travellingbennetts

Everyone has a destiny. But I had gone one better, and had a Destiny. Norleans Moto Julia’s Destiny said they had a tire for me. Mid-morning, roll up, and we’ll get you sorted. A bit of Garminising, the GPS wanted to go over Lake Pontchartrain. The longest over-water bridge in the world, which is direct, and reasonable value at $6 per vehicle. No bends, no deviations into quirky little towns, no traffic lights, just 38.4km of straight road over a lake. Impressive and yet a bit tedious at the same time. A lot of coppers, every cross-over had a parked unit waiting to do something, no ideas what.

The bridge conquered without the bald front tire exploding and sending a deadly spray of shrapnel through the side of a bus taking disabled orphans to an amputee veteran’s fundraiser, seriously that was the level of thought running through the mind, and we rolled into Moto Julia. There was Destiny, the most welcoming motorcycle dealership person we’ve ever met. You feel all problems disappearing – yes we’ve got our best people onto your bike – you must go into the city to see it – yes Cindy we can find you some new gloves, come and try some on. Into an Uber, we hit Norleans. Time to brave the HOHO bus again, the one in Lisbon in 2024 had been awful, but we’d decided to face our sweaty crowding demons, i.e. other customers, and get back on.

HOHO’d out, we decided to HO in the Garden District which has some gardens but more importantly excellent lunch venues. A gumbo was available, but was trumped by liver and onions for me and a Fried Green Tomato Po’ Boy for Cindy. A Po’ Boy is a sandwich, Cindy didn’t know why it isn’t called a sandwich. A delay here with a bit of googs happening. It was created during a streetcar conductors strike in 1929 and given out for free to all the Po’ Boys who were struggling on strike. So it is a sandwich, and we’ve all learned something.

Back to Moto Julia after that cracking lunch, check out some merch but manage to remember the limited pannier space and avoid purchase, the tire was completed. Oh, and you know how problems come in threes? Here’s No.1, you’ve got a blown front right fork seal. Damn. OK, will try to sort that out at some time in the not right now. No longer any tire fears, it was back to Mandeville via the North Shore non-toll route. We managed to avoid a humungous rain event getting back to the B&B, but not the intense sweating that accompanied it. Dismounting, Cindy said she couldn’t turn off her Sena communicator. Weird. Insanity prevailed doing the same thing over and over but with no different result. Let’s just plug it in. OK it’s off, no worries. Little did we realise whilst hoovering big oysters and luscious IPAs, it wasn’t no worries. It was No.2.

Day 26. Still February-like Brisbane sweaty as we trundled our way through the 20mph zones back to the main road. Attempts to get Cindy on the intercom to start the complaino-fest about how hot it was and how the ridiculous 4-way stops kept stopping air flow. Kept trying, that level of insanity must be tested. Then started looking at the random pedestrians all with small dogs and wondering if they would sympathise. But that would mean more stopping, not an option. OK, pull over. Approach Cindy. Why are you ignoring my attempts to connect? We’ve been married for 29.5 years, so has the intercom passion waned? Well of course it has, but not only can’t I ask where we are going, I can’t see where we are going. So what on earth has happened to your GPS? That won’t turn on either, the on/off button repair you did back at home has failed. No.3.

Nothing to break the peace of my Spotify tunes and the following of my magenta line except the occasional thought that Cindy was back there somewhere in a cone of silence and had no clue of where she was. I had become a human trafficker; poor Cindy is listening to her thoughts and has no idea where she is and…. hold on, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird is on, even people manning slave ships in the 1600’s stopped when the live version came on…. Suddenly out of Louisiana and back into Mississippi, we were on the Gulf of Mexico. Lovely, but still sweaty hot. Yes we expect that in Mississippi, but not with white sand.

Into the Pascagoula AutoZone, I needed a small Phillips head screwdriver to do something to the failed Sena. AutoZone is just fabulous for motorcyclists – tools, oils, stuff you can spray on everything, straps you can hold stuff on with, glues you can use to make sure they will never come apart, even if they are your own fingers, it is Nirvana. You’re from Australia? Wow we’ve never had anyone from there here before! Cheers mate, and as well as the screwdriver, do you know of a good seafood diner? Yeah, Bozo’s. Great tip, a huge crowd was in there and just fantastic food, including trying the local favourite – catfish. More questions about why on earth we were wearing spacesuits, and where are you going whilst you stand there sweating like piglets? Alabama. That’s where we’re going.

