Day 11: June 12th, I-24 Shut Down

It was an uneventful ride out of Kingdom and thru St. Louis.  I was expecting a lot of traffic and possible rush hour jams but that never happened.  It was a nice ride through IL and somewhere in the state I emailed Buzz in FL to ask him to arrange with his local H-D store to change my tires.

At the next stop in IL I checked my emails to find that the FL Harley Stores would not give me and Buzz any priority service.  So I started calling stores in TN and GA hoping to find one along the route.  This didn’t pan out so I texted Buzz to just find any HD store in south FL. 

Back on the road, as I-24 continued out of IL it ran thru KY!  I completely forgot about KY….I had lived in Louisville years back and last year had ridden from Nashville to Sturgis thru Paducah KY so you think I would’ve remembered.  There’s a H-D store there and I went to their service dept asking for help.  Wow, did they ever help!  2.5 hours later I rolled outa there with new tires, new rear brakes, and a 60K service completed!  But I goofed….didn’t get photos of Tracie, Missy and Archie for the blog.  Wonder if I can get back there and catch a photo of them?

It was getting late so I wanted to press for as much distance that I could get.  However, south of Nashville, traffic jammed to a stop then a snail crawl.  Two things were occurring: the Bonnaroo Festival was schedule to start on Friday and people were pouring into the area.  But that wasn’t the culprit for the traffic jam.  A big rig and had flipped over on the interstate causing a complete detour.  Two hours later I was finally back on I-24 but totally exhausted, so I got a motel room in Manchester TN and called it a day! Only 495 miles ridden today….gotta make up for it somehow.

C ya mañana,
Gonzo
Twitter: @GonzoCrossUSA
Email: GonzoCrossUSA@gmail.com
Cell: 949-433-0761
LiveViewGPS: 70.169.216.3/specialevent.aspx?cid=liveviewgps&login=gonzo.ronald@live.com&pwd=7082