The more attentive amongst you will have clocked that this adventures back story is far from complete. My bad, the strange attractors in my life have kept me busy and the posts are pending. I’m not going to stress about that, my stress dance-card is already full, instead I’ll drop them in as and when time allows.
You’d think that I would have had plenty of time given that the bike showed up in Newark NJ two and a half weeks later that my naive expectation. Instead I filled the idle moments with work, more work, nights out with my friends Adam and Rusty from PA, a poker night in Jersey City with my musical friend MAJ, drinks with Peter from work, showing my old friend Brendan NYC (his first trip and working at the UN to boot) and giving Al the barman at Barrow’s Pub a few tips about pool playing.
Then the storm broke and the bike arrived, pretty much unannounced and I headed off to Newark on the PATH train to bring it back onto Manhattan.
Back to today, I had a few things to finish up at the office so rode in, fully laden and overdressed for the heat of the city traffic and my propensity to “glow”, tidied the loose ends and bade my farewells. I only got away around 1pm and I was worried that the Friday getaway gridlock would smother me, as luck would have it the roads weren’t too bad until I got snarled up in the backstreets of Newark. Serves me right for ticking the avoid motorways and tolls box. I stopped for a breather and a chance to work out why the gearshift was barely working.
No real joy there so I limped on for another 50 miles or so before stopping at a quickly-mart to take it apart in the, now, drizzling rain. It turned out that the copper-slip grease that I had smeared the bush with had turned to a paste and wiping it off and leaving the PTFE dry removed this annoying and slightly dangerous frustration.
I crossed the Delaware into PA on one of those bridges made of metal mesh with ridges designed to make a motorcycle veer alarmingly from side to side and proceeded to get a little lost because of a road closure. Shortly after the thunderstorms started and my phone ran out of juice, soon restored by gaffer taping my spare battery to the tank, it didn’t fix the rain and around 5:30 I stopped at a gas station and called a couple of motels.
Mon repos this evening is a “Budget Host” $80 palace at the end of Swamp Creek Rd outside Boyertown where I was writing this on the verandah, wondering where my next beer was coming from, when “BJ”, a scaffolder in the nuclear industry, showed up and gave me a can of Bud Lite and directions to the shop. That’s me for today, the forecast is for severe thunderstorms tonight up until 10am, I’ll get some beers and have a bath and a lie-in.
Le Mans man 