Day 42 Flys and rain

Rochester MN has a large medical presence, a lot of the businesses that I saw were healthcare related and the Mayo Clinic dominates the town center. As we rode out of town two gentlemen who had the look of doctors gesticulated towards us. “Organ donor” I assumed was their thinking but no, one mimed a V-Twin engine to the other and it was thumbs up all round. She gets a fair bit of attention like that.

Today we were off through glorious green fields to see some of the people that make this odyssey on quirky ‘discontinued’ machinery possible, MG Cycle of Albany WI, and to thank them for their service.

I know from experience that when the GPS says 5 hours it can take 7, the discrepancy is all the time I spend stretching and scratching my head over the weather. Not today, we ploughed on leaving a breadcrumb like trail of small oil drips through Minnesota, Iowa and over the Orange river into Wisconsin.

I stopped and emailed ahead, just as well because when we arrived Gordon and his shipping guy (Clive?) are wrapping up for the day over a beer, I join them. Gordon is laid back and practical, with the easy confidence that comes from doing something that he knows inside out and loves. He’s been working on these motorcycles since the 1980’s and even put together a race team in 2008 with some success. He likes my bike and says that rusty red is the correct colour for the exhaust down pipes, hers are very rusty.

We talked about my leaking seal and I bought a replacement, it is not worth the disruption of stripping her down again to fit it, but recognising the problem and doing some small thing about it gives me comfort. Another small thing that I can do is to refit the ‘check valve’ that is intended to create a vacuum in the crank cases and keep the oil in, many people have advised me that they remove it but I now recognise that the designers might have had a valid point, what was I thinking?

Not a fan of the landscape to the south, he suggests going north east and catching the ferry across Lake Michigan, that sounds like fun, I’ll look it up. With that in mind I head north to find a motel in Madison.

Outside the Day’s Inn in the smokers ‘sin bin’ I meet Griffin and Derick from Nashville Tennessee, a broken down van has detained them here, apparently a problem with a brake pipe and smoking tyre that is not clear to me or them. They are working for a pastor in some complicated way that I don’t understand, something about a mission and not trusting him. They trade me a can of beer for cigarettes as astutely recognise the shortcomings of riding a motorcycle, flys and rain.

Tonight’s dive bar of choice is the Fire-station a friendly family owned place with character and characters and a future in the balance, the long time landlord Joe having recently passed and one of his grandchildren, Chrissy, making a great job of keeping it going for now. Rick, who worked in construction, entertained and Chrissy’s boyfriend, Spencer, a software developer, debated intelligently over what 2020 may bring.