From Clinton, Arkansas - a long post
This is a post for two days since I did not have internet access last night.

Tuesday, September 5
I left Corinth early hoping to get ahead of the storm. After being on the TAT for about an hour, I turned north and saw the storm coming with lots of lightning. Yikes! This picture was taken after the storms had died down a bit.

I started looking for a place to hide from the storm. Church awnings would work good for that. But I decided I could outrun the storm going south so I took the roads to Ripley. I stopped at a service station with a worthy awning and looked at the radar. You can actually see from the photo that by going to New Albany and then swinging northwest, I could miss the main part of the storm. Doing that I avoided rain altogether!

Everything went well today, except for the gravel roads. Here I am supposedly taking off roads to Oregon, and I have to confess that I don’t like riding on gravel roads. And I rode on way too many gravel roads today. To be more accurate, I only hate some gravel roads. I don't mind the ones that are well-worn where the rocks are mostly packed or where there are clean paths where lots of pickup trucks have passed. And I don’t mind level and straight gravel roads too much. It’s the ones that are curved or that go up or down steep hills that bother me. Oh, and the worst are the ones that are covered from side to side with marble sized rocks that give absolutely no traction. The bike slips and slides and weaves and dodges and jerks and pulls. Probably the absolute worst is trying to stop at the bottom of a steep hill covered with those kinds of marble rocks.

I mentioned that I am a beginning off road rider. Well, I have ridden quite a few gravel roads by this point on the TAT, but there has also been a LOT of pleasantly paved back roads on the TAT. I love tarmac! Even if the it is a one-lane road with lots of pot holes and patch jobs and only pieces of pavement, that is better than marbles.

I still do all the wrong things, according to the adventure web sites where I have sought advice. I tense up. I know I shouldn’t. I tell myself not to. But the front end slips six inches before grabbing, and I suddenly have the handlebars in a death grip. And I prefer to sit rather than stand. “They” say that standing enables you to let the bike move under you better. But it seems to me that it just makes that much farther for me to fall! I have tried some of their tips, but have not mastered any of them. And “they” say speed is your friend. I know that it makes sense that going faster will allow the bike to power through the marbles, but it also makes sense that going faster means a much harder fall. You notice that the word “fall” keeps coming up. My problem with off road riding is that I really don’t want to fall. I am too old and my bones are brittle. I am not a 16 year old out playing on a dirt track.

Oh, I don’t mind dirt either. Dirt’s fine. Dust is fine. It’s the marbles I hate. But I must admit that I don’t cherish riding in the mud either. It seems the word “fall” comes up again when I think about slip-sliding around in the muck. And I have seen the photos of bike wheels so covered in muck and mud that it becomes impossible to move forward. Here's a good sample.

 I've seen worse. I'm not really interested in that. This trip is supposed to be a fun lark for an old guy. When I think about all that kind of mud, I fall in love with pavement all over again. Traction is a glorious thing.

But sometimes you are traveling a road like this:

And turn the corner to find this ten miles from nowhere.

Anyway I have been tempted to give up on the gravel roads. I’ve already taken plenty of short cuts and will again. I guess I am cherry-picking my way across the TAT. But I think tomorrow I will COMMIT and see if that helps. I should have lots straight gravel roads in Eastern Arkansas through the soybean and rice fields. Good time to practice and see if I can learn to breathe while on gravel.

I stopped for the night across the Mississippi River from Helena, Arkansas... at the Isle of Capri Casino! It had the only hotel for miles and miles, and it was cheap! They want you to stay there and gamble. I know too much statistics to gamble, but I know a deal when I find one. Plus they had a wonderful buffet in the same building. But they didn't want you gambling on your computer; they wanted you gambling at their slots and such. They had WiFi, but I never could get the Internet on it.

Wednesday, September 6 - Clinton, Arkansas

I always leave pretty early. I was ready to go before 7, but when I tried to start the bike - nothing. The battery was dead. I have had some trouble out of that battery before. But I thought I had it fixed by adding water. I knew I should have changed it out before going on a trip like this.

