Entry for Thursday, 29 June 2000

Sewing machine mailbox in Murfreesboro.

State road 96 outside of Murfreesboro. Light traffic and wide shoulders.

Dutton's Store on SR 96.

Inside Dutton's Store.

Narrow US 70 where I ended the ride.

Fireworks stands are everywhere now, just before July 4th.

Last Modified on 6/29/2000 at 21:28:52

Day's Narrative: It was raining lightly when I got up, but the weather report said it would clear later, so I went to the Waffle House about 6:00 a.m. and had eggs for breakfast, hoping that it would stop by the time I finished eating. It did. The breakfast was good except the grits were cold.

It was at least an hour and 15 miles outside of Murfreesboro before the early morning traffic lightened. Then SR 96 was a joy to ride on.

Dutton's general store was the first store on the highway after Murfreesboro. That was about 22 miles which is more than I like to ride before a snack break.

Shortly after Dutton's Store I reached the intersection with US 70. I had hoped that this stretch of US 70 would have light traffic since it did not connect any large towns and ran parallel to Interstate 40. Wrong again. Someday I will learn that this may be true in the West, but it isn't in the East.

I rode on US 70 for about 10 miles. It was narrow with no paved shoulder and there were a lot of tractor-trailer trucks. It was a continual battle with the trucks, with them slowing down behind me before they could pass, and traffic stacking up behind them. Finally a truck came up behind me, blew his air horn when he was about 300 feet back then passed me when he was meeting two other cars. This forced the two cars off onto the gravel shoulder opposite me. If he wanted to intimidate me he succeeded. Not more than 10 minutes later Connie caught up with me and we pulled off together beside the road. It was clear that this highway was no fun to bicycle, and appeared to also be life-threatening. I decided to put the bike in the van and ride with Connie to see if US 70 had a paved shoulder later down the road.

There was no paved shoulder. I canceled the rest of the ride. Connie and I decided to drive on into North Carolina since it was not even lunch yet and it would make tomorrow's drive to Chapel Hill much easier. We stopped at Hickory, NC.

I believe that bicycling here in the East, one has to stay on the state or county roads. There are just too many vehicles on the main US highways. The problem is that there are not too many state roads connecting towns where motels are, and county roads, which have even less traffic, are not on most maps.

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© Ray & Connie Poore, 2000