I left Seneca SC around 7:30am Thursday morning, meetup time at Resaca was to be 11:30. Joe and Paul
arrived at Resaca about 11:15... I thought I was about to get there at 11:15, then I rolled into Ellijay, instead..
D'OH! That gave them a really good feeling about being led the rest of the way to Natchez by
me on back roads...
I was late to Resaca
... we checked out the Confederate graveyard
at Resaca, and then Don and Tracy got there...
No more being led astray by me the rest of the day, one of the roads I wanted to use never showed
up, but it was easy to compensate... Near Gadsden AL I glanced into my mirror, and I was
alone! I whooped it around, and everyone was stopped in a parking lot looking at Joe's bike -
the OEM valvestem had given up the ghost. We fixed it in the Sears parking lot in Gadsden, it
took all of us. Don had a bead breaker, I "found" a couple of one-bys for the C-clamps Joe bought
at Sears... eventually the mechanics (who couldn't let us into the shop without risking getting
fired) were outside helping, and they stretched their air hose out to seat Joe's tire when we were done...
we left backroads near Birmingham, the motel for Thursday
night was just South of there... I had showed Paul where it was on the map, he knew Birmingham
pretty well.... I lead us onto the crowded Interstate and towards our destination... I knew to head
in on 20, take the beltway, and the go North one exit when we hit the North/South interstate at
the bottom of the loop... but I didn't remember that there were
TWO North/South interstates and
I almost lead us straight into "the heart of darkness" by heading North on 65, but Paul saw what I
was doing and headed me off - Thanks Paul
The next morning Leon and Sid met up with us at our motel, and I lead us down past Tuscaloosa and
off into the hinterlands... I didn't get lost either...
... but you can't tell on the map if the roads go dirt
... we took a break, and ate muscadines that
were growing in the big Hackberry tree in the picture... Leon explained to me next time I saw him that
he and Sid didn't split off because of the company...
Don and Tracy had told some folks they'd
be at the Motel around 1:30, when they realized that wasn't going to happen, they split off too,
and made it in around 3:30... we were headed down 13 in Mississippi and stopped at a gas stop and
realized that we were only about 10 miles from the trace, so we ditched the rest of my route
and went the rest of the way on the trace... the little camera took about 1000 pictures of the trace,
they all look like this:
... except the ones from the next day, they all look like this:
I just realized that the little camera was turned on when we came upon Jeff, but I won't post
those somber pictures into this thread... we pulled into the motel like wet rats between 6:00 and 7:00...
The group ride was awesome, even though the trace is basically a 450 mile-long nice driveway... the
road from the Windsor ruins is a nice curvy road with lots of elevation changes...
There's actually an overlook on the trace...
And this cool bridge...
Guess which three guys were taking simultaneous pictures of three Red and White valkyries?
On the second day I had planned to hit US64 when the trace crossed it, but when Joe found out
he browbeat me into going the whole way
... As far as I'm concerned it is my awesome good fortune
that Joe and the rest care one way or the other if I'm there or not
so on the rest of the way
I went. We went down to take a picture of the cool bridge at Franklin, and I split off from the group
there, technically six miles from the end, but that's the 96 exit, and 96 was the start of my
alternate route...
hey - did y'all eat at that famous diner when you got to the end? I found a little country
place to eat in Murfreesboro...
I took 30 out of McMinnieville, a better road could not be found - this picture doesn't near do it
justice...
I stopped at Cleveland TN for the night, at first at a Day's Inn... I asked for a park-at-your-door room,
and the lady gave me a room with handicap parking at the door, so I parked a couple of rooms down.
I was thinking how seedy the place looked, when a crazy lady busted out of the door where I was
parked and started cussing at me, told me she was with the Russian Mafia, and then she squirted
her windex bottle at me... the Comfort Inn down the road is real nice, with flat screen TeeVees
and no crazy ladies, and the Valkyrie was safe for the night in that parking lot
I got a good Cracker Barrel breakfast and headed home on 64 and 76, home safe, lucky to
be a Valkyrie riding VRCC member - thanks for the good time everyone!
-Mike
