MACH.14: Day 2 - Old, Bold Thoughts

Day 2: Old, Bold Thinking

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

I am surveying my beautiful red motorcycle lying on its side, resting on its crash bars.  There’s a standard, well-published way to set it upright; I’ve seen a 90-pound woman do it, and so have I.  But this time, as I back into the seat and grab the passenger rail and handlebar, it won’t budge.  I finally give a mighty heave, and… suddenly come awake with a start, instantly on full alert.

After a tense evening of tornado warnings and people huddling in stairwells for shelter, all subjects here emerged unscathed, but strong storms pounded the area all night.  I’m unnerved by my dream of a fallen Crusader, and the need to see if the bike is Ok is so overwhelming that at 6:12 AM I slip on a t-shirt and pair of raggedy gym shorts and pad out to the hotel entrance in my bare feet.  All is well, covers still on the bike and trailer, and everything looks perfect.

Kitty is already in the gym doing her workout, so I turn on the Weather Channel as well as some local news to see how things look.  It doesn’t look good.  The monster storm that stretches from Michigan to the Gulf Coast and east to Virginia is trapped between pressure systems, and is setting up to do the same thing today that it did yesterday, spawning vicious cells and damaging weather.  In our local area there are downed power lines, flooding, and downed trees.  Much of Alabama has been declared a disaster area.

I borrow and modify a phrase from the fighter pilot jargon:  “There are old riders and there are bold riders, but there are no old, bold riders.”  Wandering around in moderately remote and unknown areas in these conditions seems unwise to this no-longer-bold rider (I ever I was a bold rider).  We talk it over and decide to see if the hotel has any rooms for tonight.  They do.  Two.  I book one.  We have to move to a different room and as we’re transferring our luggage we talk about what to do today.

When our son Kevin was 13, he and I took a fondly-remembered two-up motorcycle trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway, around the Smoky Mountains, and somehow ended up in Cleveland, Tennessee, which acted as our launch point for a day of whitewater rafting on the Ocoee river.  “For old times’ sake,” I tell Kitty, “if the weather is good enough, I’d like to ride that same road along the Ocoee.”

Most of the day locally is forecasted to be pleasant, with strong storms and possible tornadoes firing up again this evening, but it looks ok now.  No storms or cells are in sight within a hundred miles on the weather radar. So after a leisurely breakfast, we set off for our  pleasant little 110-mile round trip, winding along the very scenic Ocoee River just as Kevin and I did all those years ago..

Harnessing the power of its rivers, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has built a sprawling empire of hydroelectric power plants throughout Tennessee and even into Kentucky and Alabama.  Their methodology has been controversial:  On one hand, it garners praise because, in the length of a river, the same water energy can be harvested many times as the river flows downstream.  On the other hand, it has been open to much criticism because what they do kills a river.  Hydroelectric power production on the East Coast is very different from the mountains in the western United States.  In the East, they build a dam and then carry the water runoff in sluice boxes for miles down the river under there’s enough water pressure gradient, and then divert the water in huge pipes down a steep bank and into the hydroelectric power plant.  This can be repeated over and over again, based on the length and drop of the river.  But when the water is dammed up, the river downstream is almost completely dry for miles much of the year, thereby making it devoid of normal life forms found in rivers.

But this is whitewater rafting country!  In fact, the 1996 Olympic white-water rafting competition was held here.  When the gates of a dam are open, the dry boulder-strewn riverbed becomes a raging torrent of rapids!  Expeditions are a major source of income for the area.

At the former Olympic site, the gates are closed and the river bed is dry, filled with boulders. It's hard to imagine a wild river hosting an Olympic event: We stop to take a few pictures and I snap one of Kitty looking for something in the bike’s trunk.  I think it looks like an alien is inspecting our motorcycle.

