Trussville and Tunica
September 20 and 21
This report covers two days as yesterday was called off before we launched. Lucille was out and prepped to go when we received the message below. It was disappointing as I was going to ride my home state and had a handful of people that wanted to come out and cheer me on. Dorsey and I loaded up and headed south in the White Whale. We did encounter some very heavy rain and saw the potential for near term flooding in a couple of areas we travelled in. It was probably a good call.
We arrived in Trussville mid-afternoon and setup camp in the hotel parking lot. It was a relaxed afternoon where many were fixing last minute issues. I helped one rider by soldering up a crack in his gas tank and gave my two cents on a magneto problem another rider had. Cecil and Wes showed up to see the circus.
The ride from Trussville to Tunica was the longest to date at 282 miles. We were lucky enough to get about 100 miles of this ride without rain. Today is the closest I have come to ending up on the sweep truck. We were riding a state highway in Mississippi at about mile 200 when all the sudden I lost power. Turns out the master link on my primary chain failed. I replaced the link and it failed within 50 feet of taking off. I was sweating bullets as the sweep truck was probably 20 miles from me. I happened to have a complete primary chain I had removed earlier in my saddlebag. I swapped it out and made it to the end. I believe the master link failure was related to a problem with the chain I removed so I discarded it.
This little piece of metal can cost you a perfect score!