I can "bump start" my little bike by pushing it preferably downhill and popping the clutch. But the parking lot was flat, and the bike is harder to start cold. After trying once, I spotted a man coming to work, so I asked him to push me. He tried, but it still didn't start. But a friend of his showed up and he had jumper cables. That got me started quick.

I decided to leave all my extra items that drain power, like the gps and the phone, off for a while so that the battery would charge up again.

Today I crossed the Mississippi River into my home state of Arkansas. I was committed to the TAT today. Committed to gravel roads too. Before I got to Marvel, I was learning that one of the tips the Adventure Riders give seems to work. They say to turn the bike by pressing on one foot peg or the other, and not trying to steer with the handle bars. Turns out that was one of the things I was doing wrong. When I turned the front wheel, that sucker started grabbing gravel. But I found that putting downward pressure on the right foot peg made the bike drift to the right where I wanted it. That helped a lot.

Just before Marvel, I came to one of the iconic stops on the TAT.. the TAT House in Trenton.

I had read a lot about it and see a lot of photos of bikers who stopped there and posted their picture on Facebook. It was so early, I didn't expect it to be open, but as I rode by I saw Percy Kale opening up and flagging me down.

Percy said he had spies down the road where I had been. When they see a motorcycle go by, they call Percy to open up. Someone had spotted me, called him, and said, "I think you have a rider headed your way."

I signed the guest log, and he gave me a sticker he got from a friend of his who had been to Afghanistan. The sticker said, "Redneckistan, Arkansas."

Here's the picture Percy took of me and posted on the TransAmerica Trail Facebook page:

Before I left I noted this sign telling the depressing distance to Oregon:

Percy told me as I was leaving that there were a couple of bad mud holes ahead. Some riders had been stuck there and couldn't get out. He suggested I take Highway 49 from Marvel to Clarendon.

I used to live in Clarendon - served as pastor of First Baptist Church there. That's where I wrote my doctoral dissertation. One of my deacon friends from that church works at the Farm Bureau Office in Brinkley, nearby. So I decided to go there and drop in on Jimmy Reynolds. Unfortunately, he was out of town for the day.

So I headed for De Valls Bluff to pick up the TAT again. After getting gas, I turned off to the north on a gravel road. Uh Oh! The road was in the process of being graded. A road grader had gone down one-half of the road, which mean he left a big row of stones and muck about a foot high in the middle of the road. AND that meant that any nicely packed tire paths were now covered with a million loose marbles! Marbles and mud since it rained yesterday.

But I was committed! Committed to the TAT. Committed to gravel roads. So I plunged ahead. It was a mess! I got mud all over the bike and me, but I pushed one foot peg and then another and made it the mile down that road before I could turn left onto another. But when I got there, there was a big sign, "Road Closed." About that time the road grader passed me going back the other way. I studied the maps, but there was nothing for me to do but to go back to De Valls Bluff and find a detour.

I stopped in De Valls Bluff to study the map, and found a way around. But I had killed my bike to study the map, and when I tried to start the bike, the battery was dead again. I knew I had a problem now. But there was a nice downhill slope, and I easily bump started the bike.

I decided my next priority should be getting a new battery. The nearest place was Bruno's Powersports in Cabot, Arkansas - about 45 minutes away. So I headed there.

I spent about an hour at Bruno's because Sonny thought he had a battery that would work. He charged it up, but when he tried to put it in the bike, it was 1/2 inch too tall. He didn't have a battery that fit. But Sonny said that when he took my battery off, the connection was loose and that my problem may have been a loose connection. I had no choice but to put the old battery on and hope for the best.

But that didn't put me in a very confident position for launching into the off roads of the Arkansas TAT. Besides, it had gotten so late that I would not be able to make it to a place with a hotel before dark. So I decided to leap forward to Clinton by riding the blessed tarmac! 

But tomorrow!  Tomorrow I am committed to the TAT!