MACH 14: Day 9 - Memory Trip

Day 9:  Memory Trip
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

Another late day, the latest this trip.  For one reason, I was awakened by Kitty at 2:22 AM.  "Is that noise going to continue all night!?"  The chirping of the fire alarm confirms what she is talking about.  I turn over and cover my head with a pillow, with an irrational hope that it will go away, but it doesn't.

"I'm going to call the front desk!" Kitty announces, and does so.  "What? Twist it?  Can you send up a maintenance man?  OK, we'll try that."

I grab a chair, unseat the unit, unplug it, and remove the battery.  "That should do it," I say.  Just before it chirps again.  "I'm taking this thing to the front desk - let them find a place for it!" Just as I'm ready to carry the thing out the door it utters one last feeble chirp and I believe that's the end of it.

Another reason it's a late day is that I have to finish yesterday's blog.  Yet another is that we have a very short day of only 200 miles to our daughters in-law's parents, our intended destination for today.

The only reason we overnighted on Leesville is that it puts us in position to revisit a significant event from (we think) 2006.  A trip down memory lane.

On that motorcycle trip to the Alamo Run near San Antonio, a loosely organized ride-in similar to the MACH event of this trip. We'd run the Natchez Trace from Nashville TN to Natchez MS,and were slowly making our way on 2-lanes to Texas.  In a remote area on Hwy 8 exactly on the border of Louisiana and Texas, right on the bridge over the Sabine River, our afternoon was unceremoniously shattered into bits when we were rear-ended by a 20-year old who later confessed to the Texas officer that he was on drugs.  He had a suspended license, was driving a stolen pickup truck, and this was his third offense since his license was suspended.

The impact destroyed our trailer and bent the hitch into a Z so that the trailer was pushed up beside the bike.  I still don't know how I kept the bike upright.  The driver lost control of the vehicle and ran into an unyielding bridge abutment, which absolutely destroyed the truck and left pieces of the front wheels and engine block lying on the road.  Later, the officer called me and said "Your boy's in jail in Jasper.  Here in Texas we don't take kindly to drug users driving stolen trucks with suspended license.  He confessed all this in the cruiser, and of course the video camera got it all." Months later, I called back twice for an update but the trooper wasn't available at the time so to this day I don't know the final disposition.

Across the river someone heard the crash and came to investigate.  Taking a look at the wrecked trailer, this good ole' Louisiana boy said "I can get you back on the road!  I can fabricate a hitch from some stock I have on hand." He worked in an auto salvage yard on the Louisiana side of the river.
And to make an already-long story short, he delivered!  We towed that smashed-up trailer to San Antonio and home with that old boy's emergency fabrication!  Because of the damage, we had to rig a taillight, and it leaked badly, so we had to wrap our luggage in garbage bags to keep it dry, but we got it home.

So today, I want to see if Shawn and his wife Kimmy are still there.  Memory lane - no need to revisit the accident, as that moment will always be vivid in my mind, not I'm curious about the salvage yard.  I'd marked a waypoint named "Wreck" at the time with the symbol of a skull and crossbones.  As we approach the waypoint, anticipation mounts and as we slow, we see... It's closed, fenced in, the building shuttered.  By the looks of the overgrown parking lot, it's been closed for a while.

Ok, that itch has been scratched and I won't need to visit again.

A mile into Texas, I'm moderately surprised by a sign: Speed Limit 75.  "That's crazy on this narrow two-lane road!" says Kitty.  So in a rare moment, I run  5 under for a while, setting cruise to 70 mph.  I wick it up to the speed limit a little later, and I can tell Kitty is nervous about it because when brake lights come on in the distance and I come off cruise, I feel her hands digging into my sides.

We cruise through the east Texas Pineywoods region at the posted speed limit.  Texas roads just make me feel good.  The long undulating stretches of highway where you can see ahead sometimes for miles are always interesting, and I never feel like exceeding the speed limit.  When it comes to speed, Texas has it right, in my opinion.  There are few places like Texas for this kind of riding!

In Livingston we stop for a break and I fuel up even though we have half a tank.  Here in Livingston is another memory.