Into Mobile, the tunnel under the Mobile River is a true ironic immobile traffic horror. Two lanes, the traffic builds up for miles beforehand. We assume Queensland rules apply, so rode up the side at reasonable pace, before cutting in. Then the USS Alabama park appeared. We’d decided to skip this as we were very late and it was brutally hot. But the battleship Alabama is practically on the road. OK, a quick run through, we’ll take a photo from the car park and roll on. Next thing we knew we were taking a tour on the battleship. How had that happened? It is simply that awesome, it sucked us in like a succubus using the Black Hole App.

Keep rolling, out of Alabama which is narrow down on the gulf, and into Florida. Pensacola was the target, the Extended Stay Premier Inn to be precise. Cindy had booked this via Qantas Hotels on her points. Yes it was a bit out on the highway strip but we’d become used to this so it wasn’t a problem for 3 nights. As soon as we saw it, we realised there was a problem. It was gritty, and people unlikely to ever be invited to dine with King Charles III were hanging about in numbers. Don’t like it, but let’s just ignore that and check in. Up to the desk, it was 3:30pm, and almost all hotels in the USA start taking sweaty people in at 3pm. Sorry, check in here is 6pm. What the word that rhymes with Fire Truck? 6pm? That’s after our bedtime! 2½ hours standing around in full motorcycling gear in 36°C and 4,000% humidity wasn’t going to happen, so plan B, a Quality Inn on the other side of the city. Another question, why were we going to stay 3 nights in Sweatsville USA? No one knew, so let’s cut it back to 2, which gives us 36 hours to do the laundry and never leave the air-conditioned room.

Right, 3 problems to solve on Day 27. Firstly, Cindy’s Sena which wouldn’t turn on even after I’d taken it apart and stared blankly at the circuit board for 3 minutes. Dead. Where on earth will we find one of these? Let’s google. Unbelievable, there is one back in Mobile. Only an hour back there, and not having comms is literally not a tolerable thing. Then the GPS which wouldn’t turn on even after I did nothing but poke at the on/off button 70 times. This wasn’t a disaster – I’d had no confidence in my fix back home so I’d bought a spare. Swap the USA maps SD card over, and we’re a go. Off to Mobile in the killing heat, of course it was a Saturday so all of Florida and Alabama were out on the highway. Lots of riding up the side, don’t care if it’s legal or not. Eventually through the Immobile Blast Furnace tunnel cloggage, and out to the Cycle Gear shop. Yes, we’ve got that Sena, and have had it for a very long time, we thought we were never going to sell it, because it only fits one helmet and is eye-wateringly expensive. No choice, we’ll take it. Oh by the way, onto one of the other problems, you don’t have a fork seal cleaner do you? Yes we do. Perfect.

Back to Florida in ridiculous traffic and ridiculous heat via Foosackly’s for some very nice chicken fingers and into the hotel air conditioning. Never leaving it again, except I’d better try and fix my fork seal after installing the new Sena into Cindy’s helmet. Managed to reduce the leaking volume a bit, good enough, three problems all solved or improved in one day. Or were they?

No they weren’t, Cindy’s new GPS wasn’t working, and as her new Sena was working perfectly I could hear all about it. Something was weird going on and similar detail to a seventeenth century map, and she wasn’t even riding on the line.

After loads of googlin’ it turns out that you can’t just swap an SD card map to another GPS, it is registered to the GPS the map was originally downloaded onto, i.e. the one that wouldn’t turn on. OK, another US$100 to buy a new map. Then make 5 attempts to download it, using 15GB of my 20GB data allowance. But problem solved and only residual anger management issues left to address.

