June 5th 2023 Day Three

 June 5^th – Collegedale TN – Day Three

 

Here it is Day 4 already and I am finally getting around to writing about Day Three. I guess that is appropriate that you have to wait for the end of the day or the next day to write about the previous day that you won’t see day four until tomorrow unless I end up at a bar tonight. I’d like to say day three was easy without incident, but then it wouldn’t be much of a story now, would it?

 

Well, according to the 2 of 3 different map apps that I have been using to get to where I want to go, it had today’s trip listed as 6 hours to go 424 miles that I have time to kill and will be going thru Nashville that I might as well do some site seeing to see if I can find any country stars. I got an earlier start than I had originally planned which is always nice and I’d really like to thank my cousin Dianne for letting me stay even though she wasn’t home – I really appreciate it and thanks much!

 

The trip to Nashville was a great ride and early enough in the morning that it was a very comfortable ride. Little wind and clear skies that it’s a good day for a bike ride. I did finally decide to pump it up a bit. I don’t know what I had been thinking day one of my ride, but that day I only set my cruise for about 80mph instead of the 85 to 90 that I’ll usually do thru South Dakota that today I stepped it up a notch and set it for about 88, that was according to my trip info that my bike spits out. An easy ride to Nashville that although I passed a sign that said this way to OpryLand Resort I figured the next exit I could change my iPhone map to get me there, remember iPhone maps the one I trust the most and it was only set to get me to Collegedale. Well, not far away at all that it will make for a good stop, Easy enough to find that now all I have to do is find a safe place to park a bike with everything on it, to keep it safe. I did see a bike ahead of me pull into a lot close to the hotel that it must be a safe place that all I have to do is follow his lead. Well, after parking I thought I’d rather be safer than sorry that I did ask the valet if they could help me out. The first guy told me to check inside, and I did that, but according to them I should ask one of the valet’s outside, even though I had just done that. Ok, so I checked with another valet, and he asked his boss and said they normally don’t, but they could help me out if I could help them out…you got it a tip for tat. I was able to pull my bike into the larger than usual valet area, easily taking up very little space so I could spend some time inside that I did just that and only spent an hour of the 2 I told the valet I would be. Even though the valet said it cost $50 for them to valet vehicles, I figured $25 for half the time I said I’d take would suffice…ok, you can either call me cheap, frugal or a big spender.

 

Now for my next site to see in Nashville and all I could remember having spent day one finding a triple D joint in St Louis, that there was one tiple D joint show that I saw that Nashville had some awesome smoke oysters that I’ll have to try that myself. Easy enough to find with a google search and even though it was 30 miles away, it was kind of on my way to get to my days stop. Well, I punched the bar into my iPhone, and it found the place with the directions that it looks easy enough that I started out where I had to go only to find out that the iPhone wasn’t telling me where to turn. What now, I kept asking Siri to give me turn by turn directions, but no sound that I had to resort to using my bikes map to get me to where I wanted to go. Now problem number 1, I lost my trip summary on the bike. Long story, short, but when you change one trip on your bike to another, you lose any stats you were hoping to get about the first trips ride. No big deal and the bike did get me to where I wanted to go even if it wasn’t as efficient as the iPhone map would have been.

 

Wow, this is a pretty fancy suburb of Nashville, 55 South in Franklin and there was one seat for me to belly up to the bar left. I had a great bartender who helped put my helmet behind the bar and started telling me about his biking experiences. Not a chatty kind, but just a good bartender to have. I told him I was there for the smoked oysters so ordered up half a dozen and after I was finished, he asked if I wanted another which I really should’ve gotten because they were that good, but decided it was probably time to hit the road. I did get up to ask the hostess, a younger gal if she was proficient with an iPhone since I was having direction problems and although the bartender said something to me since I forgot to grab my helmet, she did a quick touch on my tn     phone to get the sound back for my directions, they make it look so easy.

 

Out to the bike and I punched in my next stop in Collegedale TN for my cousin Barb and her husband Gary’s place. I did both iPhone maps and the bike, but when the bike showed me, it was still another 11 hours to get to where I wanted to go, time to just use one map for the remainder of the day and skip the HD app. It looked easy enough and I started on my route and part way thru Siri did ask me if I wanted a different route to avoid severe thunderstorms, but I ignored it and didn’t stop to check. Well, problem number 3, forgot, problem 2 was my iPhone directions. Ok, just as I was exiting one highway to get on the freeway that would take me to Chattanooga, I hit construction and the thunderstorm Siri warned me about so let’s just say I got a little soaked before I finally got off the highway for a gas stop and to determine whether to put on the rain gear. I looked at the weather and wouldn’t you know it, according to radar that thunderstorm was only a small cluster right over the exit that I had taken that had I come thru there a little earlier I would’ve missed the entire thing. It did say it was going to be done in 15 minutes, so I waited about half an hour and although it looked as though it headed the direction I wanted to go, things had dried enough that I started out without the rain gear.

 

Now what I might call problem 4 even though it may have turned out for the better, is the iPhone maps was taking me another way to get to my cousins’ place instead of getting on the freeway I was just on to take me thru Chattanooga. All I could think it was to avoid any other thunderstorms, but it was with a lot of stop lights and no road that I could hit the freeway mph. Eventually I did connect with the freeway that I previously was on and it was a great ride thru the mountains. I wished I would’ve remembered how nice a ride it was some 17 years ago, in 2006 when I was last down here to visit. Nice winding roads that you could hit freeway speed on and an extra third lane for the trucks, both going up the hills and the ones coming down where they had to pull over to check their brakes before the decent down the road.

 

Well, besides a lot of construction in the area I made it to Barb and Gary’s place with a nice trip thru campus and it was great to get here. I also remembered the house being on top of the hill so let’s just say there aren’t many flat spots to park the bike so I don’t have to worry about it tipping again, especially when fully loaded. Thanks to Barb, the garage was the best place for the bike so that’s where it ended up. Now I can relax for the night and because today felt like a day of problems, problem 5 which happened earlier was pulling over when I got into Tennessee to put on a helmet. Oh and one more, problem 6, I am now in Eastern time zone so I lost an hour. Nothing but problems.