I was riding to the Holy Smoke Barbecue in Huntsville (the Texas one, not the Alabama one).  I'd had my bike serviced by my guy near Atlanta, Gary's Hobbie Shop.  Once I left the shop in the afternoon, I decided to ride the entire 800-mile ride with only fuel stops, which would put me on Huntsville at around 4:00 AM.  So by the time I reached Livingston in the middle of a dark night, I was sensing the end of the ride, I was tired, and my circadian cycle was at its lowest of the trip.  Just easing into Livingston and slowing for a red light, I heard the distinctive minor chord of a train whistle, close but not loud.  And a half-second later, a train emerged from an underpass just as I crossed over top.  The sound seemed suddenly a million times louder, and the train was almost directly below me, barely 50 feet from my rapidly-decompensating ears, brain, and body.  It was the most awesomely frightening experience of my life from the day I was born until this day.  Once again I barely kept the bike upright.  To this day I never hear a train whistle when that moment doesn't come instantly to mind!

Having replenished our picnic lunch supply last night walking back from the restaurant, we decide to make a 5-mile detour to the Livingston State Park for a little lunchtime picnic.  When we learn it would cost $5.00 per person, we opt out and the ranger gives us instructions for another place, which has a "Road Closed" sign.  As I pill off the road to contemplate for a moment, local officer pulls up behind me.  "I can't think of a worse place for you to stop!" he calls on his PA system. He has a point so we ride around until we find a shaded area where we can pull out our picnic chairs under a large tree of undetermined species.
Riding westward into a stiff headwind, we arrive at our destination a little before 4:00 PM.

It's good to see our daughter-in-law's parents.  It's good to be in Texas.  It's good to be near places where they know steaks.

Today I have no Internet connection and I've done this on my Android smartphone.  However, uploading pictures is too difficult so I'll do that later.

MACH 14: Day 8 - Metamorphosis II

Day 8:  Metamorphosis II

Monday, May 5, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

It is slow going for the poor kids this morning after their late night, but they make it off to school on time with relatively little fuss.  I think they’re too tired to fuss!  I back the bike and trailer out of the garage and start loading our luggage.

Brenham, who isn’t yet in school, comes out to help.  “I like those wheels,” he says about the chrome trailer wheels.  “They’re spark-e-ly!”  And then “I like your motorcycle boots.  When I was a grown-up I had motorcycle boots.”

A little before 10:00 AM we say our goodbyes (the pain of parting never gets easier, just more familiar) and strike out westward.  We plan to see Kristal’s parents in College Station, TX, and have decided to break up that trip of about 500 miles into two mostly 2-lane days.

Once again it’s a brilliant morning with temperatures in the high 70’s as we fuel up and head west on I-10.  It’s a quiet morning as we grapple with the metamorphosis from grandparents into bikers.  The metamorphosis is more difficult in this direction, I decide.  Being a motorcycling couple is a wonderful thing, but being grandparents is priceless, a forever treasure.  We hold I-10 to Baton Rouge amid the redolent sweet, heavy smell of some springtime blooming tree or shrub.  At West Baton Rouge we exit the Interstate and stop at an information center to see if there’s anything in particular we should look for.

I do a quick Google search about Louisiana on my smartphone and learn that Baton Rouge is the nation’s most inland seaport, and that 25% of our nations waterborne exports are shipped through Louisiana’s seaports.  I am also startled to learn that Louisiana has the nation’s longest seacoast (15,000 miles) because of all its sounds and coastal indentations.  Who wouldn’t have thought it would be Alaska, or maybe Florida?  Louisiana produces over one-quarter of the US production of natural gas, is second in the production of sugar cane and sweet potatoes, and third in rice production.  It also ranks in the top 5 for cotton and pecan production.

We catch US 190 west as the alternative route to I-10.  Mostly it’s 4-lane with a speed limit of 65 mph.  At various times we see vast flooded fields of rice, or ride past stately groves of pecan trees, or fields of young soybeans.  Wow, there is a lot of flat land down here!  And yet there are miles and miles of cypress swamps, and in one section we travel probably 10 miles on a raised bridge-like structure that is flat as a table top and straight as a yardstick, with no shoulders at all on either side of the highway.  From this unique vantage point, we can look down at the swamps and the logging operations.

