Taking a Break

When the walls start closing in, I'm lucky to have a wife that understands the benefits of getting away for a few days. I've been especially grouchy lately, so after work on Thursday, I packed up my motorcycle and headed to the Great Smoky Mountains with a couple of friends for the Memorial Day weekend.

They left on Wednesday morning, so for a day and a half I was playing catch-up and had a lot of time to myself to unwind. I had my riding buddy with me - a stuffed animal of Noah's that I stuck in my bag the first trip I went on, to remind me of him and to remind me to be safe. It got a lot of smiles from people who passed me.

Lost again. This happens with alarming frequency, despite all the maps we have. Fortunately we're in no hurry, and have no particular place to be.

Very Smoky Mountains. And stormy too. I've never ridden up into a cloud before, but we did on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
I think the bike is trying to eat him.

Taking a short break, somewhere in Kentucky.
Sunrise in London, Kentucky. We got an early start.
Sweet ride. A '68 Camaro, totally refinished inside and out. This guy spent two years refurbishing it, and turned down an offer of $45,000. We talked to him for about 20 minutes, and this is about all I could understand.

It was interesting listening to the different conversations in the places we stopped. Especially the ability for people to turn one-syllable words into two. Like "fe-ish" (things that swim in streams, ponds and lakes). Most of the time they talked slow enough you could figure it out, but if they talked fast, God help you. There were times I thought I'd have better communications in France. But the nicest people I've ever met.

Very beautiful country, but then every so often you run into dumps out in the middle of nowhere.

I don't think we hit a straight road once we got out of Missouri, which was the plan.
We got as far east as Boone, NC and then headed back towards Asheville, then rode the Tail of the Dragon in Tennessee the next day.

I headed back alone on Sunday, and spent the night in Paducah, KY. The next day was riding mostly through rain. The scariest part of the trip was when I ran out of gas in downtown St. Louis, right across from the Arch on I-70, in the rain and with only enough shoulder to fit a motorcycle. I-70 is below street level there, so I had to climb up to the road above, hoof it over to a hotel, hail a cab and direct him to the nearest gas station. I didn't think the cabbie was going to work up the nerve to stop and let me out where my bike was, so we ended up circling a couple of times. Between the fare, and the gas can I had to buy, that was a pretty expensive gallon of gas.

Over four days, I rode about 2,200 miles. It was a great trip, and I got to see some beautiful parts of the country that I hadn't been to before and best of all, I got to get away from the distractions for a while and regain some perspective. Turns out, life is pretty good.

I missed Mandy and the boys and was glad to be coming home. Mandy held up like a trooper - even though I could tell it was a trying weekend, she didn't complain a peep. Thanks for the vacation honey!