Ride For Pie - Loveless Cafe Friday August 21

[buddymc]

Meeting point is the Harvest AL Mapco at 9am (next to the Harvest Post Office) - Wall Triana - Harvest Rd - and Old Railroad Bed Road intersect.  KSU 915 unless we know for sure you are coming, and you happen to be worth waiting on....

We'll take a wandering path to finally get on the Natchez Trace which ends right at Loveless Cafe.  Service (mostly actually getting seated inside) can be slow, so don't expect a quick in and out.  Loveless Cafe needs to be savored and enjoyed.

Late event / last minute ride, so could be just a few of us or several. As they say, "You pays your money and you takes your chances!"

Hope to see you in the morning.

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[thinwater]

Just saw it, suiting up, coming!

[thinwater]

Meeting point is the Harvest AL Mapco at 9am (next to the Harvest Post Office) - Wall Triana - Harvest Rd - and Old Railroad Bed Road intersect.  KSU 915 unless we know for sure you are coming, and you happen to be worth waiting on....

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  I thought this was at 8:20am, and I was there, nobody else.  Then I ride home and double check it says KSU at 9:15.  I race back and I'm there at 9:15, no one there. 

[buddymc]

Wow!  Sorry about missing you this morning, but you may have had good luck in your bad luck in missing out on this ride.  It was a good ride, beautiful scenery, and the food was worth the effort.

On the other hand, it was an "adventure" with a lot of trouble caused mainly by yours truly!  Dean Knight had a lovely route, connecting up with Hwy 166 at Campbellsville TN.  What I didn't know was that he had added in a jaunt up Rose Hill to come back into Rea Branch.  Thinking he'd messed up, David Kelly and I  stopped and proceeded to wait on him at their country store.  Dean, knowing he was indeed on route, stopped a while, waited for us, we didn't show, and he rode on following the original route over to 241 and onto the Trace. So David and I rerouted ourselves up 43 to Columbia and Hwy 7 and Leiper's Creek to 96 to the Trace.  We were 20 minutes late but the wait for a table was 30 minutes.  Wasn't it nice that Dean got there early to put our name on the waiting list?

Did I mention it rained the whole time, but fairly lightly?  Enough to get all our outer garments drenched, except for David who had on his rain gear from the start.  Leaving Loveless we jumped on the Trace planning to ride it all the way to 64.  David and Dean both went full rain gear, but I had a 2nd lined windbreaker that was perfect for the weather and the light rain.  Until we got about 25 miles down the Trace, where it started raining harder and harder and harder.  By the time we crossed 20 I was completely soaked - jacket, jeans, boots, socks.  Did I mention my Uclear headset decided it wouldn't work on the way home?  And due to my inexcusable jumping off Dean's routing I had placed myself last in line, self-distancing trying to atone for my error.

Three miles later I saw a spot to finally quickly stop and dismount the GPS so it wouldn't short out since it literally had water running down its face, but couldn't get Dean's attention to tell him I was stopping.  My airhorn was full of water and only quietly "honked" just a little.  My little stopping spot had a loop at the end to turn around.  Couldn't have been stopped and off the road even 3 minutes.  Jumped back on the road and pushing hard to catch back up.  But nothing but empty road ahead.  By now I was completely frozen.  I saw a restroom building south of Napier and swung in to find it locked tight.  As quickly as possible I put on my rain gear under the slight protection provided by the dripping eve of the building, threw all the wet electronics (including my phone) into the rain gear bag in the saddlebag, and lit out again, going even faster.

Rode all the way to 64, and almost into Lawrenceburg in what has become a blinding rainstorm complete with thunder and lightning.  Never caught the guys, because it turns out when they noticed I was missing, they turned around and managed to ride past me while I was turning around on the little loop.  After that I was ahead of them!  They waited on me for awhile when they left the Trace at Napier for 241 South but I had passed that point way before they arrived. 

By my reckoning and their later reports I was about 20 minutes ahead of them, plus by then I was getting down the highway pretty good since I thought I was chasing them! 

Drama. wind, rain, thunder, lightning, cold, soaked, what more could you ask for from one motorcycle ride!  I'm going to ask that nobody count the multitude of sins This Rider committed on just this one ride?  Sorry you missed it.

[N4HHE]

Not always thinking our best on a long ride in retrospect Dean and I should have split up. One to wait and another to try to flush Buddy out of his hiding hole. But in the rain we were convinced Buddy had run off the road somewhere so we both backtracked and carefully watched the grass for skid marks.

iPhone has an app called "Find My". One can share position on the fly with other iPhone users. Google Maps offers similar ability on both Android and iPhone. Perhaps groups should sync with Google Maps before a ride? Even if one deletes the app after the ride. I don't install Google spyware on my iPhone, Android users don't have a choice.

[buddymc]

Very much a weather related situation.  Beautiful ribbon of pavement, generally nice shoulders to pull over if needed, EXCEPT when standing in 2" of water in a torrential rain.  Normally I'd have made a brief stop alongside the road and been visible.  You're definitely right that one rider plugging the route South would have caught me in short order.  But without a place for anyone to safely get off the road and simply wait your only real choice was to both ride back toward me.  And I decided against parking on the wet grass shoulder right next to the road surface so I wasn't visible for a few moments as you drove by.  Had to be during the 20 - 30 seconds my headlights were pointing into the woods as I turned around to come back onto the roadway.  Coming out you'd have seen them as you passed!

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[N4HHE]

Dean and I had to wave people by when we stopped after realizing you were no longer following. I stopped where I thought others could see us from a distance either way. As you say, not going to pull off in that unknown wet grass. Trace Rangers are said to be unforgiving.