We’ve ridden all morning until well after 1:00 PM and we are hungry.  Having exhausted our supply of picnic lunch foodstuffs, we are (well, at least I am) bent on finding the type of local restaurant that isn’t likely to be on the GPS, and we scan for eating places as we roll slowly through several small towns.  I’m looking for restaurants that might have names like Jimmy’s Cajun Dive, or The Mad Crawfish, or perhaps Billy’s Cowcatcher Grill.  We’ve run hard alongside a railroad track for over a hundred miles, so something named after trains would seem to be in order.

At Krotz Springs, just after we cross the Atchafalaya River where huge barges and seagoing vessels ply their trade, we stop for fuel.  The gas pump has no card reader, so I have to take my credit card inside for security while I pump gas.  I haven’t removed my helmet or red-and-black mesh jacket.  After fueling, I walk back inside and the same attendant says “Can I help you, sir?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am, I just filled up at pump #4.”

“Oh, you did?  How did you do that without leaving a credit card?”  She begins to punch buttons and looks confused, apparently mystified that the pump had actually delivered gasoline without her permission or knowledge.

“Ummm, I did leave a credit card.”

“You did? With me?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.  Is it this one?”

“Yes.’

Really? I can only surmise that while I wasn’t looking, 30 other bikers, helmeted and attired just as I am, must have walked in unbeknownst to me and the attendant somehow got me confused with one of the others.  Nevertheless, the bike is now full and our stomachs are empty; we briefly consider eating at the little diner attached to the gas station but decide to pass.

I look for opportunities to stop and take some photographs of the rice fields and other agricultural goings-on, but never found a place I felt comfortable pulling the big bike over, or where the berm was slanted in a way that would allow me to put down the kickstand.

So the search for a non-GPS restaurant continues through Opelousas and Eunice.  We always miss the restaurant or it’s on the wrong side of the street or too difficult to find a parking space on the street.  So we finally settle on… Burger King!  It’s the first time in years that I’ve eaten in a Burger King, and then only because it happened to be on the correct side of the road.  But it’s protein nevertheless.

At Ragley we turn north on US 171 and eventually arrive at Leesville, LA, home of Fort Polk Army Base.  As we’re unloading, I survey with amusement the array of luggage we carry to our room every night.  It’s a long way from a pair of jeans and a couple of t-shirts packed for a road trip.  We check in and I clean the bike, after which we walk about a half mile or more to a local steakhouse where the music is country, the peanuts are everywhere, and the steaks are exceptional.

When we get back to the hotel, Kitty once again helps me cover the bike and trailer.

MACH.14: Day 7 - Tent City

Day 7:  Tent City

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

Our guest room has been populated with tents.  Brotherly love prevails as Carter and Brenham, aged 5 and 3,  decide they want to inhabit the same dinosaur tent for the night, while Danica is comfortably housed in her own princess tent with an awesome inventory of stuffed furry friends.

This seems to work out splendidly until 2:37 AM, when there appears to be some invasion of personal space within the dinosaur tent.  This incursion is vigorously defended and somehow the concept of two-brothers-sharing-a-dinosaur-tent seems a little less attractive from that point on.

And by 7:12 AM, our room has become a certified Tent City.

Kevin is the lead pastor at Gulf Coast Worship Center (http://www.yourfamilyplace.com) and it turns out we've invaded an unusually busy weekend.  We try to keep a low profile and help out as best we can.

Back at the house after lunch, all the kids are clamoring for motorcycle rides through the neighborhood.  The youngest needs to accompany Kitty as a second passenger, squeezed in between Kitty and me on the seat.  They all think it's cool to be able to talk through the headsets.  "You sound like you're on the radio," says Carter.

Kevin is off to church for a special event, and later, after the motorcycle rides, the rest of us head to the beach.  The water in the Gulf of Mexico this early in May is warmer than the East Coast in early July.  It's a calm and serene sunset with nobody around but us and a great blue heron

Kevin meets us at the beach after his church event.  Following a quick pizza stop for dinner, by now it's late, way past the kids' normal bedtime, and tomorrow will likely prove to have an interesting early start.

"There will be no Tent City in Nona and Papa's room tonight!" decrees Kevin.

Tomorrow we've scheduled a 300-mile day on mostly two-lane country roads and expect to be in Louisiana near the Texas border by evening.