We continue the mesh jacket experiment.  We’ve discovered one characteristic that is a deficit, at least for me:  Often while traveling, Kitty for no apparent reason suddenly decides to impart a wonderfully relaxing back rub to my person.  These jackets have crash protection in the form of a “tortoise shell”pad across the back, shoulder pads, and elbow pads.  “There’s not much area left over for a back rub!” says Kitty.

On the return trip, 15 miles from Cleveland and the hotel, we stop for a late lunch at the Ocoee Dam Deli and Diner (http://www.ocoeedamdeli.com).  “Why can’t we have a place like this at home!” Kitty exclaims as we walk in.  It was recommended by the chief engineer back at the hotel, and if our experience is an indication, it is worth coming back to any time we’re in the Cleveland area.  This is a very funky, very off-the-beaten path kind of place.  In some ways it reminds me of another favorite, The Shed barbecue joint in Missisissippi.  Kitty orders a mushroom and cheese hamburger, while I indulge in a black-and-bleu version that includes some decadent crumbly bleu cheese.  With all due respects to my all-time favorite, the Kobe beef burger back home, at the Blue Duck restaurant in DC, this could be the best hamburger I’ve ever eaten.  Perfectly prepared, tangy blue cheese, tomatoes, a little lettuce, and some sauce I can’t quite identify, perfectly delectable.

In the course of our lunch, we strike up a conversation with a couple of southern good ole’ boys about the huge wild boar’s head mounted on the wall.  And thus commences a fascinating conversation about wild boar hunting, Crimson Tide football, accents and dialects throughout the country, how the TVA affected life around these parts (the dams covered over several little settlements, which one supposes are still there to this day), race and ethnicity, and the Amish settlements not far from here.

After saying good-bye to our new friends and leaving the restaurant, I tell Kitty “This is just practice for our next trip to Nova Scotia.”  For that trip, whenever it happens, she has expressed an interest in going to some place, staying there for a few days, and doing some local exploring.  This has turned out to be a fantastic day, with a delightful little 110-mile ride, rekindling some fine old memories, riding out of weather harm’s way, and absorbing some local color.  What seemed a setback has become a little gem in its own right.  And isn’t that how we should strive to live our lives?  The old “make lemonade out of lemons” philosophy.

Crusader and the trailer are parked back underneath the canopy, and since we have  plenty of time and opportunity, Kitty is doing laundry and I’m writing this blog.

Tomorrow the weather should be less severe and we plan to catch up our itinerary completely by riding to the same destination via Interstate vs. meandering mountain routes.

MACH.14: Day 1 - Splotches of Red

Day 1: Splotches of Red

Monday, April 28, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

When I awake, Kitty has already departed the motel room for her morning workout.  I think when the first motorcyclist camped under the pines on the first night of his first trip, he did exactly what I do:  Pull back the curtain and take a look at what the weather is doing.  In this case, it’s cloudy but not raining.

I walk outside and uncover the bike and trailer, load up the day’s route and take a look at the XM Weather in motion. After some consideration and consulting the Weather Channel on TV, it appears that with a late start we might have a better chance of missing the big red splotches in the approaching weather front that has brought extreme devastation to Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas, and unrelenting, is now bearing down on the East Coast. So we take a lazy approach to breakfast and packing and finally are ready to roll a little before 10:00 AM.

The bike temperature reads 54 degrees F, so the experiment of the warm-weather mesh jackets continues.  What would happen if we each put on a heavy sweatshirt under the jackets and their thin nylon liner?  Could we ride in these temperatures with the mesh jackets?

I pull out the soft Gold Wing branded luggage where we’d packed our cool-weather items and realize that none of the sweatshirts I’d packed have made the trip!  It turns out Kitty had asked me about those shirts and I said we didn’t need them.  Only thing is, I thought she was talking about my set of t-shirts while she had in hand the stack of sweatshirts.  Guess I need to look a closer, pay a little more attention, when Kitty asks a question.. So, given a meager choice of merely two not-so-heavy sweatshirts, both mine, I give one to Kitty and I wear the other.  It’s a relatively light travel day of under 350 Interstate miles, so we will have plenty of time to stop and switch things around.

