Goodbye Texas, Hello Madness.

It's been a while! Around three weeks to be less vague.
I'm sorry if anyone was worried about my apparent disappearance from the blogosphere. Those who have me on Facebook will have seen periodical updates as to my progress, which is little consolation to those of you who have no desire to be burdened with "social networking".

Since my blog entries are usually epic anyway, and now I have three weeks worth of stuff to fit in, I'll try where possible to just make this a summary, and if I can be arsed at a later point I'll embellish upon some of the finer detail.

I last left you having crossed the border from Mexico to the US, and had been (legally) anally fisted by a man in uniform. I didn't want it to happen but I had little say in the matter. The following few days were spent miserably moping around in a hotel, feeling sorry for myself. My moodiness was compounded by my travelling companion Chappers' unbelievably chipper disposition. He found the whole episode hilarious. I was seriously contemplating ditching the trip and heading home.

We were somewhat stuck at this point for transport. The only office in town was the same chain as had just had us thrown in to cells for a day. We have too much luggage and accumulated crap between us to hitch-hike, and so we had a bit of a quandary.
In the end I resolved to parcel-post most of my belongings back home, and just keep my bike gear and enough clothes for a week at a time. Andrew did similarly, though kept enough socks for a month at a time. I didn't, and still can't understand why.

The lovely lady lawyer, Jennifer Jiminez, who had helped us so much during our little spells in the cells shared dinner with us each night we were in town, and introduced us to her husband, and a couple of relatives. They listened to our travelling tales, and apparently they were/are hilarious. Perhaps it's just the way I tell them, because to me it seems to have only been one disaster after another! Anyhow, her two older brothers told us they'd made arrangements for us to pick up some transport in San Antonio. We had a nice final night with the whole family, gathered round the TV eating party food and watching Obama take victory in the election.
Next day, Jennifer offered us a ride up-state to San An, and took us to a pre-arranged point where the fella with our wheels would pick us up. Eastenders fans, I shit you not, we stopped to meet our guy on "Billy Mitchell Road", the link-way serving the city's airport. After 20 minutes a guy arrived, we switched our stuff from Jennifer's trunk to this guy's and bade her farewell. The fella giving us a ride turns out to be our contact's son. He ran us to a place near some sort of war site on the lower east side of town. We were met with a bald headed cigar smoking cliché in weather-beaten combat fatigues - a retired colonel who now spends his time restoring European classic vehicles to something approaching their former glory, but with various sacrilegious twists, like 21" alloy wheels on an old Mini Cooper, and an old British Post Office transit van (complete with postman pat style livery) with the most outrageous engine modification imaginable - a Ford DFV engine and gearbox from a late 70s F1 car! It sounded unreal.
Anyhow, we were told to be patient and enjoy the surprise in the morning when we would be given as a gift our next form of transport. So, we all enjoyed a big smoky hog roast with some neighbours, told all our tales again, and slept like babies.
We were awoken shortly after 8pm by some beautiful engine notes. Two engines - Bikes! Well, sort of... True to his madcap modification roots, we had two machines that were not quite to manufacturer specification. First we have a 1964 Vespa carcass with 2004 750cc Moto Guzzi Breva engine shoehorned in, complete with quite ludicrous appearance of the transverse mounted cylinders poking out either side of the seat, and capped with heat-shields made of chopped up gun silencers and carbon fibre. Second we have a 2003 Suzuki Burgman that is modified into trike form, and equipped with a fire-belching Aprilia Tuono engine, with stupidly complex exhaust pipes, apparently in order to quench the earth-rumbling sound somewhat (and failing miserably as soon as the throttle is in use). I can't begin to describe how mad they both looked when we first saw them, and they have continued to do so since! The sort of thing that if you were describing them to a biker friend they'd swear blind it was impossible and you were full up to the eyeballs with bullshit.

By midday we had managed to find a way to strap our stuff to our new steeds, squeezed ourselves into our bike gear (at which point I discovered I've put on about a stone in weight, and there was precious little room for my fattening thighs AND my genitals in the one-piece leathers) and off we went. Our new adventures thus began!

