A day on the motorcycle without the need to don the ransuit (portable suana) is a good day.  We made that happen today.  When we woke up in Shelbyville, Kentucky the weather reports were talking about strong winds, lightning, hail, and some tornado warnings in the area.  That does not sound like the ideal combination for travelling on two wheels.

I don’t have a lot of faith in the accuracy of the weather forecasts I watch on TV.  They have to make them worst case scenario so that no one in the viewing area is caught off guard.  Out came the phone with my trusty My Radar app.  The weather was closing in fast.  The decision had to be made to try to outrun it or stay put and hope it passes.  I was quickly on my way to the front desk to beg for late check-out which was granted. The time was moved from 11:00 to 12:00 noon.  Thank you Best Western Hotels.

Now that approval was given to lounge in our room an extra hour the breakfast hunt was on.  Shelbyville must have not figured out how to combat the dreaded virus because all of the fast food restaurants are not allowing dine-in.  The decision was made to have breakfast at the Golden Arches.  This place is never my favorite breakfast diner but we made do.

The radar showed that the storm was almost on us.  The blue dot in the middle is us sitting in the motel room while the sky is about to fall on us.

I sat and watched as the rain moved in and I could no longer see across  the parking lot.  I had visions of getting washed out to sea or at least to the Cumberland River.

Two hours passed and the radar looked much better.  So much better that it was time to roll.  One last check of the radar showed that not only was it clear where we were but the size of the big green blob had diminshed where we were headed.  Time to celebrate leaving the rainsuits packed away

There weren’t any more pictures taken today.  We were on a misson to avoid the rain showers in the area.  Amazingly, we only caught a few drops as we made it the 200 miles to our next overnight location, Cookeville, Tennessee where the temperature at the end of the day was a robust 90 degrees.  No suana suit was needed.

I’m really glad there aren’t more pictures (although there might be video of the incident).  Some how I once again missed a critical turn on the carefully planned route.  To be honest, the “road” I was supposed to turn on appeared to be someone’s driveway.  Who knew missing that turn would add 20 miles to our day and cause me to fear for my life.

I finally found a “last resort” road to get us headed back in the right direction.  I made a hard right turn onto Dry Dock Road.  I’ve been on small roads before but calling this a road is a real stretch.  I rounded a corner and there stood a large doe right in the middle of the single lane.  She was as surprised as I was.  Just as she moved into the underbrush, I saw the warning sign that said “High Water – may be over the road way”.  Oh my – time to whoa up the 4 million pound motorcycle I’m riding.

Good news – there was no water currently covering the roadway although the stream was lapping right at the edge of the concrete.  Bad news – the water had been there and left the gooiest mud / slime you can ever imagine.  My bike had a mind of it’s own.  The concrete was broken into a very uneven surface that could have been made of axle grease.  I literally freaked out and poor Jana was right behind me.  I had to “duck walk” the bike across this slime bridge.  If I had tried to ride, the bike would have slide sideways into the stream (which seemed like a raging river in my head).  Some very kind locals pulled their cars into an adjacent driveway to let us get through.  Either that or we gave them the highlight of their entertainment week.

I don’t very often get discouraged but my inability to handle this situation and to put my wife into it too, almost made me pull out the “for sale” sign and abandon the two wheeler right there along that picturesque Kentucky stream on Dry Dock Road.