I was right and way wrong. My dad used to tell me that flying was hours of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror. If only it had been just moments...
I was right.
The trip through Arizona was great. At 4:30 in the morning I had the road to myself and the drive to Payson was beautiful. It even got so chilly that by the time I reached the top of the rim it was cool enough to put in the jacket liner. Cool but not cold. Coming in to Holbrook was like one of those car commercials where they show an empty curvy road that is all yours. Even the switch to I-40 was pleasant and as I said before, boring as to driving challenges. One rule, keep up with traffic. It was fast but very smooth.
New Mexico was like a postcard. The miles of high desert were broken up by outcroppings of low monolithic red rock mesas like those in a Roadrunner cartoon. The weather was perfect and the road was full of motorcyclists ..... all going the other way. I was planning on making it a three day trip and spending night one in Tucumcari but by the time I arrived it was only 3:00 and I wasn't too tired. Another Vulcan Nomad rider I met suggested Amarillo as a close alternative.
Texas was flat. I don't mean that as an insult but after seeing other states that was the one thing that really stood out. After arriving in Amarillo I found a motel and asked the clerk where a good Mexican restaurant could be found. She said that the best was Tacos Garcia and she was right. Everything was perfect even the 3 sauces they brought out for the chips. I had shredded beef tacos, an enchilada and 4 large glasses of water. When I got into my room I took a shower, flipped through the channels, found nothing interesting and went to bed while it was still light outside. I woke up at 3:00 after asking for a 4:00 wake-up call left at 4:15. I forgot about daylight savings time so instead of getting light at 4:30 it was still nighttime. Oh well. I did what I thought I wouldn't do, drive I-40 in the dark but on a Sunday morning it was all mine. No traffic! By the time I crossed over into Oklahoma the sun was in my eyes.
Oklahoma was green and beautiful. I recently watched the movie The Grapes of Wrath. Things have changed. My first view was of green rolling hills, farm houses and cows. They have cows! I would have sung the title song to Oklahoma but I couldn't remember the words. I stopped for fuel in a little town either in Texas or Oklahoma (right near the border) and started talking to the clerk. He asked how I liked my bike and mentioned that he would like to get one. Then came the stories. It wasn't bad enough that he told me about his friend that helped cleanse the gene pool by killing himself while doing a wheelie on a highway at 120 mph but then he had to show me his scars that he received in a crash while illegally riding his quad on the street weaving around medians. "I don't know what happened but she flipped right over on me." He was from Georgia.
Arkansas was very green too. Maybe it's just because I'm from Arizona that green stands out. I've heard people say of Arizona, "It's brown and rocky here." Yeh, that's desert. Arkansas was like Oklahoma but with more trees. The sky started to cloud up and I remembered that weather was supposed to begin at Fort Smith. In Arizona we kind of look in awe at clouds, having seen so few. The trip was uneventful except for the sore butt and apprehension about what lay ahead.
Way Wrong!
I called ahead to ask my son, J, what the weather looked like in Memphis and beyond. Well it's raining but it's supposed to clear off by 5:00. There is no rain in Nashville. In Little Rock a lady I spoke to at the gas station said that she had just come from Memphis and she said it was raining so hard cars were having to pull off. "You be careful now!"
I took off my leathers and jacket and put on the rain gear. Next time I don't care how warm it is the safety clothing stays on! Almost immediately it started. A light drizzle is all it takes to clarify the problems. Semis doing 80 mph throw off a swirl of mist that is as thick as fog and there goes the visibility (no wipers on the helmet, you know). Drivers here are like drivers everywhere, road conditions change, no problem, keep driving as usual. So there are cars off the road, gee what could have caused that? The only bright spot was that the crosswind was so strong that the mist thrown off by the trucks didn't stick around long. Of course, the crosswind was strong enough to keep me leaning 10 - 20 degrees also but with the trucks passing every few seconds since I had "slowed" to 65 there was always the opportunity to straighten up periodically. This went on right up to Memphis where things settled down and I thought, "Whew, that will be something to talk about."
Welcome to Tennessee. I called J again and asked how it looked. "Not raining here, you may be able to outrun it." I found out later that as soon as he got off the phone the rain started in Nashville. I didn't outrun it, I ran into it. The visibility was so poor that I had to pull off under an overpass but I knew that time was not on my side. It was going to get dark soon and then I would be living my worst scenario, driving on an unlighted curvy highway at night in the rain with fast (80 mph) very heavy traffic and terrible visibility. If my number was up there were thousands of opportunities.
I drove nearly 100 miles under those conditions luckily without the rain falling and didn't get into Nashville until 9:30 that night. But if one's mind has been burdened by the cares of life, an exercise like this will allow a crisp new perspective. Whew!!
