This ride was motivated primarily as an excuse to see my friend Ron in Tennessee and for exercise to keep in shape for possibly more trips. No pictures. And, this was the easiest trip of all. I chose to take Rt. 11, picking it up in Chambersburg, PA and following it all the way to Knoxville. It parallels I-81 most of the entire way to Knoxville. The road is generally in very good condition with good shoulders much of the way, probably because it has to serve as a detour route when there is a major malfunction on I-81. Only one long grade for a mile or two going up to Christiansburg and a couple others were of any consequence, but I was able to make all the hills on the trip. The hills did not pose as much of a problem as the 2015 trip, which hopefully means I have made some recovery from the heart issue.
I couldn’t believe the weather was perfect with not a drop of rain the entire ride. I left in mid-September and expected some cool or chilly days, but I was able to ride every single day in my shorts. Speaking with Ron the night before my last day through Knoxville, he warned me of the big football game at UT (University of Tennessee) and a possible traffic nightmare. (I barely was able to find a motel room that night 40 miles east of Knoxville because of the game.)
I left at the crack of dawn and went through the mid-town area and there was not a clue of anything unusual. Very little traffic. I also followed a nice ‘greenway’ segregated bike path through much of the Knoxville area to the far west side where I was only about 5-10 miles from Ron’s. The hardest part of the entire trip was pushing my bike up Ron’s steep, long, gravel-and-dirt half mile driveway. But not as hard as at the end of the 2015 trip when the driveway was mostly mud from heavy recent rain!
Anyway it was great to see Ron’s and his wife’s smiling faces….as well as his several head of cattle and pigs.
Rather than have my wife drive all the way down again to pick me up, I insisted on taking a bus home from Knoxville. This also gave me an excuse to drive back down months later to visit and pick up the bike. The bus trip was a disaster. 26 hours without sleep and 3 days later I came down with the worst chest cold since I was a young teenager. I remember one person continually coughing about two rows behind me. I was sick the entire month of October.