Kingston, TN to Annapolis, MO

I rode the Devil's Triangle again on the way out of Kingston yesterday, and it was a good thing that Carolyn and I had ridden it the day before, because the coal trucks were out in force on the weekday.  Having been on the road the day before, though, I knew that the section of road between the mine and the processing plant was not too long, and that there was a lot of good road after that, so I just took it easy and waited behind the trucks until I got the road to myself again.  I mounted my helmet cam on my helmet for some of the route and I will try to upload them to YouTube, but it's a slow process.

Yesterday the weather was about as perfect as it can get.  Today......not so much.  I stayed overnight at nephew Mark's house in Russellville, KY where I had a nice visit with Mark and his son Jon who is also a motorcycle nut (motocross), so we had lots to talk about.  The forecast was not so good for today, and it was rightly so.  It rained all day except for the first couple of hours.  It was also quite cool.  A couple of times I saw 48 degrees on the thermometer, and it was usually about 50.  I arrived at nephew Tom's house with wet hands and feet, but the grip heaters saved the day again.  Tomorrow promises to be better, if somewhat cool.  What a contrast from those 95 degree days at the start of my ride.  I may have to break out the heated vest.

While at Tom and Beth's I got some much needed maintenance done on the bike.  Tom and I changed the oil and adjusted and lubed the chain, and then he broke out the pressure washer and we gave it a much needed clean-up.

Here's a pic of Carolyn and I after our Devil's Triangle ride:

I'm still learning to deal with the navigation recommendations that my Zumo makes.  It sometimes sends me on  strange routes, especially through towns.  Here is one of the roads I ended up on yesterday.  I went by it twice because I thought it was somebody's driveway.

Then there is this gravel road which is part of the route to Tom's house.  Not the fault of Zumo.

At least it wasn't dusty since it had rained all day.

While I was at Mark's house last night he showed me the website of an outfit that takes pictures of people riding the Dragon, and we found a couple of me.  These are about the only pictures I have of me actually riding the bike:

I do have a short segment of video from the Devil's Triangle. It was actually just a "place holder" to keep the camera from shutting off, which is does if not put into the record mode in15 minutes.  So the road wasn't all that interesting at that point, but I did get a shot of an oncoming coal truck.  If you look carefully you can see he is over the double yellow into my lane.  That pretty well spooked me for blind right-handers after that, and you can tell it from the way I'm riding around the rest of the right-hand turns.

  Tomorrow I head down into Arkansas on what looks to be some good roads, but I have a long day of 435 miles.