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Embarking on an Ill Advised Trip
Wednesday, March 9, 2005 Day Ten First order of business was to make additional repair to my bike. When I went outside, there were three other bikes parked next to ours. I didn't even hear them come in, but Ron said he heard them around 1 AM.
I positioned my bike next to a parking bumper to sit on, and got out my brand new, now fully charged, cordless drill, and other tools to extract the broken screw.
The guys who came in during the night chatted with us for a bit before getting their gear all packed. Their bikes were sporting California plates, and I was wondering how it was that they were so clean. Our bikes were a shitty mess of road grime. Turns out, they were on their way back to California from Daytona Beach. They had ridden from Ontario, CA, (a suburb east of LA,) to Daytona Beach in just four days. The previous day, they had ridden all the way from Daytona to Lake Charles in a sixteen hour ride! That's a distance of 825 miles. That is just too much like work in my tour book. They were amused my adventure of buying a bike on eBay and riding it cross-country. Later in the day, we pulled into the Harley dealer in Biloxi, MS to buy the correct hardware and a new timing cover, and, of course, a couple more T shirts.
About the time it was starting to get dark, we stopped for gas in Mobile, Alabama. We holed up for a bit in a Waffle House to study the map and decide whether to keep going or spend the night in Mobile. We drank too much coffee, and chatted with the waitress. She declined our offer to take her to Bike Week with us, saying her fiancé probably would not approve. "We're expecting," she said. Later, she said, "It must be an interesting life on the road." I said, "Life on the road? I work for a living just like everybody else. I'm just on vacation." I guess the "Easy Rider" image of the nomadic biker, living without any visible means on the road indefinitely is what some people think of when they see bikers on a road trip. I've been to Mobile a couple times, so we decided to find a room and go into downtown Mobile for dinner and to check out the night life. Finding a room proved more challenging and more expensive than expected. Apparently there was some sort of event in town that had a lot of the hotels booked. We eventually got settled in and found our way to the downtown. We cruised the main street a couple times, and found that the local police were amusing themselves by following us wherever we went. Our experience of Mobile nightlife was pretty uneventful. We found a couple of bars populated by young things who found us less than interesting and we were forced to eat late night fried bar food for dinner. Go to NEXT DAY'S STORY |
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