09/06/08 - Ride to TTown

The Southern cruisers normally have an officers meeting in Montgomery once a year. This past year we did not have one. We got a new state officer recently so he called a meeting. We were to meet at the Jim n Nix on the Atlanta highway. I posted a ride for anyone to join me and we met at about 8AM Saturday morning. I had a full day planned as I also had a ticket to the Alabama game that evening. We left and soon were mired in some annoying peppering rain. We were taking a back route down 25 toward 231. All was well though we were annoyed by the rain (which was not forecasted). There are several railroad crossings on 25 going south, one in particular crosses the road at an unusual 45 degree angle instead of the normal parallel direction. I hit this track going about 35 or so and the front end of my gold wing went crazy. The framework around the tracks that keep them from being like steel pipes in the road were now gone. I’m glad I went over kind of fast because it was about as bad a freak-out moment as I’ve had on that bike and before I knew it I was over it and the front end righted itself. I hollered into the radio that the tracks were messed up, two gold wings in the rear heard the transmission but both went down when attempting to cross the tracks. Fortunately aside from a cut on one elbow nobody was hurt. But we were quite exasperated that anyone would leave those tracks in such horrid conditions. Once we collected our wits were all continued south to 231 and on to Montgomery. 231 is an attractive road through rural farmland providing much scenery. After a while we finally came out from under the tropical rain band that had been haunting us all morning and we got to the BarBQ joint. After eating I made a quick exit as I had a long way to go. From Montgomery I went north and then got onto 82 which goes directly to Tuscaloosa. Let me tell you, there is NOTHING on that road. Unless trees count as something of note. That has to be one of the longer stretches of absolute wilderness I’ve seen in the state. I got to Tuscaloosa to find that the university in their collective wisdom had managed to mangle up the parking situation even more than last year. It took me a long while to find a parking spot even with something as small as a gold wing. They literally blocked off half the campus for reason unknown except to force most people to park in their expensive pay lots and take busses to the game. The game itself was rather horrible as yet again some pathetic nobody team humbled the tide in front of their home fans, fortunately unlike last year, we actually won the game though we didn’t look good doing it. Afterwards if the parking was bad, the messed up traffic afterwards was much worse. They blocked off the popular warrior river back route away from the campus forcing everyone to take the more congested routes through town. The end result of that was that hours later I was still barely away from Tuscaloosa. I eventually stopped at the iron skillet for some breakfast and coffee. I finally rolled in my driveway about 1AM. The problem with the University is that the people making all these decisions all live there and don’t have to endure the virtual hell that has become the after game rolling train wreck to Birmingham.