Day 6 – Mississippi Bound

We broke camp in the Pine Forest after a very restful night of sleep east of Counce, Tennessee and headed to Corinth, Mississippi. Our plan was to spend the night in a hotel there after spending two nights in the wilderness in tents and make a determination of our progress or lack of progress toward our ultimate goal of Clinton, Arkansas.

The beautiful red clay and dirt roads in Mississippi were wide and not challenging. There were beautiful vistas showing lush pine forests.

  
As we rolled into Corinth, Jeff’s bike developed another problem. The semi automatic clutch went out and he ended up peddling the bike a few blocks before we could find a place to pull over and assess the situation. As with every other time we have stopped, more people gathered to look at the bike and ask questions. One man stopped and asked if he could help. In a few minutes gave us the name of a motorcycle shop that he highly recommended. Jeff called the shop and they sent a young man out with the trailer and we loaded the bikes and we’re off to the Yamaha Honda dealership. We were met at Lake Hill Motors by Duane the owner. This is a very large dealership with a number of mechanics and other employees. However, Duane was interested in the bikes and personally got down on his knees and took off the clutch cover. He was able to fix the bike after a few adjustments in just a few minutes (no parts were needed) and refused payment. Jeff gave the young driver of the truck and trailer a nice tip for his efforts since Duane would not except any money. Just another example of great people we have met so far in Tennessee and Mississippi.

After getting the bike fixed we rode them to a Holiday Inn Express where we cleaned off two days of dirt and grime from ourselves. We called Sam, the developer of the TAT who lives in Corinth and he met us for a drink at Ruby Tuesday’s. Below is a photo of Sam with Jeff and I on either side of him with one of our Motopeds. 

  
Later that evening after assessing our lack of mileage gained into the trip and the fact that we have now been gone six days, we decided we would cut the trip short. We will have gone about the number of days that we wanted to be gone but only about half of the distance. There are many reasons for our lack of mileage – some of which has been noted in previous posts.

• One flat tire
• Time spent picking Jeff up out of two water hazards
• Time spent letting the bike dry out after getting it out of the water hazards
• The time spent talking to the locals about the bikes and our adventures actually took a fair amount of our time
• Having to go much slower than planned on some of the very loose gravel roads where the bikes were a little unstable.
• Let’s see, have I mentioned the multiple times that we needed to stop and look at our maps and GPS because we had made some wrong turns.
• Set up and tear down time for the days we camped which also meant that we needed to stop early so we would not be setting up camp in the dark – keeping in mind that we have no lights of any kind on the bikes.

Well, that’s probably enough whining about why we came up short of our mileage goal. However, in no way does that diminish the experiences, thrills of the ride, time spent with the wonderful locals.
So we called my brother Mark to determine when he might be able to come from Bedford, Indiana to pick us up. His schedule matched ours and we planned for him to pick us up in Ripley, Mississippi the next day.