The realization that we'll need to reverse-morph into bikers tomorrow comes with a little jolt.  But Kitty has a sign in our bedroom at home that says "When a child is born, so is a grandmother."

Wherever we are, whatever we do, we'll always have that.  Always be that!

MACH.14: Day 6 - Metamorphosis

Day 6: Metamorphosis

Saturday May 3, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

“These people are serious about their departure time,” I tell Kitty.  “When they say 9:00 AM, that means everybody on the bikes, engines running, and pulling out at 9.  I  don’t want us to be the ones watching all the other bikes’ taillights as they roll out.”

So we make sure we're awake in plenty of time to be fully packed and checked out of the hotel in time.

When eating crawfish, one should carefully consider the implications of wearing contact lenses.  I learned this years ago in Memphis on some motorcycle trip.  Having eaten quite a few plates of extra-spicy mudbugs, I paid no special attention to extra hand-washing; the instant I touched a finger to my eye to remove the lens, someone lit a match in there that did not diminish for many minutes.  There was no remedy except to wait.  And then repeat for the other eye.

Since then I've learned how to scrub carefully around the fingernails, which doesn't completely obviate the capsaicin's effect but makes it tolerable.  It's the lesser evil compared to taking out the contacts first and figuring out how to affix my glasses after putting on my helmet for the ride.

This morning my eyes smart only a little and it's gone after a few minutes without residual effects.

At breakfast, Kitty asks about various people whom I probably know or should know but she probably doesn’t.  One such is Willie Davis, who I hadn't seen yesterday. Willie is a rather small man, quiet, unassuming, never given to telling a lot of stories about himself.  “But make no mistake,” I tell Kitty, “He may be the fiercest Iron Butt rider of us all!”

It’s another crisp and delightful morning, nothing but sunshine and blue sky, one of those mornings that makes a biker happy to be a biker. Maybe a gardener has that same feeling but it doesn't quite have the same ring, does it?  Riders start assembling their bikes in an informal queue so the ride can start in an orderly, unified fashion.  When the procession pulls out, led once again by Picky, filling in for Roger who's still in the hospital, Kitty asks what time it is.  I glance at the clock in the bike’s display:  9:00 AM exactly.  “I told you they were serious about their departure time,” I say to Kitty.

As a sidebar, I've resolved one mysterious issue:  Last night I discovered my Slime tire inflation pump, cleverly disguised as a Slime tire inflation pump, stowed in the extreme rear corner of the right saddlebag.  I'd checked there several times before giving up at the beginning of the trip.  I don't know how I could have  missed it.

The 30 or so bikes take a leisurely pace southward, a pleasant ride on Hwy 27 to the Natchez Trace.  The Trace is a bit like the Blue Ridge Parkway without the mountains.  Picky acts as our tour guide.  "If you look off to your right, you'll see some trees.  Now if you look over to your left, you'll see some more trees."  I don't count the miles but in probably 50 miles or so and with two rest stops we reach US 61, which we take northward to what has become another annual tradition: The Old Country Store (http://www.natcheztracetravel.com/natchez-trace-youtube-videos/562-old-country-store-restaurant-lorman-ms.html).

"My grandma was the Queen of cooking cornbread.  I'm the King of cooking chicken," proclaims proprietor Arthur Davis, quite famous in these parts and even beyond.  "If Colonel Sanders had my recipe, he would have been a five-star general."  At various times Mr. D will come out and sing for the patrons.

It's hard to argue with his sentiment, and while we are there, a number of other biker groups stop by for some delicious all-you-can-eat fried chicken.

We've planned from the beginning to tap out after lunch and head to Gulfport, MS to see our family.  After making our rounds of goodbyes we strike out in a generally southeastern direction for the 200 mile ride to Gulfport.

I've had the GPS generate a route via roads whose numbers I don't even know, but seems to involve Hwy 28, Hwy 550, and US 84 to Monticello where we pick up Hwy 587 to Columbia. 587 would be a fine 2-lane road if only it had a decent road surface.  I will avoid this segment on future rides. Mississippi roads tend to feature long stretches of forested areas with few towns and little development, so making sure there's a plan for fuel is a good idea.  At Columbia we pick up US 98 for a few miles to Hwy 13 and then the final miles on US 49 before following several street roads to our son Kevin and family's home.

