The Bugsplat Saga – The Chronicle Continues

A Damp Good Time-KY SCRC Rally

Due to work commitments the calloused butt gang got a late start but that was really no problem as Kavinator’s bike has a warp speed. We had been appointed by the Princess to serve as West Georgia Ambassadors to the SCRC KY State Rally. Our mission was to eliminate their weapons of mass destruction and return with fair young damsels for Spuckett’s inspection.

We blasted north from Temple through Cartersville where we accessed I-75. Whoever said that the nation’s commerce moves by rail has obviously not ridden I-75. We had wall to wall semis running nose to tail trying to make their destination before the weekend. This was no place for a two wheeler to be but mindful of our mission we traveled on.

We stopped in Dalton so that Kevin could tell his current bride goodbye. She is an attractive woman with a nice hug who will join the crew on the Memphis trip. Domestic chores attended to we headed north again, this time slanting toward Knoxville. Traffic is never good in Knoxville but late on Friday with major road construction and rush hour traffic it is almost impossible. On the plus side we did have several opportunities to stand up and rest our butts while stopped.

From Knoxville we headed north toward Kentucky and the host hotel in Richmond. We encountered high humidity in the form of heavy rain on Rarity Mountain just before we entered KY. Here we stopped and donned rain suits and the rain temporarily abated.

Kentucky used to be an ancient seabed and that is obvious as one sees the various shale, slate, coal, and sandstone formations. Eastern KY is also very hilly where the softer minerals have eroded away leaving steep or sheer mountainsides. The rain returned and we were to be plagued with it for most of our stay in the state.

The host hotel was well situated on a major thoroughfare right beside the interstate and across the street from a Hooters and a liquor store. Just the right spot for an SCRC rally! Check in was remarkably inefficient but the people were friendly and we eventually had our rooms and retired across the street to eat before Bob got surly. Richmond is the home of Eastern Kentucky University and most of the wait staff appeared to be co-eds including our Kimberly who negotiated with Kevin about becoming his future ex-wife. Actually Bugsplat and I were handling the negotiations using our authority as ambassadors and Kevin’s extra bike as the bait.

While we waited for our food we examined the map and discovered that Richmond was only about 10” from Cincinnati. We quickly determined that by arising early on Saturday we could go to Indiana and Ohio and still visit the Red River Gorge and the Natural Bridge State Park.

Obviously every one was not able to get up at the same time we did (notice the bottle of Jose Cuervo!). We headed north at daybreak and circled Cincinnati before heading south toward our destination. All the roads in the vicinity of the Ohio River were in poor shape – probably from all the salt they use in the winter. We stopped for gas somewhere in northern Kentucky and decided to abandon the interstate and head southeast on local roads to better experience the state. KY 36 is a marvelous road that goes nowhere in a hurry. It winds along a ridge line and probably used to connect communities that no longer exist. Large horse and tobacco farms and small family plots were interspersed with the mostly forested areas. Many of the pastures we passed seemed abandoned and it was clear that this was a very poor but beautiful area. We passed thru a decidedly ugly town named Cynthiana and a delightful little town name Carlisle where it seemed that the entire population was sitting on rockers or benches in front of the stores along Main St. Eventually we hooked up with KY 77 which runs thru the Red River Gorge and on to the Natural Bridge State Park.

 Our friend the rain had returned by this point so we didn’t dally as we passed the amazing geologic formations in the gorge. At the end of the gorge we passed thru the NADA tunnel which is a tunnel 900’ long and 12’ wide cut by hand thru a solid rock mountain in the early 1900’s to facilitate logging. This was a wonderful place to check one’s horn.  

Next stop was to be the natural bridge which looks like this on a dry day:

 Here’s how it looked when we were there:

 No one was willing to chance the slick clay to get down to the bottom to view it from that angle on this day. The picture in the bottom right is Bugsplat and Kevin descending the sky lift back to our bikes. They made me ride by myself because I’m afraid of heights! We had ridden to the top in fierce thunderstorm which made for great wet tee shirt viewing but was a little scary. Arriving at the pavilion at the bottom we found a group playing Bluegrass music but since we were wet we quickly departed.

In deference to the weather gods we chose the Bluegrass Parkway instead of local roads for our ride back to the hotel. The rain stopped south of Lexington which was good because the evening plans were for a bike show, a cookout, and biker games. There were around 250 riders to feed and entertain. The bikes were not really show bikes but there were no rat bikes among them and several people went home with a nice plaque for their efforts.

 After dinner the bike games began with the weeny bite, the wet balloon toss, the plunger & toilet paper game, the slow races and others. One of the sponsors was from I-75 Yamaha riding an FJR with the electric clutch and he was wearing everybody out in the slow races. I would have pictures of this but my camera drowned in the thunderstorm on the sky lift and did not recover until the next day.

Fed and amused I retired to my room to clean up while Bugsplat and Kevin continued to party. One of the drunk women was very captivated by my prosthesis and wanted to rub my stump. I said ok and gave her what I thought was Bugsplat’s room number but turned out to be someone else’s. I don’t know how that worked out but I do know the hotel had a three hour power outage later that nite.

Daybreak the next morning found us racing south trying to beat the line of thunderstorms moving across the state. Maybe because of the magic of Daniel Boone’s left toe (notice the shiny toe in the picture – it is rubbed for good luck), we made it to Tennessee without

 encountering any real rain. Traffic was horrible even on Sunday morning around Knoxville.

South of Knoxville we abandoned the expressway and headed south on TN 72 and US 411 encountering only mild showers. We stopped at the Road Kill Café in White but they were closed so we traveled on splitting up in Cartersville and arriving home with just under 1150 miles on the odometer for the weekend.