I had first honours on the VespaGuzzi, and soon learned that it likes to lean left whenever you're on the gas, and the stupendous rim-mounted brakes retro-fitted to the front wheel make it the meanest stoppie-machine I've ever ridden bar none. We spent much of the day swapping back and forth between the rides to share the strain. The Burgmuono struggles to put the power down without snaking around, and requires very gentle throttle control, but once you're going it's lovely and luxurious. The Vespaguzzi is a bit mad too pulling away and is surprisingly stable for such a heavily modified little thing, but the constant pull makes it tiring work just to ride straight for more than an hour or so.
We blasted past Houston (again!) and stopped in Port Arthur, where Janis Joplin was born. In the morning of the second day we spent a couple of hours in the Gulf Coast museum in order to see if there were any Joplin exhibits, and were surprised at a vaguely decent* music hall of fame (*in provincial terms anyway). We carried on to Baton Rouge which is a nice enough city, with a bizarrely large number of European students hanging out in the town bars. The third day we reached New Orleans.

New Orleans was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days spent, though somewhat depressing too. TV images of the remaining destruction and municipal decay don't seem to do any justice to what is still going on here. Funnily enough the well heeled areas seem to have bounced back but nobody is knuckling down to resurrect the poorer black communities, and it's been three years now. Fucking ridiculous. Any other nation and there would be continuous reports of an ethnically rooted mistreatment of the populace. Still, we tourist types are well catered for. We enjoyed some music, danced a bit, drank a lot, spent far too long in a couple of titty-bars, and generally had fun. New Orleans also inspired a pact made through the prism of an alcoholic fug, that we would make sure we never go more than 48 hours without visiting a titty bar or jazz club (jazz as in music, not English slang for porn).

Our next destination was Memphis. We headed up through Jackson (Mississippi) and decided to keep going and do it in one hit. We stuffed more dollar bills in more panties than was strictly necessary to adhere to our pact, but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless. We spent a day at Sun Studios and then Graceland, and another night with the dollar-bill girls. The following morning we made an emotional pilgrimage to the Lorraine Motel museum, where Dr King Jr was murdered 40 years ago. There's an atmosphere about the place that cuts to your bones somehow, but not in a chilling way. It's stirring. There was definitely a kind of electricity in the air among those of us wandering around, possibly an extra frisson of poignancy given the events of a election night only a few nights earlier.
Tear-ducts purged, Chappers and I man-hugged, helmeted up and rode off. We headed through Jackson (Tennessee), and on to Nashville.

Our day in Nashville was a blur of tourist nonsense surrounding music museums etc. An odd place to be blunt. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it all seemed more fake than Jordan's boobs. Not a day I enjoyed, compounded by the strip-clubs being a bit low-rent shitty too. I was glad when we rumbled out onto I65 for Birmingham, (Alabama). We got there around lunch time, had a long lunch, and got directions from a sweet little old waitress (who reminded me of my maths teacher from school) to the Civil Rights institute museum. Another emotional little trip that, so we gave the titty-bars a miss and found a little dark jazz club instead. In the morning we found our sweet waitress again and after chatting a while about where we'd been the last few days (neglecting to mention several costly nights in strip joints) she suggested we try the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Chappers decided to go shopping instead, so we split and enjoyed some separate time. We met up back at the hotel then headed down to a little place recommended to me by a couple of lads from Newcastle upon Tyne who happened to be at the hall of fame the same time as me. They're students on an exchange year apparently, and have made it their mission to drink in every licensed bar in town, growing the world's whispiest beards to try and look older than 21 to avoid getting ID-checked. I suspect they will fail in their quest but good luck to them! Anyhow, the place they said to check out turned out to be a small piece of heaven, fallen down to earth. 1920 Speakeasy, nestled in the middle of town. Full of oddballs, music fans, and cool people. I knew I met the first two criteria easily but not the third - or so I thought. The second an English accent tumbles past my tongue I became the coolest person in Alabama. I only paid for our first two drinks, then as the night passed on Chappers and I washed our souls into a boozy oblivion with drink after drink laid upon us by some of the friendliest people on earth.

The next days plans were somewhat affected by waking up somewhere neither of us recognised. The only people around seemed to be fast asleep so we stumbled first in to our clothes then second out to the world beyond the doors protecting us from an eye-bashing sunshine. It was quickly revealed to us by a young lady who followed us out the door that had awoken in a University of Alabama sorority house. Ugga Bugga Alpha or some other Greek nonsense. We asked which way to head for a bus stop, were duly directed, and off we set.
Within about a minute of leaving our helpful new friend, we were picked up by a campus police patrol car. Apparently we weren't supposed to be where we were. Grown men are not supposed to emerge from female only lodgings. We set about saving ourselves with a rapidly improvised tale of being simple naive English folk cruelly duped into attending a small gathering elsewhere on campus whereupon we fell victim to a heinous student prank, from which we were rescued, narrowly avoiding certain doom, by the ladies of Ugga Bugga who (from the kindness of their innocent hearts) kindly provided us sanctuary until such time as the bus services began again. Utterly unbelievable but it seems an English accent means you could tell someone you're a higher being from another planet, here to investigate how to grow hot air balloons inside rabbits, and you'll sound authoritative and honest.
And so we benefited from a ride to the edge of campus, whereupon we caught a ride from two girls in a beaten up old ford who apparently recognised us quite well, but neither Chappers or I recalled at all. They even knew about an Africa-shaped birth mark on his scrotum which, it has to be said, was more than I knew about him from the several preceding years up to that point, so when all said and done it must have been a good night!
Back at the hotel we repaired to our respective rooms, each rectified our dishevelled appearances with a shit, shower, and shave, then met up again to enjoy one last night in Alabama. We pledged to remain sober, and tried to find something suitable but somehow ended up in the back of someone's pick-up going to a small karaoke party back on the university campus. We murdered a few songs, sank a modest amount of cheap pissy beer, and got taxis back to the hotel.

Next day we rode off to Atlanta (Georgia), and spent a few unremarkable days taking in the sights and sounds, stuffed a few more dollar bills into a few more pairs of feminine undies, enjoyed a spot of jazz music, and took off toward Florida. Unfortunately Chappers suffered a puncture on the Burgmuono not far from Valdosta, near the Georgia/Florida border. Turns out the wheels fitted to the trike are somewhat unusual specification, and so the tyres had to be ordered in from Japan. In the end this took four days, during which we borrowed a car from the garage taking care of the tyres, and explored the surrounding area. It looked to be a mind-numbing prospect but we had a surprisingly enjoyable time. We suspended out titty mission since it didn't seem that there was much going on around the Valdosta area, and the one place we did spot looked like the girls had recently stepped out of a sex change clinic. So instead we headed across to a small mom & pop hotel that was recommended to us by the garage owner, near a national park called Okeefenokee Swamp, a little way to the east of Valdosta. We had a couple of trips out on boats, and on the last day of waiting around the swamp, killing time, we were shown some old fashioned southern hospitality by a lovely old couple who put on a fantastic spread for us. That final evening I was also shown some new fashioned hospitality by their granddaughter, just home from college ready for the holidays. Marvellous.

On Wednesday this week we managed to hit the road again, with new tyres fitted all round on both machines (made sense to do so), and headed south for Florida. A marathon day back in the saddle saw us eventually arrive in Tampa. We decided against staying over here, and on Thursday we carried on down the coast roads to Naples. Friday we made the short hop over to Miami, and so we spent last night relaxing and soaking up the atmosphere in what seems to be a shallow place. I can't put my finger on this place in much the same was as was true of Nashville. It's not box-fresh plastic like music town, but it's just "not right". Perhaps that's just a first-day perception after a spell of the more old fashioned and simpler life in southern Georgia. The modern neon sprawl might just need a few days adjustment.

Now it's morning, and time for breakfast. Perhaps fresh eyes will bring a new perspective on this city.

So here's to Miami, and all its gaudy pleasures.
Cheers!