T-Storms and Heartburn Relief

This entry is for Monday, 23 May 2011:

Last night we had severe thunderstorms with heavy rain and light hail about 4:30 AM. Fortunately, the hail was small and no damage to the bikes parked outside occurred.

I had "heartburn" over the oil indicator light incident that I experienced yesterday so we decided to have my bike checked at the closest Harley dealer that is open on Mondays. That turned out to be Wildcat Harley-Davidson located in London, KY. London was roughly 80 miles east of the Columbia, KY hotel where we stayed last night.

Today's ride started out wet with us donning full rain gear from the hotel to the HD dealer.

I got the bike checked out and repaired in about and hour and a half. Turned out that the oil indicator sensor was defective and needed to be replaced. This is a minor repair and was a great relief to me as it avoided costly and time consuming repairs. Anyway, we were back on the road from the dealer around noon.

From the HD dealer the weather had cleared up and we headed south and west to get us back on the planned route which as you may have guessed follows roads with the AAA map scenic route dots.

This route took us through the Boone National Forest. We went through several rural communities in KY and TN before hitting Rt. 111 and Rt. 60 into Cleveland, TN. Cleveland is located to north and east of Chattanooga and is the home of Lee (as in Robert E.) University. This ride today totaled 350 miles.

After several days of riding through parts of rural America and making some observations, I have a few questions for my blog readers:

1. What is the most common home type in rural America?

2. What is the most common luxury home type in rural America?

3. How can you tell how many generations of family have lived at a given property?

Read on to the end of today's blog for my answers to the above questions based on observations on this trip.

Overall, today's ride was good beyond the early light rain we had in the morning. We had lunch at the Ole Country Cafe in Robbins, TN. Gerry and I both had the local special: "Roast Beef Manhattan." Think of a hot roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes in the middle of it covered with brown gravy. Yum! For dinner in Cleveland we had Italian at Roma's downtown. I had the Penne Bolognese which was very good. Of course, Paul, we had desert at the local DQ.

Tomorrow we are heading east into western North Carolina to visit Deals Gap and the Dragon's Tail (a.k.a. Rt. 129) and then on to a bunch of mountain roads in TN and KY, generally heading north.

Answers to questions:

1. Single wide modular home.

2. Double wide modular home.

3. Divide the number of abandoned vehicles of like kind in the yard by 3 (e.g., number of abandoned pickup trucks, or number of abandoned quads).