I Have A Bad Attitude

[BikerGeek99]

Kind of a hidden shop up in there. Good thing they have that red door sign.

Just down the way was Kevin Barry’s Pub.

We stopped in for an afternoon beer.

We wound up staying in there wayyyy too long. I won’t even mention what our bar tab was. Eesh. But while we were in there, we got to chit-chatting with a couple on the other side of the bar.

Have you ever gotten a vibe from someone? A vibe that something may not be quite as it seems? Well, I kinda got that vibe from this couple – Jennifer and Steve. Over the course of … uh … a while, we just shot the **** with them. She’s from south Georgia and he’s from Charleston, SC. Nice people. But something just seemed a little … off. I finally figured out what it was – she’s unhappily married living with her husband and kids in south Georgia, and he is divorced and lives up in Charleston. So, they’re just … you know. But she is not willing to take the steps she needs to take to be single, so they’re just … you know. I feel sorry for them. I’ve been in that exact situation before. I wanted to tell them that what they’re doing right now is doing neither of them any favors, I wanted to tell them several things. Instead, I just kept my mouth shut and grabbed another beer. They were really nice people in a bad situation. I hope they get their **** together someday and can truly be happy together.

As we had been sitting there a while, the ebb and flow of people coming in and out of the bar was influenced for a while by a passing heavy rain shower. This picture doesn’t really do justice to what I was trying to capture: there was a little bit of sun shining through onto the cables of the bridge, making them a contrasting white to the Mordor-ish clouds in the background.

We eventually tore ourselves outta the bar and headed down the way for some dinner.

Yummy salads.

Sooze got the shrimp and grits and – MAN! – were those grits goooood!

I had some good shrimps, too. Mmm…

After dinner, we headed back to Moon River for a beer and Sooze wanted to buy some of their gifty stuff.

Making beer…

We had a prime view.

Saw this up in the corner.

 

[BikerGeek99]

After wrapping up at Moon River, we headed back to the hotel. I moseyed down to where the bike was parked just to make sure it was where I left it. I did an immediate about-face and went to up to the room to grab the camera, because…

When I came down I saw these by the bike.

Dunno what this is, but I think it’s cool!

I love stuff like this.

Chevelle SS 396 drop-top. Me likey…

Gotta be a Chrysler 225 slant-6. There’s a reason why I know this. Back In The Day, I had myself a rip-snorting 1980 Plymouth Duster with a 225 slant-6. You can tell those things ANYwhere by one endearing trait: the valve tick. I swear that every one I have heard since I had that Duster – EVERY one of those engines had that valve tick. I got rid of that car over 20 years ago but I guaran-damn-tee you that I can still pick out that slant-6 tick.

Am I good or what…

A Harley and a BMW sharing a parking spot. Imagine the conversations they had (if bikes could actually talk to each other, that is)…

And that’s a wrap on Saturday, 4/21/2012.

 

[BikerGeek99]

Sunday, 4/22/2012.

Our exit strategy out of Savannah had been up in the air since the trip started.

Go back the way we came, through West Virginia?

Maybe head north up the coast and ways and fiddle-fart around?

Mother Nature helped us with our decision.

Overnight, rain moved in. The rain was tracking to be moving northbound moving up the coast. Or, if we re-trace our route down, we’d be riding in rain the entire way home.

Screw dat.

I devised A Plan: we’ll head west to Atlanta, then head north from there, leaving the rain to the east.

We decided to ride up to my dad’s place between Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky. This is making for a long day riding today, but then an easy day to get home. My guesstimate was 600 miles worth of riding today.

We were up early-ish (for us) and on the road around 8:15 which, for us, IS early. Especially on a Sunday. But, we had miles to ride and a place to be.

We are beer snobs and liked this place. If you only like Butt Light / Meeler Lite, don’t bother. You won’t “get it.”

We moseyed our way outta Savannah.

As we headed out of Savannah, it was cloudy and a tad chilly – maybe in the low 60’s. We got out of town a ways and stopped for gas, something warm to drink, and a picture of a sign that made me laugh, because I really like me some freshly baked pizza fried chicken.

Pizza fried chicken? Hmm… Must be a southern thing.

As we were warming up a fella approached us and struck up a conversation. Turns out he has several bikes – a VFR, a Valkyrie, and a Royal Enfield. Nice fella and we had a nice chat. Gotta love touring on a motorcycle.

Enough dicking around, though. We’ve got miles to tick off…

Somewhere between Macon and Atlanta, the sun finally came out. It was still cool – in the upper 50’s or so – but much more bearable in the sun. This, however, would not be the theme of the day.

We just rolled along, ticking off the miles.

While working our way around Atlanta, some ****** in an SUV moved RIGHT into our lane, damn near taking us out. My Spidey Sense was already tingling, though, and I was anticipating his asshattedness, so we were fine. I let him know he’s #1 in my book, though, and, using hand signals, “suggested” he get his head outta his *** and LOOK THE HELL AROUND YOU!! Moron. If I didn’t know better, I woulda thought he was from Pennsylvania.

We stopped a little north of Atlanta for fuel and something warm to drink. Holy CRAP had the wind picked up! Luckily, the wind was, for the most part, coming out of the north. I can deal with that, annoying as it may be. I’m just glad it was not like the wind we experienced back in 2010 heading into Great Falls, Montana. That was some of the KRAZZIEST wind EVER. Oy.