Enough east and south, let’s north long-time starting Day 28. The motored cyclist is assisted in border crossings here by Pinckney’s 1795 Treaty which is the 31^st parallel and originally was set between British and French/Indian territory then between US and Spanish territory. So not long in Florida, up into Alabama again. This was a big day. Target was Talladega, or a bit west of there at Childersburg. Here is a good example of the route planning methodology back home – wow, Talladega Nights, what a classically hilarious movie, let’s go to Talladega! But we need to avoid the big city of Montgomery. So west through Selma. This was an important place during the Civil War and produced a lot of arms and ammunition but has gone backward since. To add another notch to the FF (fast food) experiences we decided to dine at the Selma Sonic. Sonic is a drive-in diner and provides a Flintstones experience by bringing your meal to the car window, but they also have outside tables so the motorcyclist can eat. Unfortunately that also means no barrier between the motorcyclist and the Selma residents, with the skills developed avoiding the Pensacola hotel cat swarm used on a particularly disturbing person.

A huge moment occurred this day, we went around several nice sweeping corners, the first since a few states ago, thinking the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks. Another huge moment was our first Home Depot. Didn’t get what I was looking for, so not as good as Bunnings back home, but we could tick it off.

Pushing up north-east, we managed to avoid Talladega because we’d realised it was ridiculous going into horrible hot cities because of the name. Other towns went the same way, such as Nutbush Tennessee, and in the future Allentown Pennsylvania, sorry Tina and Billy. Fairly late in the interesting day, we arrived into Childersburg. Our accommodation was in a quirky tiny cabin on the Coosa River, just west of the town. OK, let’s go and have a look. After some slightly technical off-road, we managed to find the correct roads and the cabin, which was very isolated and very pleasant. Cindy had the door code, but it didn’t work. Of course, she must be doing something wrong, let me try. It doesn’t work, there must be something wrong with it. No numbers to call, no people, no phone reception. Hmmm. OK, let’s go back into town, do the shopping, and try to get in email touch with the cabin organisation. A full Walmart experience later, Cindy’s email had not been responded to. The only phone number was to a call centre which was only open when people aren’t trying to check in to accommodation. Hmmm, OK, let’s develop a layer of plans. Plan A, we’d seen a staff building access road so let’s try up there. Plan B let’s try and break into the cabin, bears can’t do it so therefore we hyper-evolved motorcyclists can. Plan C, check out other hotel options in Childersburg. Amazingly, Plan A worked, the staff were there albeit just about to go home. After getting the correct code, Plan C was retired but we might give Plan B a go if we get bored.

Day 29 was a relax day with a walk along the river and a ride back to experience our first Piggly Wiggly supermarket. No television, no social media, we didn’t discover we actually had Wi-Fi until 5 minutes before we checked out on Day 30. Childersburg was a happy time.

Couldn’t avoid a city forever. Especially Atlanta, and not because it was a fictional island that sank beneath the Atlantic Ocean before being discovered and moved to the Deep South by property developers, thank you History Channel show which I only saw non-contiguous bits of because it was the afternoon, and I drifted off. The lost city held a border crossing into Georgia, and a new Klim helmet visor, but unfortunately it also held loads of heat and traffic. Fortunately the dealership had some water and allowed me to take my time assembling the helmet in the glorious air conditioning.

A real slog developed getting out and heading northwest, but as all roads lead to Rome, possibly also brought over from Italy to the Deep South by property developers, we nearly ended up there in a B&B just outside a small-ish town called Rockmart. Yes, it had been a market place for rocks, everything made sense. The B&B experience turned out to be a good exposure to the culture of the Deep South, we were the only guests there so socialised with the owners and their family and friends. It was their first exposure to Australians, so the pressure was on, especially to not blurt out things like Jesus Harold Christ it’s hot!

Georgian people believe that Georgia is the true South, and all the rest try to take credit for Georgia’s hard work. Exactly why is a bit difficult for them to define, but as the owner’s son was a motorcyclist and knew all the fabulous roads, we could but heartily agree. One of the owner’s friends had a fireworks business, another opportunity to explore the differences between the US and Nanny Australia. Fireworks shops are just everywhere, and they are huge. I asked her what I needed to provide if I came into her shop to buy fireworks. Could I even do it as a foreigner? Assume ID and some sort of permit, like in Australia do I need to have a certain sized property and be able to prove the local Fire Station has inspected it? She looked at me strangely. Money. Money is what you need, you must pay for the fireworks.

