I didn't witness this but, I heard Moe nearly had a knock down drag out with some child abuser at breakfast this morning. Seems like Mr. Dahmer wouldn't stop berating little four year Jeffery, and Mrs. Dahmer didn't seem to mind. They eventually went away when Moe threatened to call Child Protection Services. I hear the whole scene was not pretty.
Last night I noticed along the side of the road what looked like dead opossums with remarkable little tire tracks on their dead little bodies. I had no idea there were armadillos in western Tennessee.
Somewhere around Little Rock, what looked like a crumpled refrigerator box loomed in the middle of the lane in front of Moe and Matt. It turned out to be someone's living room carpet. It stuck up like a tee-pee. Moe swerved left and missed it. Matt swerved right, but caught the edge. He got a bit wobbly when his rear tire left the road. A sphincter tightening moment indeed.
I got clobbered by head winds in Arkansas. It really chewed into my mileage. At one fuel stop, I put in 2.317 gallons of fuel in a 2.4 gallon capacity tank. I was literally driving on fumes.
We actually made it past Fort Smith and finally stopped for the night in Roland, OK. The last two hours were in a steady rain. Greg and Moe had to stop as they could not see through their goggles. Moe started to slow down to stop under a bridge. I on the other hand couldn't stop with wet brakes. I over shot the bridge by about 50 yards. After a while under the bridge, Greg reluctantly admitted that maybe it was time for his next helmet to be a full face. The camera phone photograph really tells all....We stopped at the Cherokee Casino. Cheap rooms since it was a given someone would lose money in the casino. We decided the 'Grill' in the Casino was not the dinner we were looking for.
Thunder and lightning were in the distance as we walked across the street to the 4 Star Diner- "Y'all can't sit near that window- last week we had to haul everybody into the walk-in" our waitress told us. Exactly 90 seconds later, it was raining sideways. Shortly after that penny sized hail started pelting the cars in the parking lot. The waitress said the catfish was good that night. She was right.
We retired to the Casino where Greg and Moe cleaned up at the Texas Hold 'em table. I on the other hand promptly lost a minor sum of cash that was ear marked to lose in Las Vegas anyway.
I purchased a Garmin Zumo 550 GPS unit for this trip. I never really got the chance, with my stellar preparation for this journey to learn all the functions. Learning on the go is not a good option. It has an SD card slot and an MP3 player for tunes that blast through my headset in my helmet. I had tired of listening to the same three albums I had figured out how to punch up at 70mph. I was thrilled to actually notice the 'play all' button on the touch screen. It's an alphabetical playlist- not a bad random shuffle. I get the added bonus of hearing several different artists interpretations of the same tunes back to back.
Today I listened to songs starting with 'A' to 'I' today.
More pictures of today:
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