Mid-November 2004, Penny and I went to Atlanta to pick up my bike. I had just spent the last 6 months working a contract job for Cox Communications in Atlanta. I had already come back to Memphis in the car. We drove back to Atlanta on a Friday and spent the night at the house I had been living in during my contract. The plan was for me to ride the bike, with Penny following in the car, to the campground I had stayed at during a couple of my trips up to the Smokies. The camp, called Ironhorse Motorcycle Lodge, was in a small town close to the North Carolina/Tennessee border. We were going to get there mid-day and spend the afternoon riding together in the mountains. The closer we got to the campground, the colder it got. We decided to bypass the campground and head on to Gatlinburg.
As the day got longer, the temp got colder. As we hit Cherokee, North Carolina, I was ready to be at our destination. The plan of riding together was over. It wasn't very fun traveling all this distance in two separate vehicles. From Cherokee to Gatlinburg it was a long haul across the mountains. I think we topped out at 30 mph the whole crossing. The traffic was not fun. There are no turns off that road, so whoever you get stuck behind - you get stuck with for the duration.
We stopped at the first hotel we came to in Gatlinburg. We had a great time that night - ate out, goofed off around the strip and did other married people stuff.
We left Sunday morning to be welcomed by the ever popular Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge holiday traffic. If you've never been there before, you don't know what you're missing. One main highway in and out of this tourist trap. Traffic at a stand still for what seemed like forever. We stopped to eat and check out some shops on the way out. Once we hit the outskirts of Pigeon Forge, we were able to pick up the pace.
The remainder of the trip to Memphis was relatively uneventful until the bike gave out just east of Cookeville. The carburetors basically lost all functionality dues the gaskets on almost all four giving out. That's a story you'll have to ask me about in person. I'm not going to waste internet space with the worthless story of Volunteer Honda and how they screwed me out of $500 dollars for work that was incompetently (and incompletely) done.
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