Friday – September 24th 2021

Riding from home in Douglasville, Georgia to the motel I had reserved in Kannapolis, North Carolina (Charlotte) via the Mileage Disposal Unit (Interstate 20 & 85) it should have only taken me about 5 hours to ride the trip. This part of the weekend trip was not about enjoyable riding or scenery, it was about getting from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans

I had planned to depart at 1:00 PM with an estimated arrival time in Kannapolis, NC at about 6:00 PM. However, due to work obligations, I was not able to hit the road until 3:30PM. I live in the Atlanta, Georgia Metropolitan area. Downtown Atlanta is about 28 miles from where I live in Douglasville, Georgia. Prior to moving here in October 2020, I lived in Southern California (and Minnesota 3 years prior there). Traffic congestion in Southern California is notoriously awful, especially around Los Angeles. Well, Atlanta’s traffic is also disgustingly bad. What makes matters worse in and around Atlanta is once you are off the freeways, there are not many large avenues, boulevards, or highways that serve as alternate arteries to the Interstates (there are some, just not as many in cities like around Los Angeles, Chicago, or even around Minneapolis / Saint Paul Metropolitan area from where I am originally from. Don’t get me wrong, I love this area and I am very happy that my wife and I dropped anchor here and purchased our home here, but the bad traffic reputation of Atlanta is to be heeded.

So anyways, as I have mentioned above, I rolled out from home at 3:30 PM, rolled into town (Douglasville) and fueled up and hit Interstate 20 East. I made it a whopping 7 miles on I20 before I hit a massive traffic jam, all three lanes at a dead stop as far as one’s eye could see. Google was telling me it was a 35 minute slowdown before I would even make it past the western I-285 beltline and suggest that I exit onto Thornton Road, Georgia Highway 6. I took Google’s advice and exited onto GA Hwy 6 only to be snarled into another traffic jam though this snag only took 15 minutes to proceed 3 miles (cough). Google then wound me through some back roads with a left turn here, and a right turn there and so forth, only to dump me back onto I20 a mere 6 miles down the interstate, where I again sat in traffic turning myself into a nice browned roast sitting atop of my air cooled Harley Davidson.

Once past I-285 traffic broke free and I was rolling the speed limit, more or les, until once again, all lanes were stopped. And again, Google was telling me to bail off the Interstate and onto Atlanta’s narrow and congested city streets into Downtown Atlanta at what was now 5:15 PM, brilliant! LOL, To put this joy into perspective, at this point of my journey, it had taken me almost 2 hours to travel 28 miles. From Downtown Atlanta, I crawled onto Interstate 85 and would ride in spurts traveling the posted speed limit and then rapidly stop, crawl for a few miles, and repeat. This slow paced travel would persist until just past the I-85 and US Highway 129 interchange near Jefferson, Georgia. I had now traveled 82 miles in 3.5 hours or roughly an average of 23 miles per hour for the time and distance covered.

The remainder of the travel was at normal Interstate speed crossing into South Carolina as the sun set and darkness descended several miles from Greenville, SC. But, I thought to myself, at least I am rolling at proper highway speed, until I reached Spartanburg, SC. Once again, traffic came to a dead stop in all lanes and would creep forward every once in a while. It was now getting a bit chilly and I still had on mid temp leather jacket and my warm weather leather gloves, once I was able to roll at 40 MPH or so about 15 miles north of Spartanburg, my hands became ice cubes, it was getting downright cold, in South Carolina in September! Road construction, crappy pavement, and bad traffic persisted until I reached North Carolina where the road became silky smooth and I was able to open up the throttle to reasonable Interstate speed.

I finally arrived and got myself situated at the motel in Kannapolis at about 11:00PM. With the late start at 3:30PM I was expecting to arrive around 8:00PM….I was only 3 hours late, ICKY indeed. I went to the nearby IHOP and inhaled a burger and some fries and went back to the motel to sulk and feel sorry for myself about the crappy travel day, no not really I stayed up and watched a few episodes of South Park.

