RIDING THE DRAGON PG1

Here is the Theme of the whole Texas/Tennessee connection, for 2004, between Floyd Flud and myself (Harold Halliburton).On June the 21st. Floyd is comeing up from Granbury Texas to Don Duncans in Little Rock and then they are coming to Pleasant Shade Tennessee, from here we will go on to the Smokie Mountains and ride the Dragon, a road with 318 curves in 11 miles. Floyd and Don rode from Little Rock on the 22nd of June, to Pleasant Shade. It was a wet nasty time and Floyd had a coil to short out to ground about 50 miles west of Memphis. Floyd called and let me know they would be here sometime that day, regardless. My twins were here to meet them, and eat with us, but Waynes' wife and him had to go to work at 4:00 am the next day, so they ate and left. When Floyd and Don arrived it was already dark. They had experianced a rough day, but there was more to come.

On the 23rd of June Floyd, Don and myself Got up to ride to Pigeon Forge Tn. at the foot of the Smokie Mountains. My wife Lela and one of the twins Shayne, followed along in his pick up. Here is a shot of Don and Floyd as we are about to depart on the Journey. I had planned on going through the Dragon and across the Mountains to Pigeon Forge on the 23rd, look around Pigeon Forge and rideing back home on the 24th, but it had rained all day on the 22nd and I decided to go to Pigeon Forge first and ride the dragon on the 24th.

Don is makeing some last minute adjustments to his trike, getting ready for the ride. This shows how to revive a dead Gold Wing. When your motor dies, just cut a Toyota in two, join the front and back together and let it push your Gold Wing down the road. This is just another of the many ideas used to get on the road with a trike.

Before we left the house it had started to rain enough we put on our rain suits. Here we had stopped to fuil up. We were in Cookeville about 99 miles from Knoxville and 40 miles from home.That is one of my twins (Shayne) walking between the trikes. It was still drizzeling rain here. What I want to remind you of, it is only about 2 1/2 to 3 hrs. drive from home to Pigeon Forge, about 170 miles. We left the house about 9:00 am.

We pulled off in a parking lot to meet Marie, when Don noticed he had an oil leak. At first he thought it was a gas leak. He had a 1/4" pipe comeing out of the block to his oil pressure unit, and viberation had cracked it, when he tried to tighten it up it broke off. Shayne and I got in Shaynes' truck and went to hunt up a parts store, where we purchased an easy out. We also bought some other stuff in case we couldn't remove the broken pipe. We got the pipe out and went direct with the sending unit and was ready to roll. It was raining cats and dogs from time to time. While we were here working on Dons trike it was a slack in rain. Marie decided to ride with Lela and Shayne in the truck.

Here we set in the parking lot of the Red Roof Inn, in Pigeon Forge. It had come a torrential down pour just as we left the parking lot where met Marie. Her decision to ride with Shayne and Lela had been a good one. The traffic was crawling through Knoxville due to the rain. You could barely see the vehicle ahead of you. Don and Floyd had no face shields, I had a full face helmet and I faired better in the rain than they did. All in all we were wweett, wet short of drowned. ha When we arrived here at the motel it was 5:00 pm. This 2 1/2 to 3 hr drive had turned into a 8 hour ordeal. My final comment on this is, "It was an experiance that I did enjoy, because I was rideing with friends". I didn't enjoy getting wet nor did Floyd and Don. The rain had ruined the first day, maby a better day tomorrow when we ride the dragon.

We arose the next day (the 24th) to find it was a fine mist not even enough for us to put on the rain suits. Don had shorts on, pressing the weather just a little. Floyd finally put his leather jacket on and some gloves. Thats what hot Texas weather will do for you in the mountains. ha I had on long sleeves but was beginning to get a little chilly.

Don and Floyd couldn't figure what to do with this Great Smokie Mountains sign. While they were figureing it out I took a picture or two of Floyd, Don and the sign.

We finally decided there was room for all of us at the sign, so we got a strainger there to take some pictures for us. Now we had Lela and Shayne nearby in the truck, but they didn't get out. We are about to cross the Smokies and go over into Cherokee North Caroling, some 30 miles away. This is the entrance to the park on the Tennessee side.

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