Day Fourteen

Knoxville, Tennessee to Memphis, Tennessee

Mileage: 405

The day started out dark and overcast. For a change the weather forecasters were right. Less than 70 miles into the ride, it began to rain...and rain...and rain. The sun was not out for a minute the entire day.

There were two occassions that the rain came down so hard that we couldn't see at all. Traffic on Interstate 40 had slowed down to 50 mph. I found an overpass to hide under and ducked in. I overshot it by about 20 feet because I was concerned whether the other two guys could stop quick enough. When I realized that they did, I walked my bike backwards to get out of the rain. We waited there for 30 minutes or so and ventured back out into the weather when it calmed down.

We drove into and out of rain for the most of the day. Two hours from Memphis, we got hammered again. Lucky for us, there was a rest stop one mile away. When we pulled into the rest area and I made a "bee-line" for one of the covered picnic areas. Once underneath, I pulled to the left, Sludge to the right and Batman parked his big Road King down the middle between two of the picnic tables. It was really raining. I used my helmet as a pillow and took a 20 minute cat nap.

The rain let up and we made a final dash to Memphis. Dark menacing clouds were on the horizon, but I-40 took us around it. Ten miles from our downtown hotel, gusts came out of nowhere and we had to lean hard to the left to stay in the lanes.

We arrived at the hotel about 7:0pm. With all of the stops and dodgeing the rain, it took us more than 10 hours to get here. The hotel was very nice and located only six blocks from the famous Beale Street. This is the home of "The Blues", my favorite music. In 1994, I saw B.B. King perform a live unscheduled concert of five songs. What a blast.

Beale Street hasn't changed much since then. Except that now, Wednesday night is bike night. Due to the weather, it wasn't very crowded, but there was a nice turnout anyway. We decided to have dinner at the famous "Blue City Cafe". The TV shows, Travel Channel and the Food Network have given this restaurant high marks. The food was great and the service was prompt.

We walked around Beale Street and listened to the Blues artists until about 11pm and returned to the hotel.