Oct 5 and 6th--Alabama, MS, and LA

Well, we were up early on the 5th, and headed to Birmingham. Our plan was to get there early and drop the trailer at a motel central to the Museum of Art and the Barber Motorsports Park. We were in Birmingham by 10:30 a.m. We stopped first at the Quality Inn where we met their front desk clerk, a terrific guy. Yes they had a room for $79/night...oops, it’s still NASCAR Talledegas weekend and the computer shows the room rate is $130/night. He was a sweetheart, he tried everything he could to get us the normal rate, including calling the 1-800 number and acting like he was just a traveler. When he couldn’t, he suggested another hotel close by that was nice and clean and much more reasonable. What a dear!

So we checked in to his recommended hotel and dropped the trailer in front of our room, and headed to the Museum of Art for brunch. Unfortunately when we got there, they were completely booked up for brunch, so we ate at the Sheraton and then came back for the opening of the museum at noon. The museum had quite a wide range of art. One notable collection was an absolutely wonderful set of photographs by a woman named Marion Post Wolcott who worked as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (part of the WPA) during the Roosevelt years. She documented the conditions of migrant and farm workers in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina in the 30’s. The other impressive collection was a set of 11 Leonardo Da Vinci drawings brought over from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin. The jazz group playing for the brunch could be heard throughout the museum, so we spent a delightful couple of hours wandering around.

Then we headed to the Barber Motorsports Museum and Track. What an incredible place! Steve was drooling for 3 hours, and I was so impressed with what they had and how they displayed it. They had two bikes, a BMW R100 and R80 ridden by a couple around the world back in the 80’s along with photos of their trip. As a result of their trip they made it to the Guinness record book! They had hundreds of beautifully restored bikes and bikes in original conditions covering 1905 to the present. They had pillars of bikes and walls of bikes. They had old bikes, new bikes, little bikes, big bikes. Norm and Kevin would have absolutely loved the place.

Random thoughts--

• Steve had a long and thorough discussion with Tennessee pig and bear hunters--concerning the relative merits of hunting these animals in the brush with a .44 caliber handgun or a .30-.30 lever action. . . and which meat was best to eat.
• The motto on the license plate for Alabama is “Stars fell on Alabama”. Isn’t that great?
• Steve lost the wrist rocker Jon gave him from his bike and the motorcycle stores don’t seem to keep them in stock. Guess we’ll have to order two or three when we get home.
• I talked with Meri today and Jamie yesterday, and everyone sounds well and appalled about Sarah Palin. Aren’t the SNL clips great!!! Tina Fay does an absolutely great Sarah Palin--she could be her double!
• We saw fields of the Katrina trailers today in MS, and they are still cleaning up blown over trees along the highway in MS after Katrina
  

We are headed towards Houston tomorrow, and plan to be there at Norm and Phyllis’ on Tuesday.

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 6th. It is hot and muggy outside, so we decided to enjoy AC after a long day of traveling. Tomorrow we’ll be in Houston!

October 4 and beyond

Well, yesterday is a day we don’t really want to remember. We did a lot of traveling down the Interstate through Virginia in the fog, then we went through a small section of Tennessee and then into Asheville, NC to see the Biltmore Estate in Asheville. However, when we got there after driving through downtown Asheville about 3 p.m., (closes at 5 p.m.) we discovered that it was $47/person to do the whole estate tour, including the mansion and the wineries. We debated about this for a while, and then decided to skip it and head back up to the campground we had planned on staying at.

We found it, but unfortunately it was a very long, very uphill, very curvy gravel road, and about halfway up the drive, Steve was turning the bike with the trailer into the sun on gravel in a sharp right turn and started to slide. I, of course, screamed!!!! The whole rig was sliding backwards, and Steve was trying to stop it. He finally succeeded, I got off the bike, put a rock behind the trailer to stop any further sliding, and we both took one short deep breath. Obviously the next thing to do was to detach the trailer which by now was jackknifed. As I was gathering strength to do that, a couple came along behind us and saw our predicament. He helped me detach the trailer and was going to tow it up to the campground for us, but in the meantime, Steve had ridden the Wing up the hill (after we rescued him once from again sliding down the curve into the “low shoulder”*). He decided that we were having nothing to do with this campground and we would just turn the trailer around and tow it down. Then it wouldn’t start. So we had to get out the book and tools and check all the fuses to see why it wouldn’t go into neutral so it would start. After Steve finally got it started, he towed the trailer back down the gravel road, and I walked to the bottom. We headed out of Asheville as quickly as we could, and found a nice KOA out of town to the west to stay at.

So Asheville wasn’t a great experience for us, but Paul at the KOA was! He was a lovely fellow and worked as the maintenance man. He was from Rhode Island, but left about 2 years ago after a long life as a maintenance worker. Since he left, he has worked around at KOA’s until he found the one where we met him. He just LOVES his job and his life now. I called him Happy Paul, because he was just so “darn” (borrowed from Sarah Palin) happy!

This morning we got up and had coffee and beignets at the KOA office, Ummm, yummy. Then we headed out to Deals Gap, the motorcyclists’ mecca. 318 curves in 11 miles.

On our way to Deals Gap, and the beginning of the 318 curves, we probably took 320 curves, some marked ‘caution: 10 MPH”! What a beautiful ride! I snapped pics along the way, and we went through the 11 miles with no problems and with only 4 bikers passing us! Highly technical riding but not at fast speeds! Steve, Kevin, Norm and Phyllis and I once did a section of Hwy 1A in northern California that had a sign as you are going into it, “curves, next 21 miles”. It certainly was many, many more curves than Deals Gap was! But now Steve can say he rode “the Tail of the Dragon”! And it was beautiful, too.

After that, we stopped to buy souvenir T-shirts and stuff, have lunch and figure out the best way to get to Houston to see Norm. We reprogrammed the GPS for fastest way to Houston, and started out. Tonight we are camped at a campground just inside Alabama and tomorrow we are headed for Birmingham. We will spend the night in Birmingham, and see the Barber Motorsports Museum and the Birmingham Museum of Art (supposedly the finest regional museum in the Southeast) to see the Da Vinci exhibit! Then onto Louisiana the next day and to Norm’s on Tuesday.