At the last minute, I take another look at the XM Weather that overlays the GPS route and see that within 50 miles we’ll be riding in rain.  So we do the Dance of the Rainsuit.  I almost always leave the bike key in my jeans until after I’ve put on the one-piece suit, but this morning I’m saved by the fact that the key is in the bike.  So rather smugly, I comment that for once I’m ready to go without halfway disrobing again.

We soon learn that at 54 degrees, the mesh jackets with a sweatshirt would have been inadequate to keep us warm.  But with the rain gear, it’s perfect.  And thus we learn that the likely temperature at which we could ride with these jackets is mid-50’s; the rain gear fits over the jackets.  Even so, the heated seats are a welcome addition on this chilly ride.

Just as predicted, in 50 miles or so we are riding in rain, moderate to heavy.  As we head southwest at a constant 70 mph, I keep an eagle eye on the red splotches on the weather radar.  In 95 miles, about 50 miles from the Tennessee border, we stop amidst heavy rain for fuel, and shortly after this the sky clears and we have some moderate sunny weather. The radar looks like we’ll have no more rain today, with the possible exception of the very end of the trip, and some red splotches that hover dangerously close to Knoxville.

By now the temperature is 82 F and I’m getting way too warm and sweating in the rainsuit.  So at the Tennsesse Welcome Center, we pull in to to the Undance of the Rainsuit and take a little picnic lunch.  Our Excel trailer features a vinyl-sheathed picnic cooler mounted on the tongue between the body of the trailer and the bike.  We pack various foods in it from time to time, and inside this cooler goes another little cooler.  Kitty learned years ago to pack several bottles of water in ice overnight in the hotel, and in the morning she pours out the melted water and repacks the bottled water in the smaller cooler.  We have ice-cold water all day, every day, even on the blistering hot days.  We seem to settle on some kind of protein bar supplemented by peanut-butter based offerings:  peanut butter on carrots, peanut butter on celery, peanut butter on apples, or in Kitty’s case, peanut butter off the spoon.  To Kitty there are three basic food groups:  Chocolate, peanut butter, and all the other stuff.

We leave the liners in the jackets because I’m still skeptical of Knoxville:  It looks very close as to whether we’ll be in rain there, and the liners will keep us dry, if too warm, in the event we hit more rain.  By the time we make Knoxville and take the I-640 Bypass, it’s 86 F and I’m sweating.  Eventually it becomes clear we will skate by the red splotches representing tornado and hail warnings, and at the next fuel stop (which we really don’t need yet) we take the liners out of the jackets and I remove my “arms.”

A word of explanation:  Kitty and I both have a pair of LD Comfort riding shorts (http://www.ldcomfort.com).  My good friend Mario Winkleman, a Gold Wing rider and a wonderful poet in his own right, some years ago developed a special riding material and garments for Iron Butt rides.  In the early days of marketing his product, we would frequently meet in San Antonio for an annual event called the Alamo Run, where a hundred (give or take) Gold Wing riders would show up for a barbecue hosted by the man we called “Pappy.”  That’s another story.  I recall asking Mario about the LD Comfort riding shorts and right there on the street, he pulled down his pants to show me the shorts, and said “Here, feel the material!”  Not being quite up to that challenge, I declined.  But I never bought a pair until last summer.  I ordered them online and in the space where it asks how I heard of the product, I simply said “My old friend Mario” and told this story.  Back came the product I ordered with a note from Mario and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t order.

Among the extra items were LD Comfort “arms,” which are just sleeves made of the LD Comfort material.  I’d put those on at the rest stop because the liners are sweaty and the “arms” feel pretty good.

We arrive at Cleveland amid flood and tornado warnings and dire predictions of large hail later tonight.  I’m not sure what to do with the bike and trailer.  I’m fresh out of instructions on how to handle hail, 50 mph straight-line winds, and tornados.  Raquel, the desk clerk, tells me to park the rig under the portico and I believe we are as well prepared as possible.