Day 30, and 16 states in, just more than one every two days. The plan for the day was back into one we’d already done, Tennessee, just. Joyously Georgia is the start of something we’d been missing for a long time, mountains. The Appalachians extend down that far south and armed with our B&B owner’s son’s tips, we could get into them quickly while avoiding all the roads that led to Rome.

Lunch in the lovely little town of Ellijay, with a handy drive through ATM experience – and then it was back west into Chattanooga. The Choo-Choo was partly to blame for this, but the Civil War battle site of Chickamauga was the main reason. This was a key location, even though the Union forces lost the battle they eventually drove the Confederates out of Chattanooga, which opened the door into the south and resulted in the capture of Atlanta. It was hot. Damned hot. The traffic was a clogged mess. Cities ranking dropped yet again.

Day 31, a quick and sweaty trip out to Chickamauga, once again an excellent visitors centre and film and diorama showing the geography of the battles. There were a series of them around here in late 1863, with the Confederates being pushed south, then taking the hills around Chattanooga by winning Chickamauga, then being pushed off and back south in a very well conducted campaign led by U.S. Grant. After that, we decided the Choo Choo was a no-no and opted for Rock City instead.

Rock City is in Georgia up on Lookout Mountain, as is Chickamauga, so we’d crossed the border numerous times before lunch. Rock City is a tourist attraction with lots of nice gardens and paths through the rocky mountain cliffs, and it was a bit cooler than down in the city so made for a pleasant wander.

The fat head was the major problem

Back down to the hotel, a new record was set for getting an Uber out into the craft brewery district for dinner, nearly an hour. This cancelled out the Uber record set back in Pensacola, when I could actually see Barbara accept my request for a ride and we got into her Hyundai five seconds later. But that’s Uber life.

Up and excited on Day 32. Another state planned, North Carolina. Pretty much due east, we rode to Ducktown, named by Cyrus Q. Quincy in 1879 after his small settlement was attacked by ducks, one of which signed the treaty to end hostilities and later became mayor. Fuelling up in Ducktown, a lady asked us where we were from. Not bloody Ducktown I said, I would have kicked duck and named it Duncantown. Everything apart from the physical lady may not be strictly true, however she said she worked nearby at a motorcycle friendly diner, and kindly invited us to swing by. We weren’t going there, but asked whether she knew where we might get a coffee? The Yellowbird Coffee Shop in Copperhill, just down the road, run by a friend of mine. Excellent. Into Copperhill, this place is literally right on the border, we somehow ended up 3 feet back into Georgia at the café. Pulling up, there was a Triumph Bonneville parked outside. Quality establishment. Inside, a bloke was in conversation with the barista. Hello, hello. Where are you from? Australia? This gentleman is from New Zealand! Wow that’s close to Australia! Gidday! Our natural suspicion of New Zealanders quickly overcome, we started talking. We’re Duncan and Cindy from Brisbane. I’m Nan Miao from Te Waipounamu Motorcycle Tours in Christchurch, NZ’s biggest motorcycle rental company. I’ve just been to a BMW Rally in Nashville advertising our existence, I’m riding back to catch a plane home today. We know people who’ve hired bikes from you, thus we had none of the usual awkward silences one has talking to people from NZ. We really need to get back there.

Off north, Tennessee is relentless. It teases with other states but doesn’t allow a crossing. OK, we’ll force one, but first some excellent roads up to Tellico Plains. Then a scenic road east. The Cherohala Skyway. These sorts of roads are a USA specialty, there isn’t a road in Australia that was built simply for tourism, but there are many here. We met Tom on this, a very interesting bloke who considers humungous miles are only for the weak. It was 2pm and Tom said he was very nearly home, in fact a tiny 400 miles to go. Practically there. It is a very rare day we do 640km, so can only pretend we are in the same league.