From Bad to Worse – Saturday September 15th 2021

Late into the night, roughly around 3:00 AM on Saturday I awoke with a pretty intense stomach ache. I thought maybe the burger, fries, several sodas, and half a bag of Doritos’ (don’t judge me) had maybe combined forces into a coordinated cooperative attack upon my digestive system, so I took some Prilosec and went back to bed. 9:00AM rolled around and I felt as if Mike Tyson had been using my mid section as a punching bag. My plans for Saturday were already altered as Lionel Trains Corporate had cancelled their warehouse sale due to COVID (Delta) concerns. The remaining plans for the day were to swing into Speedway Harley Davidson and window shop, stroll through Concord Mills Mall and more specifically the Lionel retail store, Lodge, Ikea in Charlotte to pick up some wire baskets (small) as these are sold out in Atlanta, and then a night ride of Downtown Charlotte for a future video.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans – The Sequel

Being that I really didn’t need to be anywhere in the morning and because I felt like crud, I decided to sleep in. I did not wake until 2:00 PM when I, um, let’s just say I had a really urgent desire to test the motel’s plumbing. Soooooo, after I had expelled out all of the demons from my lower digestive system (or so I thought, more on that in a bit), I took a shower and got dressed. My entire body was aching with particular soreness of my neck, legs, and hips (odd one). I rolled out and hit CVS first for some Aleve and took two in the parking lot, went to Harley Davidson and was not impressed with the showroom selection and left in about 5 minutes to go to the mall. While in the mall I was feeling weak and just plain lousy and once again the acute strong motivation to test plumbing infrastructure but this time the mall’s public restroom. The restroom’s cleanliness was so poorly maintained as if a troop of wild baboons suffering from irritable bowels had invaded the restroom, yeah it was pretty bad. Mind you after serving 10 years in the military, I have (had) a pretty high threshold for unsavory restrooms. Now that I was forced to measure my true grit, I went on a quest for another restroom, at the other end of the mall. Concord Mills, while not as large as the Mall of America in Minnesota, is not much smaller in land area (while the Mall of America has multiple levels, Concord Mills is all one level). After expelling this set of demons, I decided to cancel the remaining agenda for the day as I was feeling terrible. I went back to the motel and slept for a few hours, waking only to speak to my loving wife and grab some food for dinner and maybe breakfast. I was back in bed by 10:00 PM and did not wake until 9:00 AM the next morning.

Sunday – September 26th 2021 – Scenic Way Home

While Friday and Saturday were craptactular (new word and no pun intended…..really) it is important to keep things in proper perspective, especially to keep my grey mush in my skull thinking positive. Yes Friday’s travel was not enjoyable and at times pretty miserable, I did arrive in Kannapolis safe with no mechanical issues with Dexter (my motorcycle). That alone is something to give thanks for and be grateful. And yes I was feeling ill on Saturday and needed to rest in hopes to feel well enough to ride the planned 393 miles. But, i was able to do so in a comfortable setting as opposed to camping somewhere on a cold hard ground and the lack of plumbing infrastructure to test while expelling demons of the bowels (that just sounds nasty).

With this trip being a bust with regard to Friday and Saturday, Sunday was redeeming. I rode west from Kannapolis, NC, past Lake Norman, through Rutherfordton, NC to Saluda, NC in the hill country that proceeds the Appalachians. From Saluda I dipped down into South Carolina, west into Georgia and dipped back north into North Carolina and finally back into Georgia and rode home. While I was still enduring some stomach aches from time to time on Sunday, the nice ride and scenery including the stop in Saluda redeemed the overall weekend trip from failure.

Future Posts & Videos

I will be creating a dedicated post within the near future with some details from Sunday’s travel and Saluda, NC. I will also create a video with some of the trip from Friday and Saturday with most of the trip edited out and a video dedicated to Sunday’s ride. I am currently working on the video Day 15 USA West 2020 video and will start work on Day 16, the final day of that trip immediately after. I started the video series for that trip over a year ago and shelved it due to the move to Georgia and all the projects with our new home, and of course some much important family time. After USA West 2020 videos are completed, I will create the videos for this trip and another weekend trip going to the Myrtle Beach, SC area the weekend of October 1-3 2021.