Day 41 Black blood

No rush this morning, I awoke to rain and motel WIFI so flaky I had to reconnect every 10 minutes. This blog doesn’t write itself but I have fallen into some routines to make the process more efficient, hopefully not at the expense of originality. When I hit the motel room the phone and tablet go onto the charger along with the back-up battery, also onto the WIFI to sync any photos, video and timeline. I retreat to a bar, normally pre-selected along with the motel for their proximity and dive like qualities, to scribble drivel into a notebook. A race between the alcohol and recollection, a cocktail of fatigue, frustrated creativity and the growing intoxication boosted by my ‘one meal or less’ nutrition regime.

Come the dawn I wake and transpose the scrawl, edit the photo’s (mainly to compensate for my inability to hold the phone level or keep my fingers out of the way) and try to make some sense of it all.

Today was little different save the conundrum of what to do with a massive biker festival banner, I rolled it up tightly and conveniently it is only a little wider than my load. Ejected from the Motel 8 at kicking out time I endured the remaining squalls on our path north eastwards above the line of storms.

That worked out well, marred (not Johnny) only by the diversions around flooded roads and the revelation that she has now worn through her rear crankshaft seal, evidenced by a small drip of her black blood below the bell housing (bell shaped but housing the flywheel and clutch). I stopped, paranoid that the haemorrhage was killing her, and checked the engine oil level, all good still, she might make the remaining 1,200 miles to NYC. The weather improved so much I took off the waterproofs and fitted the darkened visor.

At times the roads were so long and deserted that I was tempted to park her astride the center line for a photo opportunity but fearful of the potential wrath or worse should one of the big trucks show up and notice or not notice her, I bottled it.

Rochester MN arrived and I stopped on the outskirts to phone Tammy at the 2nd Street Inn and Suites, not too far from Kathy’s Pub. “Yes hon” she confirmed (“hon” is how men are addressed in Minnesota apparently) they had a room, actually a massive suite, for me and when I arrived regaled me with tales of her war bride mother from Liverpool and her trips as a child to England. She still had cravings for Cadbury’s flakes and directed me to park the Guzzi under a fire exit out of the expected rain. I parked and unpacked and walked away, there was a crash and she was lying on her side spilling freshly topped up fuel from her tank. A curse on the high profile of the tyres and the softness of the uneven bitumen, a grunt and the superhuman strength of a parent lifting a car from a crushed toddler and she was back on her feet. I lashed her to the fire escape and escaped to the bar.

A bar with an elevator to a rooftop smoking area, perfect, innkeepers of the world take note this is the way to do it.