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.
No comments:
Post a Comment