Day 44 Wash day

Plagued with guilt, I checked the oil and fitted the check valve, she’s a little lower on oil and I’ll need to find a purveyor of SAE 20W-50 soon to drip feed her with. The delay cost me dear. As I packed the bike I saw, and lamely videoed, a phenomenal storm front racing in from the lake. The sheer velocity of it was shocking. I knew my dry day was over and considered retreating back inside the hotel and drinking the hours away but the road called me, dear.

I pulled into the nearest gas station to fill the tank, their internet was down along with all the traffic lights in town as 35-45 mph winds had ripped through taking down communications and scattered leafy branches across the roads. Waterproof gear now on I I lurked under the eaves waiting for the worst to pass and studying the radar for a path less sodden. They invited me inside to wait and, leaving the bike parked by a dumpster, I went in for a coffee. People often ask and compliment me on the bike and when a local came in and said something about it I trotted out a stock reply about her age and condition, “no” he said, “I’ve just backed my truck into your bike and knocked it over!”.

I trotted out and, with a calm demeanour, surprising to me, tempered by so many set backs, hauled her back up onto her spindly feet.

Some harm done, the left handle bar and mirror displaced, the brimming fuel tank now depleted across the blacktop and the rocker box protector now scuffed to match its right hand companion. “Shit happens” I told the guy and thanked him for letting me know.

The local police were directing traffic through the now defunct traffic lights on the road out of town and attending to a wreck at one, one car had rear-ended another at speed. I took it easy and headed east through the wet forest, the WD40 and my other efforts to keep the water and electricity apart held out and she didn’t miss a beat. I’d set Lansing as my first port in the storm, large enough to have motels and with a with some vague undeserved fondness having once worked for a fork lift truck company in Basingstoke, Lansing Bagnall. I made it there with enough ease and time to spare that Jackson (birthplace of the Republican Party) became an option and only got caught in one lightening storm on the way.

“I’ll fuck the fucker up” said the lady in motorcycle gang colours standing at the reception of ‘America’s Best Value Inn & Suites’ having been locked out of her room by a malfunctioning lock and, now ejected from the motel, unable to retrieve her possessions and those of her equally large companion without the attendance of a lock-smith. I waited patiently for the fracas to abate then bailed and phoned a quant little motel by a peaceful lake to the south.

A genteel lady emerged from a trap door in the floor to greet me as the only guest at the Bauer Motel on Evans Lake that evening and certainly the wettest as I had been caught by another thunderstorm on the way. Her husband came out into the rain to find a piece of gash plywood for the Guzzi to stand stably on (only the road being paved) and she enquired as to my nutrition regime then directed me to the ‘Patriot Pub & Grub’ walking distance, remarkable because nothing ever is, down the sodden road. Not a dive and not a place to meet people of my kind, or my kind of people. I ate my pulled pork and drank my Coor’s Light and retired to my homely room leaving the curtains open to welcome the lightning’s drama safe in my bed.