We make room for the bike and trailer in the garage and the metamorphosis is complete:  Biker couple transformed into grandparents.

We are content to be with our Mississippi family.  We drive in the van about 15 miles to the Back Bay Seafood restaurant for dinner, but it really doesn't matter.

MACH.14: Day 5 - Mudbugs

Day 5: Mudbugs

Friday May 2, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

Yesterday and today are rewards for enduring the vicious onslaughts of severe storms and threats of tornadoes earlier in the week.  It’s hard to believe that this crystal clear and cool weather could occur so close in time to the monster storms that terrorized much of the country.

At breakfast in the hotel, we learn that there is an impromptu ride for today, loosely organized by the Missouri Gold Wing chapter whose members have showed up in force for the MACH.14 event.  So precisely at 10:00 AM, it’s kickstands-up and we are off, forming a long line of bikes where Kitty and I are #9 in line, and thus riding the left track.  CB chatter is professional and ride-related, not a lot of extraneous chatter this morning.  Picky is our leader and Dean is our tail gunner as we take the exit off I-20 west to US 61 south and an eventual right turn on Hwy 462 to Grand Gulf Military Park, where we take some group photos and kick around the place for the better part of an hour.

From there it’s off to a Sonic drive-in restaurant in Port Gibson for a quick lunch, and back to the hotel, except for some who wanted to collect Louisiana as a visited state, performing a little detour across the Mississippi River and back.

The afternoon is spent at the hotel, chatting and lounging around on folding picnic chairs that magically appear from the various trailers that folks have towed behind their motorcycles.

At 6:00 PM it’s off to Toney’s for the main eating event:  Crawfish!  (http://www.toneysrestaurant.com)  I don’t do a head count but I’m guessing about 40 people show up in Toney’s back dining room for all-you-can eat spiced steamed crawfish.  Four heaping plates and one not-heaping plate, supplemented by delicious new potatoes and sweet corn on the cob is all I can eat.  Kitty does a fine job on her own share of mudbugs.  I dare not ask how many heaping plates full of crawfish she herself consumed.

Afterwards, someone says “We’re going for ice cream.”  I ask Kitty as we climb on the bike if she wants to go back to the hotel or go for ice cream.  “Ice cream sounds pretty good to me,” she replies.  So we head out of the parking lot with with only the instructions to “turn right and it’s on the corner just up the road.”  I see no ice cream place and almost ride through the intersection, but then notice a bunch of bikes in the parking lot of… MacDonald’s!  Well, I guess they do have ice cream even though I wouldn’t have thought of that as an ice cream destination.  So about 8 or 10 of us sit around eating MacDonald’s ice cream, regaled by stories “Fearless” tells of his experiences as a one-time security guard at a large hospital in Atlanta.

I’d unhooked my trailer from the bike this morning for the ride (it’s a lot easier in tight quarters with lots of bikes to be without a trailer), so back at the hotel I reconnect and check the lights and connections.  Looks good for tomorrow, and we spend another hour or more chatting before packing up our own chairs in the trailer and saying good-night.

Tomorrow there’s a more formal group ride; rumor has it we’ll be riding south to Natchez, then coming back north on the Natchez Trace to Lorman and lunch at The Old Country Store that has become a group favorite over the years.

MACH.14: Day 4 - Ole Yeller Weed

Day 4: Ole Yeller Weed

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy

Once again we make a very lazy start and it’s 10:50 AM when we pull out of the gas station next to our night’s motel.  It’s a brilliantly beautiful, sun-drenched morning, but chilly, 64 F.  Kitty is wearing one of my sweatshirts under the mesh jacket with the liner; I’ve opted to ride without the sweatshirt, but keeping the liner and mesh jacket.   Of course I’m a little chilly right away, but not enough to stop and put on the sweatshirt.  Sometimes you just live with your decsions.  “Silly boy!” Kitty says encouragingly.

I have routed random two-lane roads to Vicksburg.  These seem to take the form of Hwy 19 to Philadelphia (the Mississippi one, not the Pennsylvania one), then Hwy 16 through Carthage and Canton, and Hwy 22 to near Vicksburg, finishing out the last 16 miles on I-20.

