Day 2 finds us waking up at Georgetown. Went out for the free continental breakfast in the lobby. A deciding factor for us now, figure it into the cost of the room. If it's the same price as a room without breakfast, or even just slightly higher, that will push the decision in that direction. Plus free wi-fi now as the netbook fits in the tail trunk. Anyway.... ate breakfast, took Steve back some breakfast. Got on the road about 9:30 a.m. Stopped just 2 miles down the road, as there was a cache at the rest area and I collected on Steve's promise to let me get at least one cache in Kentucky and Tennessee. This was the Kentucky cache, called Bluegrass Welcome. Quick and easy rest area cache. Dropped a duck travel bug, and dipped the rest of my bugs.
Now truly on the road, off we went down I-75. Skies looked a bit threatening most of the day, but you know, it didn't rain again! The Lord must be smiling down upon us as rain would have not been a good thing on a motorcycle. We stopped for gas somewhere in southern Kentucky, I don't remember quite where, and also made a quick stop at a weird place, just over the border into Tennessee. There is an exit to nowhere there. Looks like they might have been planning to put a road in but didn't get around to it. The exit even has a highway overpass and you can actually go the other direction if you need to. Expensive turnaround!
Hit Knoxville then headed east on I-40. Time for another break. Stopped at a rest area not too far east of Knoxville to do a cache named East Bound and Down. In one of those weird geocaching coincidences, the last to sign the log were Team Peterson of Grand Rapids. Yep, I know them. Also, they left a purple bear that had been brought back from Tennessee (Geo-Woodstock) by Band of Bradys, another West Michigan cache team, and dropped in Team Peterson's home cache. So this bear travel bug (which I think should be named boomerang now) went from Tennessee to West Michigan, from West Michigan to Tennessee, and now back to West Michigan. I will probably take it down to geobash next week, though, to break the cycle.
On from there. Got to Johnson City and the rally (more properly to Gray where the fairgrounds are located.) We had to go through registration at a nearby school building, where we had to wait quite a while for walk-ins. Guess we weren't the only ones that didn't want to commit to paying the pre-registration fee. In our case we weren't entirely sure Steve would get the time off with the transition to the new company, and didn't want to go through the hassle of getting a refund.
Once we were finally registered, we went on to the fairgrounds, finally found a place to park, and walked around some of the vendors for a while. It was hot and humid, really not a lot of fun once you get all heated up. We also went to the "country store" and bought event t-shirts, and were given patches, a little backpack, a pin, a sticker, and a plastic mug. The bike is really full now.
We had a spot of trouble getting to the hotel. We couldn't get reservations in Johnson City, so ended up in Kingsport, about a 10-15 minute ride north. I misread the directions, though, so we ended up in the wrong direction twice. Finally found the hotel. By this time we were both tired, hot, and sweaty. And to find out that Steve has some concerns regarding some vibrations on the bike which shouldn't be there. Nothing that will cause the bike to fall apart on the trip, but it shouldn't be there. Guess he's tried to have them (our local BMW dealer where we bought the bike) find it without luck. So he's pretty frustrated about that, and about motorcycling in general (at least tonight anyway. Maybe tomorrow will be a new day and he'll be in a better mood. Hope so.
We walked up to the KFC and had dinner, then Dairy Queen for dessert. Walked back to the hotel, and while Steve covered up the bike, I went to church. The church across the street that is, where there was a cache. 375 feet from our hotel room. Sweet. There are two others in different directions less than a tenth of a mile away as well. Picked up two more travel bugs in the cache tonight, will take them to geobash with me next week.
I was so hot and sticky that I took a quick swim in the pool (outdoor) and came back feeling refreshed. On to the high speed where I logged my caches and also realized we were just 3 miles from Virginia so Steve (probably reluctantly) agreed that we could go to the nearest Virginia cache tomorrow so I can add another state to my list.
We're also planning (as of the last time we talked about it tonight anyway) to go to a seminar tomorrow about planning your own bike trip to Europe. Probably will never happen but you never know. Steve also wants to test drive a similar bike to his so he can see if the vibration thing is just his bike or common to the model. He was talking to some other riders of the same kind of bike here at the motel tonight and they don't have the problem Steve has. Not a good sign.
Here's hoping day 3 goes better than day 2 ended.
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