The riders:

Ed (Ogre)
Michelle (Blesk)
Blake (The Lazy Destroyer)

We meet up at a gas station right off of 400 at roughly 5:00am:

Ed's wife Kathy (Fiona) was nice enough to show up in the morning to be the witness for our paperwork!

Everybody getting the final touches ready for the 1k mile ride:

We roll out and hit 400s/285w/20w to make out way to Alabama. We make it just past where Talladega GP is and we pull off for gas. I make a horrible choice as this exit only has a station with an old-school style pump. So we keep on to the next exit where we can get a proper receipt!

We pull into the next exit and the gas station is closed! 7:00am on a Saturday, WTF?! We decide to fill up anyways since the pumps were on and naturally both Ed and my pumps are out of receipt paper! Ah crap not a good start!!!

We wanted to take a quick break so we head to the NEXT exit to grab a bite to eat and get a receipt there!

Eastabooga, AL (what an odd name). This is about 1 mile away from the big Talladega track:

We grab a quick snack and get back on the road!

Get through Birmingham and hit up 78 to go towards Memphis. This is still just a highway but will be Interstate 22 very soon. I was warned that this is a boring stretch without many gas stops. They were right! At first it wasn't so bad but after a short amount of time we were going 15-20 miles without seeing any gas stop exits. Traffic was also non-existent on this stretch.

We stop in Winfield AL for another gas stop and to stretch the legs:

Make another stop just 50 miles short of Memphis at Holly Springs MS. At this point we are really getting hungry! I debate whether I should snack but decide to hold off for the real food in TN. Michelle sends a quick message to her boss to prove she is staying busy on her day off!

The plan is to head over to Beale St and then after lunch make a quick loop through Arkansas to get that state off of the list before making the never-ending trek through Tennessee. It would make a long afternoon because that state surely looks like it never ends!

Getting into Memphis I start to have GPS troubles! :eek: My GPS tells me to take an exit that is 8 miles ahead, but the street name it gives me is for another exit number 4 miles earlier. I decide to go by the name and not the number, which proves to be a mistake, and a bit of a brain fart on my part. Trying to re-calculate the route, I accidentally clear the map!!! So I have Ed lead the group until I can fix it later.

He head through AR first before hitting lunch and make out way back to Memphis.A short jaunt through the city and we are at our destination!

We pack three bikes into one space to save a little on parking fees:

I ask them "Okay, where should be go?!"... They were indecisive!

We wander around and finally... Beale St!

Random trolly rolling through:

Looks like a great area, but damn we are hungry! Where is the FOOD?!?!

We ended up at the Blues City Cafe:

This was the first thing I saw on a quick "best food on beale st" Google search so I knew it had to be promising!

We get in and after looking the menu over, we all three decide on a half rack of ribs.

Waiting for some food:

Finally, the food arives! 400 miles so far and it's looking worth it:

Ah, that's about all I could eat:

Those ribs were friggin awesome and I couldn't get enough! I wanted to eat more but being on the bike... I figured bad things would happen if I filled up too much on the rest of the food there.

Ed (Ogre), with the total lunch domination:

I really couldn't help but get a picture of this sign over the kitchen area:

We decided to wander around a bit, here are a few random shots:

With our lunch out of the way, we head back to the bikes to continue on our journey. The parking lot attendant was nice enough to get out of his air conditioned car to get this pic for us:

At our next stop in Jackson TN I try to take a pic of Blesk but she beats me to the punch:

Random train next to the gas station. If you look closely there is a window mount AC unit on the passenger car, so I think it was a restaurant or something:

Continuing on I-40 we see a small caravan of oversize load semis carrying tanks. As in the military kind. There was no turret on them but it was pretty cool to see.

Head into Kingston TN and we take a longer break and get the chains all lubed up and stuff, I think we're nearing the 600 mile mark.

Another stop in Crossville TN and appears we just nearly missed the rain there:

We grab a bite to eat there at the Wendy's and continue on:

Head into Knoxville and it's getting dark. They are doing construction on I-40 and have all the detours kinda screwed up, making all of our GPS units pretty much worthless. I tried to follow mine as long as possible until a detour that wasn't on my map caused it to freak and kept tracking off of the side roads and not the interstate. I pull off and realize theirs is doing the same thing. We make a very "scenic" ride through downtown Knoxville before getting our way back to I-40. It really felt good to get out of that city! My GPS was just about one step short of shooting itself in the head with the amount of recalculating it did there.

Make out way into Hardford TN, one of the last big stops before getting into NC and also just before the twisty section of I-40. We gas up and the attendant there asks us what we are doing. I tell her 1000 miles and she's like, "Wow, that's a lot of miles in one weekend" so I tell her we're doing it in just one day. She says... "Oh... Well... Um... Good luck!"

The twisty section of I-40 was actually pretty fun although pretty tough in the dark. It was odd though as it seemed to just keep repeating itself with the same turns. It was almost like there was a 3- or 4-turn template and they just kept reusing it, because the turns kept looking the same, regarding the layout and turn radius. This could not be the case and my fatigue setting in but it just all seemed to repeat itself a lot. Overall a pretty fun section for an interstate!

The only downside was it killed our speed, as going 45-50 was plenty fast in the dark there, and it was for about 30 miles.

Before getting into SC, we split off from I-40 and get a shortcut on Hwy 25. This also killed our speeds to but I think the only other option was the long way on Interstates.

Make out way through Greenville and make our last stop at Pelzer SC. None of our cards worked at the pumps... so we all had to pay through the cashier there. It was by far the longest transaction I've ever done paying for gas, and I think Ed and Michelle can agree!

We were wore out by this point but we were very close to home now. We decide to hit Cumming and make out way to Ed's house there. This would also make it easier for Kathy to sign the final papers since we were running way late on the trip. In my head I was thinking we wouldn't get home any earlier than 3am at this point, yikes!

South on I-85 we finally make it to Georgia! Shortly after we get a bike behind us and although he was going faster than us when approaching, he doesn't pass and hangs behind us. I thought it was odd that there was a bike on the road this late at night, and a sportbike styled one at that. He follows our every pass but is staying a decent pace back behind us.

We make out GA-20 exit and head west towards Cumming. Our buddy behind us follows. This is where I'm thinking "this is getting weird". I know I've been on the road a long time today but this is just odd. At a stop light I glance back and he waves, so I figure he must be just really bored?! I don't see any guns or hatches or shovels on the bike so I'm thinking we're probably okay.

We finally make it to 400 area and pull off into the big gas station there, for our final gas receipt. Our stalker follows, and I'll be damned, it's Jeff (Vengeance)!!

Apparently he's been following our progress on the SPOT tracker and hung around Commerce to meet up with us. Way cool! Unfortunately due to our bad timing he was hanging out there for a little longer than planned but stuck with it and hung around until we rode by.

I think the official mileage was 1,125 miles at this point, around 22 hours elapsed time:

We make our way to Ed and Kathy's place and hang out for a little bit and proceed to pass out! I head back home since I'm sure Tiff is at home worried so I pass on Ed/Kathy's gracious offer to let me stay there so I can head home.

Awesome ride guys, ya'll did awesome!!!

The 7-state tour of the Southeast: GA, AL, MS, TN, AR, NC, SC

SPOT data: