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| Hester Ready to Roll |
This 680 mile riding day couldn't
have started or ended any better. There were, however, about 450 miles in
between that could have used some improvement. Leaving the Dallas area around
4:30am, the predawn darkness revealed crystal clear skies, no wind, and the
weather was comfortably warm. It was a
perfect long t-shirt day. My arrival in Franklin, Kentucky
eleven hours later was under blue skies with puffy white pillow-like
clouds, a light breeze, and the same perfect warm riding temperature.
Things got interesting, however, as I rode east of Little Rock. The temperature dropped
significantly, winds were gusting, and the swollen skies were threatening like
a low hanging gray blanket. I decided to use the trick most riders do to
all but guarantee that the rain will stop. I pulled over and donned my
rain suit. That guarantee wasn’t worth the paper this blog is
printed on, if it were printed. The
skies opened up in what seemed like Biblical proportions and they didn’t dry up
until Franklin, Tennessee
(not to be confused with Franklin,
KY).
During the rainy day ride, I kept myself entertained
listening to Neil Peart’s book Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road. For the musically unwashed, Neil Peart has
been the Drummer for the band Rush for 40 years. The book details a period of temporary
retirement in the mid 90s after his wife and daughter died tragically within a
year of each other. A real pick me up,
right!? Peart mounted his BMW sport touring
motorcycle and rode over 55,000 miles over a three year period, alone. It’s a fascinating account, written with the
same gift for prose found in so many of the Rush tunes that Peart authored over
the years. I’ve been a fan of his
writing for years, but had never read the book.
I loved his descriptions of places I had ridden on my Alaskapade
adventure. I kept saying out loud to
myself , “I remember that!”
When the rain started pouring really hard, I pulled under an
overpass and stopped to check the weather radar app on my phone. This wasn’t going to be a passing
shower. The storm was sweeping from west
to east and appeared to be growing in intensity. It was clear that sitting this one out was
not the answer. I decided I needed
something more entertaining than a story about someone else riding a motorcycle
to keep me focused. I pulled up the Slayer
folder in my GPS unit’s mp3 player and set the mood with “Raining Blood”. I’m not a huge Slayer fan, but I appreciate
some of their music and it does get your attention. In my case it actually accelerates my
pulse. Most importantly though, it makes
me alert and given the crappy road conditions and cagers’ lack of patience, I
needed all the help I could get. Once I
made it past the lines of truckers and other slothful vehicles, it was just
another day in the rain with pretty much open roads ahead of me until the clouds
broke. I decided that I had all the
Slayer I needed (for a lifetime, probably) and shifted gears to Tom Petty’s
Full Moon Fever album. Actually, going
from Slayer to Petty isn’t just shifting gears.
It’s like dropping your bike into first gear at 80mph and popping the
clutch. But I digress.
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| Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner all-in-one at the Awful Waffle |
Despite the rain, I pulled into my hotel a couple of hours earlier than I anticipated. I would have just kept riding for another few hundred miles were it not for the fatigue I was feeling after the eight hour rain ride and the fact that I'm cashing in hotel points along my route and didn't want to waste the ones I spent on this hotel. No worries. Early dinner and early to bed. It's not like I got much sleep last night.
I ride 760 miles to the Washington DC area tomorrow; hopefully in drier weather!