Seemed like it took forever, but we made it into Tennessee.

I could not WAIT to get by this dude – the damn straw or hay or whatever was blowing right into my face.

Ruh-roh… Those skies do not look good…

 

[BikerGeek99]

There are not many definites in life beyond death and taxes. One thing that is always true is if I am very warm, Sooze is comfortable. If I am comfortable, Sooze is chilly. If I am chilly, Sooze is cold. If I am cold, Sooze is frozen solid. Basically Sooze is more sensitive to cold temperatures than I am.

And right about now, I was cold, so I knew Sooze had to be frozen solid.

Once we got north of Knoxville, the clouds appeared, blocking out the sun which effectively dropped the temperature by what felt like 20 degrees.

It may not look like it, but it was kinda chilly right about here.

We stopped at a gas station that I stopped at on my way home from NAFO 2010 with Tom and Pam. Poor Sooze was about as cold as can be. I really felt bad for her. She’s a trooper, though, and went inside to get some hot tea and to generally just warm up. We discussed the idea of finding a hotel and waiting until morning to push home, but we knew it was not going to be any warmer tomorrow, so we just pushed on, the thinking being that we would have an easy day tomorrow.

So push on we did, cold temperatures be damned.

I stopped to get gas and one more cup of coffee before getting to our destination for the night. The batteries were low on my SPOT tracker - if you look at the SPOTwalla page, it looks like we kinda bypassed a chunk of Kentucky. Nope – I didn’t realize that when the batteries are low, the SPOT stops tracking. Good to know.

It wasn’t too long, though, before we were at our exit.

We made our way through the rolling hills.

Finally! About 12 hours and 691.6 miles later (our biggest-mile day ever 2-up!) we made it to my dad’s. You may remember him from our Milestones trip a couple years back.

The welcoming committee, or Lucy.

And Petey. This has GOT to be the World’s Grumpiest shih tzu. Do NOT try to take his tractor from him!

My step-mom warmed up some dinner for us and we sat and shot the breeze for a bit before calling it a night. Man was it ever nice to crawl into a cozy bed, warm at last!

 

[BikerGeek99]

April 23, 2012.

We slept like rocks. We needed the sleep. After a late start, and a jaunt into Shelbyville for lunch at one of dad’s favorite sammich shops, we hit the Road For Home.

It still wasn’t overly warm, but at least the sun was out. So was the wind…

Note the flag – we would be in some pretty strong winds all day. Nothing like the winds we hit in Montana a couple years ago (thank goodness), but still strong.

Finchville Hams, as seen on “Iron Chef America.”

Spring has sprung, and what was gray not too long ago is now lush and green.

Stopped at a rest area to get rid of some coffee before diverting around downtown Cincinnati. Again – note the flags.

I can’t help but add “y’all” to Florence because of this water tower.

Bypassing downtown Cincinnati.

Back to our home state – round on the ends and hi in the middle, as the saying goes.

Yup. We’re back in Ohio, alright.

 

[BikerGeek99]

Our timing being what it is, we hit Cow Town just in time for evening rush hour.

And, finally, we made it home and were greeted by our own welcoming committee: Ferrous The Iron Kitteh. This kitteh was a stray at my dad’s place several years ago. I was down there burning some vacation time from work and playing golf with dad. This kitteh decided that my truck’s cooling fan shroud would be a great place to take a nap. Score: truck: -3 fan blades; kitteh: fine as can be. Hence her name, Ferrous.

After the almost-700 mile day yesterday, this 225 mile ride home was nothing.

It was a great trip. Woulda been nicer if the weather woulda been warmer, but there are some things ya just can’t control. I did have that problem with the bike, but the guys at Thunder Tower HD were absolutely the greatest. Dinner at Hudson’s was awesome. Hopefully Jennifer and Steve get things figured out. Clowns are creepy.

And how’s my attitude, you may wonder? Well, let’s just say that a few days of 2-wheeled therapy worked wonders.

 

[Bustanut joker]

Glad to see ya got yer **** together and fxd the 'tude thistledik..Last thing we need this weekend is Pam kicking yer *** for bein' a crab :lol:

Oh, nice report as always ********.

 

[RPrice]

Wow, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Thanks!!

 

[escapefjrtist]

Nice finish BG...good to hear the attitude is appropriately adjusted!

Thanks for taking us along!!

--G

 

[beemerdons]

Nice finish BG...good to hear the attitude is appropriately adjusted!

Thanks for taking us along!!

--G

+1, Gunny; very nice indeed BG, in comparison to Old Michael's Ride Reports Papa Chuy gives it an '8'!

 

[petey]

Nice, thanks for taking us along..enjoyed it. :yahoo:

 

[rushes]

That was fun.

Thanks!

 

[Sparky.88]

Slow morning at the office. I had time to make it through your ride report, start-to-finish. Nicely done - thanks for sharing. I hope The Wife and I can take a nice leisurely trip on the bike in the near future.

 

[GeorgiaRoller]

Somewhere between Macon and Atlanta, the sun finally came out. It was still cool – in the upper 50’s or so – but much more bearable in the sun. This, however, would not be the theme of the day.

This picture of Tornado damage from April 2011 going across I-75 is about 15 minutes from my house.