Arkansas & Construction Traffic

We left the Tennessee HOG Rally on Wednesday, May 28 and made a b-line for Little Rock, Arkansas. Originally we were going to stay in Memphis, but we had several people tell us that Beale Street has changed and that we'd need to go through a metal detector to enjoy the music. We also were told by Memphis locals that the town isn't really biker friendly and that our bikes might not be safe. That kind of news called for a change in plans!

I've already written about the crazy rain in Little Rock but I forgot a couple of things. In Arkansas as soon as a microburst hits, the semis and cars stop right on the road bringing traffic to a standstill; then slowly starting up again. We were in another microburst going uphill on a two-lane highway, and right in front of us, the semi's started slowly changing lanes moving into the fast lane, blocking all traffic and slowing it down to a crawl. We couldn't figure out why this happened but we only experienced it in Arkansas. It must be the truckers code to slow traffic in rainstorms.

Now wait til you hear about the the crazy Arkansas construction!

The ride to Little Rock was uneventful, however the traffic and construction in Arkansas was awful. Their department of transportation doesn't know how to route traffic because twice we were stopped in traffic because of construction. When I say stopped, I mean for over an hour, bumper to bumper and stop and go. No detours either. It was crazy! We were stopped so long, that we had time to take several pictures.





Imagine sitting on a hot, burning motorcycle engine...it was torture. We ended up turning off our bikes often just to cool down. I'm surprised I'm still smiling, cause I wasn't happy! My bike runs really hot.




Once we got going, the cars on the opposite side of the freeway were stopped completely and we saw lots of overheated cars, people out of the cars, walking dogs, chatting and visiting with each other. Once we came up on the construction area, we discovered that they were working off the main road. The road we working on wasn't being worked on or even blocked by construction workers; weird! We couldn't figure out why we were stopped.

On this trip, we've been through a lot of states with construction and we've had to wait and ride pretty slow all what you expect when road work is happening. However, we give Arkansas the prize for the worst traffic management ever! So next time you're stuck in traffic and UDOT or CalTrans is causing you grief be glad that you aren't in Arkansas! Unless, you live in Arkansas and I feel sorry for you!