We are now spending a tense evening glued to the TV as it appears a tornado is developing southwest of Chattanooga and heading toward Cleveland.  Warnings have been issued to seek shelter.

I think it is time to sign off!  I will post pics and GPS tracks to this blog later.

MACH.14: Day 0 - Bonus Time

Day 0: Bonus Time

Sunday, April 27, 2014
Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

Today is a bonus riding day: We'd planned to depart Monday, but the first day sketched out to an almost-500 mile Interstate day, so we've opted to ride a couple hundred miles on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, knocking a serious hole in tomorrow's ride.

The church we attend features four services every weekend, and they stream one of the morning services live.  So instead of attending in person this morning, we sit in my little home office and watch the service on the Internet.  After a light lunch, we finish last-minute packing, perform the dance of the car-truck-motorcycle repositioning in driveway and garage , take a quick photo of Kitty standing by the bike, and climb aboard.

“And there we go!” says Kitty in my headset as she has for years when we start out, although recently she has taken to saying “Click-click” to represent the small click we hear in the headset when she plugs in.  And so we roll out, headed for I-66 west and I-81 south, just before 2:00 PM.  There’s really no destination goal for today, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking Roanoke, VA, about 200 miles from home.

The temperature is a pleasant but cool 64 degrees.  We’ve talked about how to dress for our new-jacket experiment; for now, we’re wearing the mesh jackets, a liner in each, and under that a t-shirt plus a long-sleeved shirt.  I have a medium-weight sweatshirt, Kitty is wearing a thinner long-sleeved t-shirt that I think will be a little cool for her.  The passenger always gets more turbulence as the still air pocket collapses around the shoulders, and it’s always a little chillier back there in cool weather.  An hour later, I feel perfect without using any of the fairing’s heat vents or heated seat, and Kitty is a little chilly but has turned on her seat heater, which she says makes a big difference.  I think we’ve learned that with a t-shirt plus sweatshirt, we can ride comfortably in these jackets with temps in the mid-60’s.  That is probably the lower limit for an extended ride.

Spring has come very slowly to Virginia this year.  None of the trees are in full leaf, but the enthusiastic patches of reddish-purple redbud trees offer a beautiful contrast to the pale green of the early springtime growth.  While the Shenandoah Valley holds promise of full spring and summer on its rolling hills, as we look eastward toward the mountains where runs Skyline Drive, no sign of green is to be seen.

By the time we’ve ridden a hundred miles or so to Harrisonburg, VA, my windshield is completely and distractingly splattered with remains of many bugs.  As I inspect the carnage and clean the windshield at a fuel stop (we’d left home with just half a tank of fuel), it appears most of the insects were yellow jackets or wasps - maybe relatives of the one that stung me yesterday?  Perhaps I’m getting my pound of flesh after all!  And speaking of which, the huge hard lump on the back of my neck is actually below where the helmet rests, so it’s fine.  However, the wind and the tails of my do-rag tickling my neck in that spot make for a maddening desire to spend the whole day clawing and scratching at my neck.

And thus to Roanoke, 213 miles for this short bonus day.  After checking in to a motel, I clean the front of the motorcycle - I don’t remember when I’ve ever had to work so hard to clean bugs!  So they get the last laugh after all!

I’ve spent some time reevaluating our trip for tomorrow and moved our stopping point 60 miles or so farther south to Cleveland, TN, near Chattanooga, where we plan to leave the Interstate for good for the rest of the outbound trip.  Before covering the bike and trailer, I’d programmed the new route into the bike’s GPS system.  Rain and storms are making their way eastward, so I’m not sure when we’ll hit those - it would be preferable, it we must ride in storms, to do it on the Interstate tomorrow rather than on Appalachian Mountain roads the next day.

We’ll take it as it comes.