Day 7
Weds 12th Aug

 

I thought Sam was underestimating what we can achieve when he said that we’d probably only do about 100 miles, but when we only managed 30 miles I thought that he was actually quite optimistic! We would have got a lot further had we left town straight away, but we decided to stop off at the local Honda dealer to get a few things for the bikes and admire their collection of vintage motorcycles. I’m pleased we went there as not only was there an extensive collection of gorgeous bikes, which saw me saying ‘I want that one, and that one, and that one…’ over and over again, but we also got top notch service which seems to be lacking these days.

 

 

 

We got some new air filters as ours were on their last legs, and also a new ignition barrel each as the Chinese ones we’d bought on ebay only lasted a week, suplise suplise. Ed was very happy to have a key as his bike has been hot wired for the past six weeks, and I was happy to have a new one as my bike keeps turning itself off every five minutes which is rather annoying. By the time we’d done that and had lunch it was around 2pm when we finally left Corinth.

 

 

It was when Ed got a flat about 20 miles later that we remembered that we were supposed to get another spare tube and some more rubber cement, typical.

 

 

 

Luckily we had just enough rubber cement to fix the puncture, which was caused by a long piece of metal going right in.

 

 

 

We were just setting about fixing it when a local woman drove past in her car and stopped to see if we needed any help. Here name was Jessica and she was brilliant. Not only did she go back to her house to get us a tub of rubber cement to take with us, but she also presented us with a little box of things she’d found on the road, ranging from a flint arrow head to some prehistoric black teeth.

 

 

 

They were fascinating, and as Jessica had a love for history we got an insight in to what the road used to be used for back in the day. You forget that hundreds of years ago Indians walked the roads we ride now, and that thousands of years before that it used to be the sea bed. She chatted to us about all sorts while Ed fixed the tyre, and then invited us back to her house as she wanted to give us more things. She used to be in Intel in the Marine Corp, based in Iraq, and had so many stories and insights that really got me thinking. And being in ‘the buckle of the bible belt’ as she called it, it was refreshing to talk to an American in that particular area that was so broad minded and got straight to the point. She certainly had a way with words, having us laughing a lot with all her stories, and we very much admired her outright honesty with her thoughts and feelings. She pointed out that if she voiced her opinions to anyone that lived within a 30 mile radius she would probably be outcast. I think we were a breath of fresh air for her, and she jumped at the chance to chat with us and help us, in fact she couldn’t do enough for us. We left with water bottles, army rations, freeze-dried food and some waterproof matches, and if we could have carried anything else she would have plied us with more.

 

 

It had been great chatting to Jessica but as we were losing light we had to make a move, and managed another 10 miles or so before we spotted a place to pitch our tent. Everywhere has ‘POSTED’ and no trespassing signs, but we managed to find a little spot hidden from the road and put the tent up for the night. Despite not getting that far it had been an interesting day, it’s amazing the people you cross paths with when you least expect it. I think it was Ted Simon that once said that he looked forward to his bike breaking down, as that’s when the adventure starts. So true.