Corner To Corner - Chapter 4, The Country Music Highway

There was quite the thunderstorm last night in North East Tennessee, so once again it was cool when we set out, but not raining – cool enough that we wore our light leather jackets! Quite the change from the extreme heat of Florida and South Georgia two days ago. We gassed up and hit US-23 North, which, as you will recall from yesterday is marked as “Future I-26”. It still felt like a freeway to me. In fact we stayed on this road the entire day today.

US-23 is for some reason also branded as the “Country Music Highway”. I’ve not figured this one out since it doesn’t go anywhere near Nashville. However, I have a gut feeling that it is because a number of country stars were born in the vicinity, as this road traveled along the canyon of the Clinch river and through the “hollers” and small towns of eastern Kentucky coal country, which if you know Country music, is the breeding ground for much of it. Much of the country looked like the set from Coal Miners Daughter!

The canyon is dotted with big coal mines, and the road runs along the bottom of the canyon with the Norfolk Southern railroad and the river, and the towns. The towns are actually long and narrow things, with two or three streets wide, and run for a mile or so up and down as there is really no place else to build. It looks like a great big model railroad come to life!

The place is also crawling with Baptists – in fact we passed one church that had a sign saying it was a “Primitive” Baptist church. And despite my personal belief that religion in general is primitive, I couldn’t fathom what “Primitive Baptist” is – the building was rather new, so maybe they don’t have flush toilets or something? After all if Jesus didn’t have it, and the Bible is literal, we shouldn’t have them either.

We stopped at the Harley-Davidson dealer in Pikeville, Kentucky to have them look at Tony’s bike after he went down on it yesterday on the Blue Ridge Parkway outside of Asheville. The service guy said “y’all had a wreck?, le’ me look at err and see if we can get y’all goin' quick.” He looked at it and noted that while there was nothing structurally wrong, the engine guard was bent from the 900 pounds of bike that landed on it when Tony went into the shoulder. He’ll need to replace it when he gets back to Seattle, but the bike is safe to ride, and after he re-adjusted the headlights back into alignment, and I bought a t-shirt (first one this trip!), we set back out onto US-23.

We’d only gone about a quarter mile when we saw a huge black cloud in front of us, and another quarter mile we were in a sprinkle. I turned to Tony and asked if he wanted to get rain gear out, and he said no. In another quarter mile it started to pour and by the time we pulled into a Shell station it was a full blown shower. We changed into our rain gear.

Tony was a bit apprehensive after his incident yesterday and the rain didn’t help, especially a deluge like this one, but he toughed it out and went slow – we put our flashers on for good measure and I asked him at one point if he wanted to pull off and wait it out, but he said no. After about 45 minutes and 20 miles it stopped raining hard, and another 20 miles it was just cloudy, and about 10 more miles it was sort of sunny, so we pulled off in a Wal Mart parking lot to wiggle out of the now soaked rain gear, and grab a sandwich at the Arby’s.

I absolutely hate the way the bike gets dirty in the rain. I almost can’t stand to get on it. My nice denim black paint gets an ugly dirty grey, and the chrome is dull. Fortunately we were able to wash them up in a small coin operated hand wash in Waverly, OH. A quick spray and scrub and while not showroom ready, they were tolerable to drive.

We kept rolling north on US-23, and dipped into West Virginia for all of one mile, and then into Ohio along the Ohio river for a number of miles before turning north. I was quite surprised by the huge amount of corn they were growing here – and the flat land after one gets out of the Ohio river bottom – I thought perhaps I was in Iowa. We did 355 miles and rode into Columbus a little after 6pm.

In my book, any day on the motorcycle is a good day – and except for the rain, the ride today was quite nice both in weather and in scenery and places seen that I haven’t seen. However, it felt “rushed”, and I think I violated my cardinal rule. I’ll borrow one of the lines from the Disney/Pixar movie “Cars” that I have adopted as one of my personal anthems. In explaining the love of the road and why the town or Radiator Springs died, Sally the Porsche says: “Back then people didn’t ride on the road to make good time, they rode on it to have a good time.” I firmly believe that. But today it felt rushed – that we “made good time”. Tony has some friends in Columbus and I have a client who wanted to go to dinner, and we stayed on the same road the entire trip, and didn’t once get off to explore, find a nice place to eat, a neat park or a roadside attraction. We just drove and on a road that often looked and felt like a freeway too, despite being a US-highway. We drove and drove – and while I saw some interesting things, we didn’t stop, we ate at an Arby’s and we didn’t once get off of US-23. I didn’t even write down directions on a yellow sticky note! The hotel is right off of US-23. We didn’t even meet any interesting people to show you, and because of the weather, hardly any pictures. It’s not a disappointment – but its also not why we came on this trip.
That won’t happen tomorrow. I’m vowing to work our way up to Michigan via back roads, and not even aim for a city to stop in – just ride until we get tired and start looking for a place.