These routes are sometimes scenic and always pleasant, occasionally surprising us with four-lane stretches.  Philadelphia is a quaint old southern town with a long main street and lots of small businesses, but as we pass we don’t get a vibe of a bustling, thriving town.

In Carthage we see giant casinos with beautifully manicured landscapes and artfully designed buildings.

In Canton (the Mississippi one, not the Ohio one), we stop for a break and I find some locals to ask about the yellow flowers in the fields.  They say it’s a weed of no earthly known good that moved in some years ago and they can’t get rid of it.  “Poison it one year, and it’s back the next.”

“Do you know what it’s called?” I ask.

“I don’t rightly know that it has a name.  It’s just Ole Yeller Weed here”

Just as we’re ready to pull out, a guy walks up to us, admiring the bike and trailer, and spontaneously starts a conversation.  Retired from the US Army, he says “You better be really grounded when you come back home, because there’s nothing here for you.”  He goes on to say how economically depressed he has found the area since his return home.  A chicken plant and two Mississippi State prisons, he says, offer the major source of employment.

“What about the casinos?” I ask.

He almost snorts in derision.  “The casinos suck a lot more life out of the community than they put back!” he says.  “Lots of people here will get paid today, tomorrow, and by the weekend they’ll be up there spending two-thirds of their paycheck in the casino.  The house always wins in the end.”

Thus armed with this encouraging and uplifting commentary on life in Canton, we continue solemnly on our trek. Having talked for a while now about having some lunch, we are hoping to find a roadside barbecue stand, but the chances of that, outside the little towns, appear to be slim.  As we round the a curve in the road and cross the railroad tracks into the village of Flora, I spy a building on the corner and catch a delicious whiff of cooking food on the breeze.  “I think that’s a restaurant, and there are two bikes already there!” I say, and wheel around in a small parking lot to return to the restaurant.  It’s the Blue Rooster, in a tiny building probably 30 feet by 50 feet in area.

There are maybe a dozen tables and booths in the place, and it is clearly not just a normal everyday restaurant.  Displayed on the wall is a large sign “Home of the #1 burger in Mississippi, 2012,” along with numerous other similar awards.  C.J. is our waitress today, a perky blond with a disarming southern accent, and she seems to take great delight in explaining the menu, offering suggestions, and answering questions.  She entertains us with a brief history of the building: It’s over 100 years old, was built as a little general store with a gas pump out front, and was at various times a laundry, a dry cleaning shop, and since 2008, the Blue Rooster.  Every night, she says, the trains thunder along the track barely 100 feet from the restaurant; in the old building, mortar and brick dust are shaken off the interior bricks that form the walls.  Staff must come in every morning and sweep up the white perimeter of brick dust that has accumulated overnight.

That #1 award-winning burger is an 8-oz hamburger called the “Flamethrower,” which is my kind of hamburger, but over the top for my lunch today.  I settle for the “Rooster Chicken Club” sandwich (a clever play on words, I think), and the instant it arrives, I know this is not a cook-by-the-book kind of restaurant.  This sandwich exudes passion, artistry, attention to every detail.  It is a labor of love, a masterpiece!  Served on a jalapeno bun toasted to perfection, it features a honey mustard dressing not too sweet and with just the right amount of mustard that allows the perfectly seasoned grilled chicken to speak for itself, a few slices of tomato, and  topped with bacon and a cheese that I don’t recognize.  I will say unequivocally this is the absolutely the most tender, most exorbitantly decadent chicken sandwich I have ever eaten!

Another waypoint to be stored in my GPS for some future ride!  The website can be found at http://thebluerooster.info.

We arrive in Vicksburg at about 3:30 PM to find some old friends and warm hugs waiting for us, and Gold Wings steadily trickle in for the rest of the afternoon.  Gordo, Gibbie, Skippy, Shaggy, Digger, Jacko and Tezz, and the list continues.  We learn that sadly, Roger, the host of the event, is in the hospital and unable to attend.  Some folks have ridden much farther than our 1200-plus miles.  From the West Coast, Canada, north, south, east and west, the areas of our North American continent are well represented.  There’s an informal short ride to a barbecue place for dinner, then back to the hotel parking lot for more stories and reminiscing.

Tomorrow seems to be a make-your-own-schedule kind of day until the actual crawfish dinner in the evening.

MACH.14: Day 3 - Trickster

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!