April 29, 2015
Copyright(c) 2015 Jim Beachy
255 miles today, 984 miles total on our slow-down lazy-days trip
Kitty has walked 4 or 5 miles just about every day for the last four years or more. If it's too dark or too cold, she runs on our elliptical trainer. When we're traveling she walks on a treadmill or elliptical machine in the hotel's gym. She enters her miles into an online web site that has taken her on a virtual walk across America. Some time ago she reached the West Coast in some small town in Oregon, and has now walked well over 4,000 miles since she began entering her miles. I recently tried to compute how many steps this would entail and it was about 14.5 million steps. Pretty impressive, don't you think?
This morning she's adding to those steps in the gym and doesn't get back to the hotel room until after 8:15. Not that this matters a whit, because in slow-down mode there's rarely a need to set timelines or deadlines. So it's quite late once again, nearing 10:00 AM, as we strike out westward on US 70 from Dickson, TN. It's 59 F.
US 70 here is a rather narrow, 2-lane road that runs through mostly wooded areas. In fact, much of US 70 has wandered through wooded areas save for the occasional large ranches or tilled fields.
As we ease on down the road, I think on how my attitudes and what I care about have changed over the years. In the early years, a ride was all about riding. If we didn't fill up the day from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM or later, I somehow felt cheated, felt like the day was a waste. Kitty gamely tagged along in those days and never complained, even when we rode after dark, even one night when we kept riding until midnight. Solo Guy still feels that way: He will fill up the entire time of daylight and well beyond on either end, and sometimes the intervening nighttime hours, just for the cockpit time. For him, it really is all about the ride. For Slow-down Guy, not so much. I've gotten a different perspective over the years and the many trips we've taken together. Of course the ride is important; that's what we do! And so is the ride's location, and sometimes, the ride's destination. It's important to see our friends at the Mississippi Area Crawfish Hunt in Vicksburg; important to see our family in Gulfport later on. But in a broader sense, it's no longer all about the ride. It's all about spending quality time with Kitty, who loves doing this as much as I do, together on a motorcycle. That's why we often ride slowly, sometimes ride short days. It's the time together on the bike that matters, the time to ourselves, uncluttered by the demands of life and unfettered by normal constraints. Sometimes we talk a lot on the headsets. Sometimes we keep our silence for long periods of time. Every minute is worth savoring, and for us, being on our motorcycle is the best way to savor it. Why speed that up? Why hurry to the day's end?
At the town of Huntingdon, TN, the temperature has risen to 70 F and I remove a layer of clothing and switch to my lightweight mesh summer gloves. Here, US 70 begins to deflect to the south and east toward Jackson, TN.
I reflect on the characteristics of US 70. There are roads on North American continent that I would call "destination" routes: The Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia; the Million Dollar Highway (Rt 550) in Colorado; Beartooth Pass on the north side of Yellowstone National Park, even the Blue Ridge Parkway. These are roads that many would ride thousands of miles just to experience (and in fact, I have done that). US 70 is not one of those. It is a pleasant, historic, 55 mph alternative to the Interstate. It has the distinction of running coast-to-coast, so this little jaunt through about 450 miles of Tennessee is only a short segment. Its road surface is good; its amenities are quite adequate; some sections are very historic; its towns are mostly small (we bypassed Nashville). We've ridden the back roads of other states and found many of the towns to be moribund, with most of the businesses on Main Street boarded up; not so on US 70, where for the most part the towns are active and well-maintained. All in all, I'm happy we finally had the opportunity to scratch this long-time itch.
We leave US 70 at Jackson, NT and catch TN 18, which continues as MS 7 after crossing the border into Mississippi.
"Toot-toot!" says Kitty loudly in the headset.
I'd forgotten! In all our travels, whenever we enter the state of Mississippi, from whatever quarter that might be, we always give the loudest horn blast possible to honor our Mississippi Family! So I give two loud, long blasts on the horn as we pass the blue "Welcome to Mississippi" sign.
Soon after we cross the border, we stop for a break near Lamar, MS to eat our lunch. "Lunch" is relative. We often pack up some carrots, peanut butter, and apples, and that's we consume for lunch stops if we don't find a funky, hometown restaurant. The trailer has a cooler, and inside that we put another small cooler holding the lunch items; in hot weather we pack bottled water in ice in the evening, then dump out the melted water and repeat. This trip it's been cool enough that we haven't needed the ice.
Several miles back, we'd noticed some large fields covered in brilliant yellow flowers. "Surely those are crops and not weeds!" I commented. So I asked a local man filling up his lawn mower gas cans about those fields.
"The first crop to be planted around here is corn, and then cotton," he said. "Nobody plants anything this early. Those are just plain old yellow weeds! Nothing but weeds!" I almost laugh because this is virtually the same conversation I had last year in a different part of Mississippi with a different person. The shoulders of the road were not conducive for a big bike to stop and get a picture of the yellow weeds, but if you check last year's blog you'll see a reasonable replica.
Last night when I checked the route for today in my Garmin Basecamp mapping software, I wasn't really happy with the reviews for motels in Senatobia, MS, where my routing sketch ended today. I read the reviews to Kitty (who really isn't particular about hotel arrangements) and she said "Yikes! Maybe we better look elsewhere". So I rerouted and booked another hotel closer to Memphis, which will add about 50 miles to Thursday's ride from Memphis to Vicksburg along the Mississippi River. But that will make today shorter; so after our stop, I decide to retrace the original route to Senatobia, then zoom 30 or so miles north on I-55 and back in the "wrong" direction to our hotel. Rt 7 to Holly Springs is a fine little ride, Rt 4 to Senatobia has a lot of pavement ridges and is rather nondescript.
We arrive at our hotel, which is a definite improvement over the reviews I read last night! The hotel clerk tells us to park the bike under the wide canopy, and we wander off across a large car dealership's parking lot to find a very acceptable and very welcome steak dinner.
I've recovered nicely from my fall yesterday - only a little soreness in the right triceps where I apparently braced my fall with my right arm.
Tomorrow, Vicksburg or bust.
GPS Track (Elevation Graph is nondescsript for today's ride)
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