USA - Canada - Mexico 2016 - Day 26

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Saturday, 1 October 2016 - Birmingham - Nashville

Early start to get the bike to Pinnacle Motorsports in Bessemer, 32 miles from where we were staying, by 9:00am. I planned to be there early but didn't know how traffic would be, the quickest route appeared to be straight through the city centre, on a Saturday morning? No worries, do these guys know how to handle traffic. There in just over 30 minutes, speed limit 70mph almost all the way. Compare that to the shambles of getting into the city centre coming up from the Gold Coast.

More than happy with the service department, oil changed and sent on our way with best wishes for a safe ride and a washed bike. What more could you ask for. Looks like a good business, 3 new and 1 second hand Goldwins on the floor, a range of accessories upstairs. Selling Kawasaki, Yamaha as well as Honda bikes, their main business appears to be side-by-side 4 wheelers including Polaris.

Heading north to Nashville we crossed the Tennessee River just before crossing back from Alabama into Tennessee stopping for lunch at Athens. I was starting to get confused as to whether the GPS really had got us lost. We were in BIrmingham, staying at Leeds, having lunch in Athens and there was a semi parked nearby with Crete written on the side. Right hemisphere, wrong continent?

After another sleep inducing, boring ride up the interstate, we reached our motel for the night, unloaded the bike and headed into Nashville for a sight seeing tour and site visiting. Saturday afternoon in Nashville, you gotta be kidding. I was talking to a guy while the bike was being serviced and he was telling me how a friend of his gave up riding after coming to Nashville, I can understand why. People wandering everywhere, many 3 or 4 sheets to the wind, stopping in the street to let people get out of the car, it seems that as long as your emergency flashers are on, anything goes. I had one young lady get out of the car on the traffic side, opened the door directly in front of me and got out of the car without looking, almost took her and us out. I explained very nicely that it was not the clever thing to do, water off a duck's back apparently. The traffic consists of buses, cars, horse drawn carriages, golf carts, (no kidding), tractors towing trailers full of (full) people, chaos.

Anyway, we survived the massed throngs of people and made it to a nice Mexican Restaurant for dinner. If you can judge the quality of a restaurant by the number of cars in the car park, then this was a beauty and so it proved.

I've put up a few photos as usual just to relieve you of the boredom of my rantings.

Off to visit Elvis tomorrow.

477 klms today, total to date 9,725 klms.