future.
After the Dance of the Rain Suit, of course the drizzle stops and by the time we navigate the Birmingham bypass, the clouds are breaking up and patches of blue sky appear. Now we’re getting too warm with our rain gear. We stop at a rest area just shy of Tuscaloosa where we reconfigure and have a little picnic lunch. As we’re snacking, an inquisitive squirrel wanders tentatively up to the table, and emboldened by our apparent threat-less behavior, he finally comes right up to us and tries to steal our food. Except the only thing he wants is peanut butter. In this, Kitty and the squirrel have much in common!
“We have a little under a hundred miles to go,” I tell Kitty. “Now that the weather has cleared, do you want to take a longer two-lane route?”
“Sure!” she says. “Almost any route is better than the Interstate.”
And thus I quickly route a 160-mile bonus route from Tuscaloosa, roughly following US 82 east to Hwy 5 south, which intersects with US 80, which we’ll take west into Meridian where we already have reservations. US 5 proves to be a moderately interesting two-lane route through mostly wooded areas but among some large grassy fields as well. Some of the fields are covered with a kind of yellow flower, which we think looks like the mustard or water cress plants we observed in fields back home in Pennsylvania. Yet the plants don’t seem to stand as high, so we don’t know what they are. The mottled yellow against the green provides a scenic diversion from the forest and red Alabama clay road banks. I think of Sting’s Fields of Gold - I thought he mentioned fields of barley, but maybe in actuality it was just water cress. On a two-lane road with no berm, there is no opportunity to pull over with the big bike for a picture.
We hit the intersection of US 80 and follow it west until we once again join I-20. As we enter Mississippi moments later, I give a good strong blast of the horn to salute Mississippi and to say “Hi” to our family in Gulfport, a scant 150 miles to the south of where we stop for the night. For a moment, it’s hard to stay focused on the Mississippi Area Crawfish Hunt when we are so close to our family. Today we’ve ridden 388 miles.
But tomorrow we plan to finish out the ride to Vicksburg with a short jaunt of about 160 miles; I’ve had to add some extra miles on two-lanes for interest’s sake, as the Interstate distance is barely 130 miles.
I spend an hour cleaning the bike and trailer, removing the filth and grime from a day’s travel in light rain, which is the worst for dirtying your vehicle. I sometimes take the bike to a car wash, where I simply use the low-pressure suds (never the high-pressure) and a cloth to wash, then rinse and dry. Tonight there is no car wash so my alternative is to fill a hotel bathroom trash bucket with warm water and gently sponge off the dirt before drying and polishing as necessary. After we return from a short walk across the street to dinner, Kitty helps me cover the bike and trailer.
I never ask her to do this, but I’m secretly happy when she does!
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