We left Andulsia, AL at dawn and headed down a wonderful stretch of road. US Route 84, named the El Camino Corridor. In Alabama, it's a wonderful two lane road with few cars, or at least when we rode on it. The weather was cloudy, but warm. The road had some water on it, but overall pretty easy going. In Mississippi, the road turns into four lanes and unlike our jaunt on I-10 heading the opposite direction, we encountered very little traffic, road construction or crazy cagers taking themselves out (i.e. car accidents). Now, I won't lie to you, this stretch wasn't without some intrepidness on our part. The forecast had some very nasty looking showers in it, and while we darted through Alabama and Mississippi without any real rain (we did have a few showers, but nothing major), Louisiana was suppose to be a very different story. Teri wasn't looking forward to riding in the rain. Not because she didn't want to get wet, but because she wasn't sure how her bike would handle in the rain and honestly didn't want to find out.
As we crossed the muddy Mississippi into Louisiana, the sky was getting a bit darker, but seemed fine for the time being. However, as we got closer to Alexandria, the sky was black off to the west. I made the decision to skip the secondary roads I planned and jump on I-49 and head north to Natchitoches, LA. Now typically I don't like riding on interstates, but the brooding storm on the horizon won out. As we cruised along I-49, we got some light rain, but nothing major, and we were able to crank the speeds up to 70+ MPH.
We made it to our hotel in Natchitoches, grabbed our bags and headed to our room. We had maybe 10 minutes to spare before the day turned into night and the skies opened up. It was one of those rain storms where you hold out your hand in front of your face and you can't see it because of all the rain. Boy, was I ever glad I changed my mind and cut out 10 miles from trip and rerouted us up the interstate. Of course this did present one problem, what were we going to do for dinner? There was a Huddle House outside our hotel, and while not a great place to eat, there were very limited choices, so we walked across the parking lot and had dinner. The storm had passed, and ushered in a nice cold front. The temperature dropped a good 15 degrees from when we got into town. In the back of my mind, I knew that tomorrow's journey would be a cool one.
I wasn't wrong about the temperature. The next morning all three of us donned our flannel lined jeans and winter gloves. But there wasn't a cloud a sky, so it looked like the perfect ride back into Austin. We hopped back onto US 84 and headed towards the Texas border. About 60 miles outside Natchitoches, my intercom started acting weird and I during our gas up I decided to take a look at it. Ah, seems the solder joint to the power had come loose. No problem I thought. I had just the tool, a battery operated soldering iron I brought along for just that purpose. After a couple of minutes, I determined that a fresh set of batteries were in order, so Teri went into the gas station and after a fleecing, walked out of the store with a fresh set of batteries. Yep, that was the problem, well sort of... I had never used this soldering iron before. Seems it gets hot enough to melt solder, but not hot enough to really flow solder, and not nearly hot enough to solder wires together. I gave up and decided I could go without the intercom. Back to old school for me. No music, no passengers chattering. Just me with wind and nature surrounding me. One small issue, seems my GPS is also on that power circuit, and that means I had to run it on just the batteries. Fine, I'm in Texas, I should be home in a few hours. Except that GPS won't run on batteries that long. Bummer... As we made our way into Crockett, TX (named after the Tennessee hero Davy Crockett who died at the Alamo), the sun disappeared behind a wall of clouds and we encountered some of the coldest temperatures on the trip. I stopped in Crockett to warm up with a cup of coffee, it was nearly noon and we were still over 200 miles away from home. After drinking our coffee and hot chocolate, Taylor decided she wanted a granola bar. While she was eating, I decided to take another stab at getting at least the GPS power. After several tries, I was finally able to get a temporary fix in place for the GPS. Now initially our plan was to spend some time in Crockett and look around the town. I had gone through it previously in the spring and it seemed a nice place to look around. But with the cold overcast skies, we opted to skip Crockett and just head home.
Back on road, we ran into light showers again, but they were light, and by the time US 6 turned into 21 going into Bryan, TX the rain had stopped and the road were dry as a bone. We made our final fuel stop we were less than a hundred miles from home now and I was very familiar with the remaining roads. Taylor was in a great mood, and despite not having any music or anybody to chat with, was in very good spirits. As we approached Austin, I was impressed with both Taylor and Teri. I wasn't sure what to expect out of this trip, it's different taking your family with you on a trip of this length, than doing it solo or with a bunch of guys. If guys start whining, you simply make fun of them and tell them to suck it up. With your family, you can't quite do that, well do it and live to tell about it. ;-)
As we made our final approach into the driveway, I was impressed by everybody on this trip. We had no issues with the bikes, weather, or attitudes. There were certainly some issues out the gate, but the return trip home was perfect.
The final numbers for those keeping track were:
Miles: 2501
Gas: 107.5 Gallons
Cost of Fuel: $189.19
Average cost: $1.75 Gal
MPG Averages:
Teri's 2004 BMW R : 43.5 MPG
My 2004 BMW RT : 40.9 MPG (two people on the bike)
I guess when I consider the extra weight I had, 2 MPG difference isn't too bad.
I put all the photos up on flickr they are in the following group.
Now, I'm already in the planning stages of a very short ride next weekend with the Buell group.
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