Tuesday, May 12, 2009

day two: "that low-rent tank bag"




Well, Michael and I just completed our second day having just arrived in Jonesville, Louisiana. (I don’t know where it is either- somewhere west of Natchez, Mississippi on Hwy 84). We’ve been on the road since about 9AM and have reached the end of our day at11:30PM having ridden 554 miles. (Because I’m the OCD member of our small group that figure is accurate to within 3/10ths of a mile) Anyway, as Mike and I sit eating sardines and saltine crackers we thought we’d recount the day for you. We started from Monteagle, Tennessee and rode west on 64. The initial part of the ride was a lot of fun. It was a short 5 miles of curving twisting road with a speed limit of 35 MPH which Michael and I observed assiduously (look it up). After this we rode through some beautiful Tennessee farmland until we caught the Natchez Trace going toward . . .well, Natchez. While the Trace was a veritable hellhole in the early 1800’s according to local history, it was fairly tame today. It really resembled a flatter, less winding Blue Ridge Parkway. We stopped along the Parkway for a short lunch which became a lunch, nap and pipe-smoking event. We met a neat older Harley biker from Wisconsin named Dan Anderson, while we were stopped there. Mike and I got off the Parkway to buy the fixings for supper in Tupelo and no, we didn’t see “the King.” Somewhere below Tupelo back on the Parkway I began to drop various articles from my bungeed collection. I turned around successfully to clean up the mess but failed on the second turn around and dumped my bike in the middle of the road! And it was all because of that low-rent tank bag (hence, the title). It sits right in the center of the tank close to my handlebars and prevents me turning as sharply as needed and the bag blows the horn when I turn sharply to signal others to take note of my ineptness! Mike had to stop and help me pick the bloated monster up and get me going again. I told Michael that if I did that again I was leaving and walking home. He said if I did it again, he’d let me.

Anyway Mike and I have arrived safely at a resting place of sorts for the end of our second day. WE are now in our seventh state and should cross into the big one, Texas sometime tomorrow. Along the way we have catalogued numerous biker maladies from the mundane right wrist cramp and sore from the saddle to the more risqué ones which, for the sake of our friends who may read this, we will choose to leave out all together.

4 comments:

  1. Highlights of the day:

    1. Driving down from Monteagle in the morning coolness into a valley of some of the most beauiful farmland I've ever seen.

    2. The smell of cut-grass and wildflowers that lingered all the way across the bottom of Tennessee--which somehow smelled like Bindon Plantation (how I wish I could go back there!)

    3. Stopping for lunch on the Parkway (Natchez)--tuna salad out of a can. Like dad said, a ten-minute lunch break turned into a ten-minute pipe smoking break and then into an extra ten-minute nap!! This is how every afternoon should be. And the silence out there almost hurt my ears...when the gentle breeze was still and the birds took a break from chirping, I could almost hear my heart beat.

    4. Dad flopping his whale of a bike over! Haha, he's either going to have to get his weight up, or we're gonna have to trim that thing down to a managable size. I think my favorite part about it was the car driving by like nothing serious was going on...motorcycle laying in the middle of the road and all!!

    5. Our first bit of night riding turning into our first bit of rain riding. And as if that wasn't intense enough, there were plenty of friendly woodland creatures just itching to dash out in front of us at the last minute (I think we dodged about 4 million deer, and 2 million opossums)! That made for a good 70 miles of riding 45-50mph.

    -M

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  3. Just make SURE you watch out for wild Yeshers, I hear they are quite wily! :)

    -Bennie

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  4. M'boy, as we all know, the 'yesher' is a native of the I-85 corridor and usually resides somewhere between charlottle and clemson...therefore, we are quite safe from any yesher tom-foolery. Miss ya man!

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