Day 291 Sunday 21st Manitou Springs to Trinidad 405km

This morning as we were all saying goodbye to each other a man with a long story and some little flags got Tex’s attention, he was collecting signatures on little flags, not money. The little flags will all be put together with many other little flags being signed all over America and will then be placed together on a tapestry which will be auctioned off at The Trump Towers and the money will go somewhere, I did not hear. So flags had to be signed, then we said goodbye and Mily Peens and I headed South and the rest headed North.

Peens is very good with Navigation and he had planned a very  nice mountain twisty road with some “Adventure Riding” that would be about 400km to a town on the high-way, only 200km away from our starting point, so Rocky could get to our town by high-way and do less kilometers and we could have a full day’s riding in a semicircle. The early part of the morning we rode in the Royal Gorge, a lovely scenic small little road, and then we turned onto several gravel roads, which later became a muddy track following the power lines, and later we got lost, but then found a good gravel highway and life was good again.

When you are lost you take the road with the lesser amount of mud.

Soon we were in the San Isabel Forest and passing the Isabel Lake with many Trout Fishermen along the shore and two floating on tubes casting their flies while finning around on the lake.

But along the way we stopped at the Bishop Castle. This castle in not finished inside yet and is still under construction, there is Donations Box for more funds as I think Mr. Bishop has run out of funds since he has been building this castle, all on his own, for 54 years now, so not much time to have a paying Day-Job if you ask me. There is a mote around the castle and a drawbridge gate and a stone wall, so no invaders will get  in.

There are many Cat-walks around all the towers and from one tower to the other and kids walking around on them high above the ground. I decided not to try my luck for a nice view from above while wearing Riding Boots and just stayed on the ground next to the Tuck Shop and Memorabilia Shop, selling bandanas for the many many Harley Davidson riders who makes this ride over weekends. The shop also sells signs like this:

Then we had some flat terrain to cross, more dirt highways, lekker.

We then headed for Spanish Peaks, passing a few little towns with cafes and art galleries and many people out on their Sunday drive for Brunch or lunch. The road passed some beautiful lakes and the riding in the Spanish Peaks was small mountain passes. On two occasions I braked hard when deer appeared next to the road, at the edge of the trees which starts right next to the road.

We stumbled onto another little town named Chuhara with lots of character, so we had a light lunch there.

I took this nice photo of DadAss, still the most beautiful bike and she has not given me any problems over the past 45000km through North America.

Milsy and Peens both had to re-clip their fuel line connection as their rattle loose on the gravel roads and then it feels like the bike is running out of fuel as the fuel line closes itself off when un-plugged, so they have a restricted line as it starts separating as the valve insides closes. Peens used some oil to lubricate the joint when it happened to him for the 2nd time and he says that makes it easier to push the joint together as you are pushing against the pressure in both lines built up by the fuel pump in the line before it gets to the injectors.

As Tex is not with us, we are now getting our revenge on him, he always wants us to book into the bigger hotels like Holiday Inn Express or something like The Hamptons, which are relatively inexpensive if you earn your money in  Dollars, but we push for real cheap Roadside Motels because they are very cheap and they are relatively clean and the water is always warm and you meet very interesting people there because no one sits in their room, everyone sits on the chairs outside the room looking at the passing traffic and seeing who checks in riding what bike or car. So tonight Tex is not here to influence us and we gone rock-bottom dollar price, its really nasty and to add nastiness it is on a busy noise road, so there you go Tex, we showed you tonight did’t we!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The wi-fi password is Harleydavidson05, so I think its a popular bikers Motel, but oh hell my bed has seen some miles, I sat on it and had to leopard-crawl out of it until I flopped onto the vinyl floor, which is sticky for safety reasons I suspect.

I have given up trying to download WhatsApp onto my new phone, I suspect it needs to have your South African Sim card inside for it to download. And when I put my SA card in the phone tells me the sim is “Not Supported.” So I can see that this new phone will have to go in to Hillbrow to the Nigerian Phone Magician for a little “work” once I get home so that the phone can work with my SA card.

But lucky me, when I opened my pannier bag last night I saw my old phone was on?????? So now I am using my old phone again, but it switched off again twice during the day, but each time it came back on again???? Guess it will eventually die properly and then I will be stuffed with the new phone without WhatsApp, but lets see, maybe I can limp along until Friday when we fly home.

Peens has the flu which is excellent news for me which shares a room with him. But he is finished after today and is currently sleeping, and its only 17h00. He also hurt his calve when his bike fell over onto his leg while trying to make a U-Turn on the loose gravel at our Cockroach Inn, so I guess he  is not going to be doing washing anytime soon, which leaves me to try and con Milsy into doing some of his washing and then throwing in some of mine with his. My main mission now after sending this blog is to go in search for some shampoo and deodorant.

Rocky and Andy-Boy and Uncle Bob has also just arrived here at Roach-Inn and reports that it was a 5 minute job to extend the contract and change the location for handing back the Hired Car Andy-Boy is driving in to follow his dad, which will now be returned in Houston.

Cheers

Fleisch