Decisions. By road, and I mean Interstate, I’m 1158 miles from home and a day late. It is a question of finances now. Comfortable travel on the bike is $90 per day for 300 miles, including motel. But that climbs to $142 per day for a 500 mile day. That tallies because of the extra gas, extra speed, and eating in restaurants. I’m three days away, arriving on the third day, two more motels, the single largest avoidable expense. If the bike was in perfect operating condition, I’d take some tours, but this time, it’s a freeway run back.
To assure you it was an eventful day, here is the railroad bridge over the Mississippi, looking north from Riverside in Memphis, TN. Now that I have your attention, here’s how I got there. An equipment check in the AM shows my alternator is not topping off the battery. But I know that is no big deal. As just mentioned, I took the freeway today, the first leg was Lonoke (Little Rock, AR) to West Memphis to a top notch Honda dealership with some of the finest looking used machines, and I’m serious. Barton is a business to keep an eye on when you want the real deal.Their mech guy spotted the problem instantly, and gave me the spare parts to repair it myself. It worked so fine, I took two hours off and toured downtown Memphis, across the river. I went downtown and saw the cable cars, but no place to park. They had mounted police in a central green area. I drove down Second to see Beale Street, but no parking again. In fact, there was not even any place to slow down and snap a picture. Hey, Beale Street, there would be lots of parking if you’d move all those traffic barricades. So, no shots of the area, but it is a one block kind of club and restaurant mall. I was still charging up the battery, so I was in no mood to park it and walk several blocks, but man, I could smell the Cajun shrimp and steaks. You get that on a motorcycle.
So I drove up Third to Union and over to Bellevue, which turns into Elvis Presley Drive. I’ve never been there as Graceland is not on the freeway. By now I was so hungry, I stopped at Jack Pirtles and had the combo with a side of breaded livers and rice. After the glorious aroma of Beale, a man’s gotta do what, you know the rest. Then, fed and sleepy, I asked where is Graceland? It seems it is now in the middle of a predominantly black neighborhood, as in “Elvis Presley who?”
Since I’m no big rockabilly fan, I didn’t look for the place, but drove a few miles south into Mississippi, where the Honda loves that 93 octane no ethanol juice. It purrs instead of rumbles, it pulls 75 mph at 42 mpg on that concoction. I figured if I had to drive past Beale Street and Graceland, I might as well drive past Tupelo, where I stopped at Elvis’ birthplace. Damn, there were tourists all over the place.
I could not help but notice the house was much like a summer cottage, and slightly smaller than the places I grew up in. Mind you, Elvis was not scrunched in that shack with seven garlic-breathed savages. But glancing around, Tupelo, it is not that bad a place to live, the houses are well-spaced, lots of green areas and parks. It also shows that unlike musical prodigies, Elvis was not that talented, he was just that lucky.Now, I have an extremely rare photo for you. So rare, I’ll need to fill in the blanks for you. Thirty miles west of Tupelo, the freeway was backed up because a flatbed, complete with police escort, was hauling a huge pipe down the middle of the road. Until they reached an overpass that was too low. Sorry, that’s another priceless picture I missed, but I have a lousy camera for at least another month. The point is, all traffic backed up for miles. But I noticed a space between some of the pylons (the road was under repair), and sped the sidecar through that, over a small ditch, and onto an off ramp. The sidecar always garners lots of attention, and this was a maneuver even an SUV would not attempt.
I got to the top of the ramp with a hundred motorists in disbelief a sidecar was so agile. Coming off the down-ramp, the next half hour was truly the most enjoyable freeway drive I-40 ever provided. Here is that rare and precious photo. An Interstate as it was meant to be, a pleasurable trip with NO DAM TRUCKS. They were all blocked at that overpass.
No smelly diesel fumes, no jake brakes, no buffeting ride, nobody blasting past, no smelly cattle trucks or garbage trucks, you get the idea. Consider also that there are usually so many trucks, there is almost always one passing you on every curve, every bridge, every scenic stretch where you might, given the opportunity, want to take your eyes off the road for a split second. Furthermore, without the trucks, the cars naturally spaced themselves and drove a quarter mile away from each other, as you can see.Sadly, the trucks got prevalent again and it was back to white knuckles. The premium gas did let me spring from Tupelo to Birmingham in and hour and forty-five, but with darkness over my shoulder. Then, the freeway ended, all vehicles must exit. Yeah, into a nasty neighborhood with no street markers, where the street urchins want five bucks to point where the nearest gas station is. Thanks a lot, Birmingham. The place was so bad, I drove an hour after dark just to get the hell out of there. I finally found route 280, you can look that up. I had to go cross-ways from I-65 with a jerkface tailgating the entire time.
Which brought me to Harpersville and this motel which isn’t really open but I’m not fussy 90 minutes after dark and it got open when I offered cash payment. The batbike is running fine, so I think I’ll take some secondary routes back to Florida. Thanks to Trent, who pointed out Sherman didn’t get this far, there should be some fine little towns along the way. The finest so far is Demopolis, but I haven’t got the money to take that road this time. Today was either easy driving or a freeway dash, so let me get the mileage. There we go, 406 miles today.
There is nothing quite like the American national guilt trip. We are so rich and everybody else is so poor, why, it must be our fault. They are blameless just because they try to adopt our ways and wind up on the skids because their religions and cultures don’t mesh with democracy and freedom. So you go to Google to find the distance between cities, and no matter how you set your parameters, you get India. I got news for you. The Internet is an American invention. When we want the distance from Amritsar to Bhopal, we’ll specifically ask you for it. But I guess they sure showed us how smart they are. At using our tools, our software, and our protocols. I got brodder like dat.
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