diddlee

My Uncle Jean passed away this week. His passing came at the end of a full life. I have wonderful memories of visiting his home as a boy. The what-nots he had collected from all over the world fascinated me. He told wonderful stories of his travels as a Sailor. He was my Mom's friend and brother. He was my Father's childhood friend and was with us the day Dad died. He took my baby girl by the hand and loved her in his stead. The family came to Sylacauga to honor his memory. Joe spoke an elegant eulogy. Randy, Mitchell, and I helped carry him to his final resting place.

Prelude The guys picked me up in Sylacauga. They arrived around 5pm and had supper with Bev. I got home about 12:20 and loaded up my gear. The ride down to Natchez took a long time. I had anticipated arriving around 7:30am. I didn't get sleepy so I even took a turn driving. The excitement about beginning an adventure must have done it. That and the fact that I realized I'd be on call for the hospital if there were any problems so I had my cell phone and PDA to assist me with answers. David went in the camper and slept a couple of hours. I didn't miss the arrival time by much. Day 1 By 8:30am we had changed into riding gear and gotten under way. I will call this day 1 since it is our first day of bike travel on the Trace. We took a few photos to commemorate the start of our adventure. Since we parked up on the Trace, Bob and I rode back down to the entrance so we could say we truly rode the entire Trace. It was a beautiful sunny morning. Blue sky and fluffy clouds overhead w

Here I am at work on another weekend. I a few minutes I will begin another adventure. I'll join some men from Georgia to ride as much of the length of the Natchez Trace as possible in my week off. We are planning to head south to Natchez where we will begin our 444 mile ride north. They arrived at my house at 5pm today and had supper with my Wife and Mother. They then lay down to take a rest for the long drive tonight. The Tennessee forecast looks like rain tomorrow and Tuesday. Later next week, forecasts call for heat indexes of 100+ . All riding will need to be over by midday or suffer. I am able to cut down on my luggage since the trip will be fewer folks than was first conceived. Dave was riding the BRAG this past week. I'll bet he'll be a really tired fellow. Tough to do two big rides like that on successive weeks. Anyway I'm down to 22 minutes till I head out.

A long time ago, I made a list of rides that I would want Bev to do with me. Most of them I pictured us touring on single bikes. I didn't anticipate her love of tandeming. These rides included the Virginia Creeper, New River Trail, Katy Trail, and Cades Cove Loop. Now we've knocked all of them off. I'll have to get busy thinking up a whole new bunch of rides for us. Next week I'll do the Natchez Trace which was one from my own wish list. Who knows what comes next!

I worried we might experience difficult climbs and downhills on this Rally so I put the rim brake back and left the disc on a separate lever. It turns out we didn't need it. But having the rim brake again was nice. We wore our Florida Freewheeler jerseys to gain sympathy for our lack of climbing ability.