Went to bed early last night, but didn’t help much. Crazy thunderstorm last night woke me up around midnight. I lay there for a bit before realizing my tent actually leaks. I don’t know if it was because the rain was extra hard, or I have holes. but the inside of the fly was definitely wet and would occasionally drip into the main tent. In a brief lull in the storm, I went out and pegged out the fly. That seemed to help a little.

Got up at 7:30 to lube the chain and pack. Packing a wet tent still sucks and I don’t think I would have any idea how to pack the bags and bike if it were still raining.  Still a slow start – the heat makes getting going very difficult. Even with a shower, I was dripping sweat before everything was on the bike.  A young couple was kind enough to stop by on their way out to ask if I was having problems and offered me the use of their tools.

I had tried to do some research for things to do in Nashville before I left. But I wasn’t interested in any of the top attractions. I would have considered going to the Opry radio show thing, but I got my act together to late for the Sat snow and nothing was really open on Sunday. Even Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack was closed Sun/Mon. I decided to swing by the Parthenon. Might not get to see it anytime soon in Greece, but a full size replica is still good. Unfortunately, it was Sunday morning so it wasn’t open. I gave it a shot!

Back on the highway with a target of Deals Gap and riding the Dragon.  I took a quick break to grab lunch at Hardee’s.  Not very impressed.  Kind of reminds me of Harvey’s back in Canada – not sure if that’s just a name thing.  I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat there again.

The Dragon – it really is quite a nice bit of road.  Followed a couple of Harleys up… And they kindly pulled over at the lookout.  I stopped with them and took a few pics.  They kept giving me looks until they suggested I go ahead – one of them had brought his brand new Ultra and wasn’t about to do anything questionable.  I told them I’d rather follow anyhow.  I might have gone a little faster if they weren’t in front of me, but having something to follow and remind oncoming traffic that there were bikes was worth slowing down.

Quite a nice bit of road.  Lots of turns, quite clean, no tar snakes.  Marked turns.  But it is quite busy in both directions and vehicles don’t tend to stay in their lanes very well.  Some of the 10mph turns are a little too slow for Mendy and the luggage.  I could feel the luggage dragging the bike down and had to slip the clutch to keep things in control.

I got into Deals Gap early in the afternoon.   Lost a bunch of time setting up camp, but was sorely tempted to take Mendy back out unencumbered.  In the end, I chose not to – I think it would be too disappointing for the rest of the trip to know all I had to do was lose the weight…

Grabbed a quick burger combo at the Grill and pulled out the laptop to process the video and try to jot down some thoughts.   A couple at the next table gave me a hard time for ‘working’ on vacation.  I explained what I was trying to do and the wife insisted I write about them and invited me to join them.

Chatting continued over a few drinks.  Topics ranged from politics, war, draft dodging and hunting.  I suspect things started getting off track when we started talking about ‘land of the law’, capital punishment and religion.  Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the trinity all came up.  But one thing we did agree on was the need for people to do the work and explore what they believed rather than blindly accept what organized religion feeds you.