October 12, 2021
Day Three: Dover, Tennessee to Dickson, Tennessee
Great riding, but: Dogs. So many, many dogs.
I didn't sleep well, waking up multiple times before getting up for good at 4:30. I need to cut back on the caffeine at night I suppose. (He writes at 7:24 PM with a Diet Pepsi literally at his right hand...)
It had rained in the night, and it was chilly in the pre-dawn when I stepped out of the room. It would be a few hours before it was light enough to start riding, so I did some chores, an unexpected one of which was cleaning my toiletry bag and its contents, when I discovered that a travel-sized container of shampoo had popped open and coated everything.
By the time I rode away from the motel, which should change its name to something like "Deer Hunter's Haven", given its focus on that specific clientele, it had warmed up to 58 degrees. Nice.
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I stopped just down the road from the motel and went into a McDonald's and had a couple of egg-and-cheese biscuits. Two old men were sitting inside, and asked the Usual Questions about what I was doing. One of them surprised me by mentioning that he had actually ridden a little bit of Bikecentennial in 1976, before suffering a major crash on a downhill, thus ending his participation.
The men told me that another touring cyclist had been in the McDonald's yesterday morning: A guy riding from the Canadian border in Minnesota to New Orleans. They said he told them that he rode 80 to 100 miles a day, and stopped every 500 miles to get a motel room, presumably stealth camping the rest of the time. Very much not my own wimpy style.
I assumed this was some young buck, but when I asked them how old he was, they replied "68" (!)
Soon after I left McDonald's, I exited onto a truly great series of empty country roads. Riding conditions were perfect this morning.
There was zero vehicle traffic for perhaps 15 miles, but I was surprised to encounter a young, fit woman out for a run on one of the country lanes. She warned me about a mean dog just ahead, telling me that she had to alter her route ever since the dog had puppies.
Sure enough, the dog came out and chased me. This was the first of many, many dog incidents today, although most would be in the afternoon.
After about 20 miles I reached the outskirts of Erin, population 1,490. One of the first things I noticed was a billboard advertising a government program called "Head Start." I hadn't thought about Head Start in years, but when I saw the sign I had a flashback to when I attended this program in rural Kentucky 50 years ago. It's one my of most vivid early childhood memories: They taught us to finger paint, and I distinctly remember the teacher having to coax me to touch the paint, which for some reason I was afraid to do at first. I can still remember the strange (to me) smell of the finger paint 50 years later.
I stopped in Erin at one of the relatively rare gas stations with tables at which to sit and eat, and ordered some delicious read beans and rice. I initially ordered the small size, but when that didn't satisfy me, I sheepishly walked back to the counter and ordered another one. The cook poked her head around the corner: "It's good, ain't it!" she laughed.
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I slowly rode through downtown Erin and looked things over. There wasn't much going on.
I hadn't carefully devised a route out of town, so I endured about a mile of busy highway before exiting back onto country roads. The dog chases began in earnest now. The dog situation in this part of Tennessee is as bad or worse than anything in Kentucky, which of course is infamous among cyclists for the many dogs running loose.
At one point I rode past a decrepit farmhouse from which several large, noisy wild turkeys emerged.
I was feeling quite smug about the great route I'd worked out, when the computerized lady's voice on the RideWithGps app on my phone instructed me to turn left onto something-or-other "Ennis Road". But this is what I saw when I looked to my left:
I worked out a new route on the side of the road, never my favorite thing to do, but something I find myself doing frequently nonetheless.
Roads continued to be nice, but dogs continued to be plentiful, and now they appeared in groups of three or four. There seemed to be many more loose dogs living in this region than people.
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Finally after several nice miles, good old "Tom Brown Road" turned to rough loose gravel. I walked the bike up a steep hill. I'm pretty sure I could not have ridden it.
At the top of the hill my grunting efforts attracted the attention of several dogs at a combination farmhouse/car graveyard. They were too far away to catch me, though, as the road mercifully turned back to pavement.
I arrived in "Tennessee City", which despite its name appeared to be a small rural community on a busy highway intersection. There was gas station there, where I hung out for a while trying to devise a way to get to Dickson (population 14,538), my destination for the day after my earlier navigation failure, without enduring what was doubtless terrible traffic in the highway and interstate junction where the hotels were.
A succession of characters streamed in and out of the store during the 20 minutes I sat at a table with a sports drink. One of them, an old man in a very, very dirty white t-shirt (multiple signs on the front of the store sternly warned that shoes and shirts were REQUIRED) sat down next to me and insisted on showing me his collection of loose change, for some reason.
I talked to him for a while, and then, having worked out an indirect route to my destination on a series of zigzagging backroads, left for Dickson.
Except for a necessary mile or less on the shoulder of an ultra-busy highway, it was a great route, and traffic was light.
After checking in to my motel I visited the few fast food places in walking distance, searching semi-successfully for vegetarian options, finally settling for french fries from Hardees and a grilled cheese sandwich from Dunkin' Donuts.
Today's ride: 68 miles (109 km)
Total: 231 miles (372 km)
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