Ozarks

After so many days on the road, the days become a bit of a blur. One really lives in the moment and enjoyed (or hates) each hour of the ride. From a blogging perspective, it's hard to remember what happened each day (perhaps I am getting old). 

The rides are longer now since we are at the tail end of the trip. Josh advises us that he needs to get back to Toronto on Tuesday to run a field trip that was scheduled a while ago,  to a scuba centre. He's going to try to move it, but ....  We work on combinations of how he would get back, alone, with Dave, with Jeff, with/without Ryan etc. 

In the mean time, the Roads are fantastic. Better than Tennessee. It's very rural and cell coverage is spotty. Verizon seems to be the provider of choice here, and we have AT&T. We are fighting weather systems with a bit set of storms to the south west, threatening to chase and over take us and another system to the north east, just where we are heading. Behind us, areas that we visited received record rains. Lafayette LA (we have an office there, got 6 inches of rain. 

This is mega hill country, hill billy country (and the hotel clerk proceeds to tell us about the bizarre hill billy killers). We stop at a local sight, Magazine mountain, the tallest mountain in the state. The views of the valley are spectacular and of course, regular pictures do not do the view justice. The look out sets the stage for the weather play that is unfolding in front of us. 

The sun is over a tiny spot to the left of centre stage. The clouds are rolling in as two weather systems collide, guaranteeing a wet ride for the rest of the day. Centre stage, just in front of us, sheets of rain rush towards our mountain look out, ironically, moving like a shower curtain. We watch the rain swirl through the trees below us and then bam it hits us. We wait it out under the trees. It's a short burst, then gone.  

Then we get to watch the fog as it rolls around our position and gradually fades the scene to grey. It's mesmerizing to watch it roll transform the landscape to shades of grey. Ryan has never seen this before and he is  loving every minute.  The fog too passes and then, off in the distance we see the full front arriving.  The rain is very heavy and obscures the landscape - shades of grey to black.  We hop on the bikes and make a mad dash down the valley to avoid getting caught on the mountain road in such an intense rain. It's sprinkling, so we can't go top speed.  Too late, the first wave catches as we run the last elevation. By the time we reach the gas station, we are soaked. As we don the rain layers, the full front hits and the road turns into a river. Jeff decides to head back to Nashville now since the good riding is done. It's a 7 hour ride (plus gas and rest stops). At best, they will arrive at 10pm - long day. We bid them farewell, wish them a safe ride and head to town, they go left, we go right.

The trip to town is slippery. The roads have a lot of tar which turns skating rink slippery when wet. The temperatures drop from high 20s to high teens and our visors fog. Not the best ride, especially for the Sollaks, who have a long distance to go. Weather radar says it's a big storm, so it will bring long duration of rain, so we decide to park it at 3pm. It takes too much time to select a hotel and on our way to the comfort inn, the front beats us again and pelts the bikes with big heavy rain drops. Three times, we have been soaked by this storm - it's a persistent bastard. 

Dinner at the Bistro across the street is wonderful, and the rain has cleared so we shop at Walmart and then sit around the pool patio, eat peanuts, shoot the shit and make friends with a ginger cat who love comfort inn cookies. We exchange text with the Sollaks who arrive in Nashville late - last text is at 2am.