A fabulous road completed, we were over the border into North Carolina and down into Robbinsville. We weren’t done yet, we were booked into the Ironhorse Lodge out of town. This is a motorcycle accommodation place. Surely there will be a full bar and a plethora of carbs and fatty foods. Turned out not, which was a bit weird. We expected to meet heaps of riders and have a mutual ball, but instead met only one random bloke, who like everyone else had done the famous Tail of the Dragon and regretted it. Day 33 plan was a non-negotiable, as we needed to tick off South Carolina. The fact there were fantastic roads into and out of it was a bonus, and we also loaded the panniers up with laundry and did a cycle on the way back. A successful motorcycling day always includes laundry. Day 34 was completely slack. All we achieved was to roll about in a pile of clean clothes and wash the bikes, which were a bit grotty after 5,000 miles.

A crossing of Tennessee was the objective for Day 35. Into Kentucky. This was the hardest state to try to work into the route planning, as it is just out of the way of everything, unlike Tennessee which seems in the way of everything. So to tick it off we were going to sneak about 100m over the border into Middlesboro. Fortunately in eastern Tennessee the roads are just fantastic so it was great riding.

Up through Cherokee. Another feature of the US is the places named after the tribes we used to represent when playing Cowboys and Indians, although Apache were always the preferred go-to. Winding our way north, we got through the Great Smoky Mountains, although they should have been called the Great Misty Mountains as it was fog rather than smoke. Then down the other side into Pigeon Forge. Surely a small village and we’ll be through it quickly. No, Pigeon Forge is a theme park extravaganza that goes on for miles in the stifling heat with squillions of traffic lights. Just incredible. But that was the price we had to pay to get to the final place on our – OK my – nuclear bucket list, Oak Ridge Tennessee. Oak Ridge was enormous back in the 1943 to 1945 period, with the sole purpose of enriching uranium to increase the U-235 content, the reactive isotope useful for making a bomb. Little Boy to be more specific, the first one dropped and onto Hiroshima. So we’ve seen Hanford used to produce the plutonium for the Fat Man Nagasaki bomb, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The K-25 building in 1945 at Oak Ridge was the biggest in the world, and summarises the incredible efforts made during the Manhattan Project.

Sweating it up big-time, we finally got over the border into Kentucky. First building over the border? A KFC. Just perfect. Middlesboro was a pleasant little town, and we had a pleasant craft beer/wine and a pleasant dinner. It still had some of the “abandoned” feel of some US places, which is unusual in the smaller country towns, but it wasn’t too weird.

Righto. We’d managed to weave through and pick up the difficult states, now it was up through the unavoidables, starting with the most unavoidable: Virginia. Target for Day 36 was back into North Carolina though, can’t get enough of that. So due east, and some spectacular riding. Zero traffic, misty mountains, and a hint of banjo coming from the double-wides.

Then over the border at Pennington Gap near where Daniel Boone’s son was killed by Indians. The circumstances weren’t described. That meant going the googs. That isn’t clear either, but no-one involved was riding a motorcycle so it wasn’t worth pursuing.

Cruising east, a sign appeared. The Natural Tunnel State Park. Finally, a natural tunnel, we’ve seen way too many man-made tunnels, maybe 3. Let’s swing through. Ride up to the booth. Gidday. We’ve got National Parks passes, but this is a State Park. The young lady says I’m not sure that the NP pass is valid for a State Park. But I will make the decision that it is. Have a nice day. You’re bound to have one now under the laws of Karma I say, and off we go. Natural Tunnel is literally a natural tunnel. Two sinkholes in a limestone formation, one each side of a ridge, with a river flowing between them creating a tunnel. Lots of coal on one side, let’s run a railway through the tunnel. Too easy. We went down into it and back up by chairlift, even more too easy.

Through Gate City, and into Bristol. This is a very unusual city, a main road through the middle is the border between Virginia and North Carolina. A GPS nightmare. What happened during Covid is anyone’s guess, but we could take photos entering two states while standing in a major intersection. Fuelled, we did the final awesome curves into Boone. We convoyed in with an intense thunderstorm, complete with torrential rain and stopped traffic. It is not fun sitting in rain and lightning like this, but we eventually made it into the hotel like drowned rats. The manager didn’t care, could not have been more helpful, and soon we achieved ensconced. Boone was a planned record long stay of 4 nights, simply because of a very important date. The 4^th of July. But that was in the future. Your future.

Here’s the now-standard map of the weaving progress: