Day 292 Monday 22nd August Trinidad to Childress 654km

Last night we went to a Smoke House for dinner, Andy-boy and me love to smoke meat. If you followed me on Instagram you would have seen my Big Smoker I have at my house in Hermanus, there I smoke 25kg of different meat at a time. On arrival Andy-Boy and I were off to the kitchen and asked the chef to please show us he smoker. He told us that it is illegal in the state of Colorado to smoke by burning fire-wood, it has to be electric, so he adds wood-chips, set the temperature, place the meat inside before going home at night and then the next morning after 12 hours it is ready to serve. We ate smoked Pork (which was pulled,) Brisket, Pastrami (which is a pickled Brisket which they smoked, very tasty,) but the winner was the Smoked Pork Ribs.

I should have know our accommodation was not going to be to our normal standard when I saw the owners “yard” below from the “Smoke Deck.”

I might have taken too much revenge on old Tex last night( by going dirt cheap in his absence,) my pillows smelled of garlic, all three of the pillows honked badly, but even worse was the noise made by Peens and I’s neighbor, who were permanent residents of the Motel, in one room stayed a family, their daughter was about 15 years old, poor thing, I felt so sorry for her, her father and mother were smoking The Devils Lettuce flat-out as we went to bed, and they were joined by 2 other creatures who crawled out of their hole and they made so much noise I could not fall asleep. So I put a second set of wet toilet paper over my normal ear-plugs and tried again. Eventually I did fall asleep and dreamt of Pizza and Garlic Bread all night.

My revenge on the Boom Rooker Neighbors came early this morning when I started my bike motor at 6h15 and pointed the exhaust towards their room’s door after backing up as close to their door as I could get. I did this for 10 minutes, revving the motor and then we left without anyone surfacing.

We had a long day and we wanted to break the back on the long boring trip to Houston. Peens did the best he could with working out a Kronkel Pad, (twisty road,) but he had very little mountains to play with. He did find us something short for the 1st 80km but then we turned a corner and the “flatness” of New Mexico, our next State lay below, beckoning us to come down and get bored in its straight roads.

Although we are very far South, and no longer in the high altitudes, I was surprised to see signs informing us that the Snow-Plough does not operate after 7pm and 5am, so you might be snowed in during the night and not get out until after 5am when the plough comes past your part of the road.

The road was straight and narrow, we saw no other cars, just the occasional farmer in the fields or parked next to their cattle.

Then we crossed over from New Mexico into Texas, the road we were on was called The Great Texan Plains Trail. It was small but flat. The  entertainment road had many sharp bend in the road every 10km, we would head East, then after 10km sharp 90 degree bend to the right and we are running South, then after about another 10km sharp turn to the left and we are heading East again.

The only entertainment I had was being hit by the occasional bug on the chest or helmet, once a big bug hit me under my left arm and stung me back into being wide awake, trying to dodge the bugs if I saw them in time.

We did pass through some very small towns with many interesting people: (note his “stoep” doubles as wood-storage for the winter.)

The farmers were farming on a very big scale, as Texans do. Look at the length of this irrigation “line.” Each wheel turns at the same pace, its electrically driven, but due to a wheel losing traction and the terrain not being flat and smooth, one section of this long line of irrigation sections sometimes starts overtaking the section next to it, and this is the genius of this “machine,” it has a cable that runs from the one side right through to the other side, passing through each section of the irrigation-sprinkler-machine, and if one starts going ahead of its “neighbor” next to it, the cable touches a sensor that pauses the electric motor for that wheel, until the cable stops touching the sensor, whereby it allows the wheel to start turning again.

Today I saw 7 trains. It saddens me to think that our infrastructure for our trains in South Africa are now the next target for money to be stolen from the citizens, (after our Arms Industry and Electricity Generation and a few others.)  The theft is happening form two sides, 1stly the railway tracks and cables are being stolen for scrap metal, and it has happened that trains plough into the ground in the morning where there was still railway tracks the night before. But even more money if siphoned off from the top with new trains being bought that don’t even fit on the tracks, or others that cant pass through our tunnels. So our trains are getting less and less and the trucks on the road getting more and more. Three trains were very long trains full of coal, with 260 carriages full of coal, 7 Locomotives spread out between all the carriages. The others were stacked with Container.

But I jinxed my luck yesterday when I said DadAss has not let me down, so today she did, she started smelling, I knew there was something wrong, so I stopped and saw water dripping out of her, but because the radiator is covered by panels I could net see where. We had just entered our town we planned to sleep at, so fortune was on my side.

After another PAINFUL Check in, (they don’t have staff in most places, hotels, motels, restaurants, and the staff that they do employ are useless and not trained, but more about that in my Final Blog,) Peens and I started stripping DadAss. The coolant was streaming out of her, bleeding heavily.

I started her up and as soon as she became warm, we saw the problem:

We suspect that some dirt had gotten in between the radiator and the cover that protects the radiator against stones being kicked-up by the front wheel and puncturing the radiator.

So I bought some special epoxy and a steel brush and some anti-freeze and a funnel. DadAss was drained from all its fluid and then laid down on the operation table for Dr. Peens who started with more brushing and then some treatment from his flame-thrower before declaring that his nurse, (me,) should hand him the mixture that would seal the wound. I was then sent off to write the blog.

But at this very moment the Assisting Dr. Milsy, specialist in cardio, has advised the other specialist that DaddAss needs to get a transfusion and her liquids returned into her body. I think it is too soon but what do I know, I have not been to medical school. So my day tomorrow might be very interesting.

We had a long day today so that we could have a Tourist Day again tomorrow. We are heading to a small Texas town called Denison. This is the town where Pie hides his collection of Studebakers in America. A long time ago already he stopped importing the cars he bought to Sough Africa as apart from the shipping costs the government wants Import Duty and VAT. So Pie bought them in the USA and then found an old dilapidated building in a small depressed little town of Denison (I suspect it was depressed,) and then he parked his cars there, had them restored there and then fixed the building up and made it all very nice, I suspect. So tomorrow we are going to see what he has been hiding from his riding buddies.

Luckily the team of Doctors working on DaddAss as I type this are also specialist in finding twisty gravel roads and have committed to finding such a road along the Red River for us for tomorrow, lets hope they don’t ride off into the distance when DaddAss falls ill again.

Groete

Fleisch