Three Brits and Their Bikes June 17, 2003 

by David Lomax, Manchester, England

(Click on pictures to enlarge them.)

A short note from Sam:

David Lomax, Stefan Boddy and Johathan Russel - Three English gentlemen and experienced bike riders. They wanted an adventure on their motorcycles and they got it. They wanted to travel across the United States using non-pavement roads and they got it. They purchased the maps and rollcharts from Tennessee to Oregon. My job was to locate, purchase and set up two XR 400 bikes for the ride. I did just that by adding 4-gallon tanks, Baja Light Kit, new tires and thick tubes, new chain and sprockets, rollchart holder, a rear luggage rack, fresh oil and filter and a fresh air filter. Jon rode his KTM 640 down from Canada. Now riding off-pavement means that there is going to be mud more often than not. So enter the sections of Mississippi and Oklahoma and welcome to the Trans America Trail! I met the trio in New Orleans and transported all to the Trailhead in Columbia, TN.

To all,

The bike is broken so I’ve now got some time to tell the whole story so far!

The flight from the UK was great, lots of leg room and good food! We arrived in New Orleans at around 7:00 p.m. CST (which is six hours ahead of UK) and went out for food and beers.

We met Sam the next morning as planned and drove north through torrential rain to Madison, Mississippi, arriving around 5:00 p.m. It rained 4 ½ inches in a day! Sam was great and his house was beautiful. The bikes looked great and after the paperwork, his Italian mother cooked us great pasta and meatballs.

Day 1: Tennessee

We set off at 7:00 a.m. and Sam rode the first 100 miles with us. The navigation went really well and although a lot of Day 1’s route had been tarmac’d (paved) the scenery was excellent. Sadly we soon figured out that 12 hours a day on the bikes was going to be the norm. We saw some amazing wildlife and an incredible diversity of people from Quakers (who look like a film about the 18^th century with no power or tools) to the U.S. "redneck" in his 6 liter V8 truck complete with gun rack and dead animals. Quite a serious variety! The highlight of the day was the slippiest river crossing in the world. Sam said one of us would come off, and in true form a little over exuberance saw me drinking more than I had bargained for. Typical.

We all slept well that night, crashing out by 9:30 p.m. (around 3:30 a.m. UK time).

Day 2: Mississippi

Immediately the scenery changed and became far more swamplike. The heat rose to around 95 degrees and the humidity was 100 percent. Sweating became the norm and we all drank like fish to stop dehydration. Wishing for water was one thing, but when we finally got it, it wasn’t exactly what we’d been wishing for! All that rain took its toll on the state of the trails and tracks. Mud became the order of the day and plenty of it! Riding a bike through slippery/sticky mud is no fun in that heat, and boy did we suffer. We had to keep the speeds up to get our daily 250 miles done in the light and the riding became quite exciting….

We were too busy congratulating ourselves on our excellent time keeping to notice the "bridge out" sign. Sad really. Amazingly the bridge was almost fixed, and the only part we couldn’t ride was the six-foot high concrete wall to get us up on to the part finished other side. Clearly there was a simple solution to the problem. Pretend we were the blue team on a management team building course! If we sweated before, we certainly sweated more during he construction of our mk1 bridge jump ramp. Four pieces of 12 foot planking, two 2-foot/sq. lengths of rolled steel joists, a mallet, some old rotting wood, and 3 liters of sweat saw it complete. I got to go first and after a brief period of air time touched down on the new bridge and squeezed passed a large crane at the other end. Jon jumped next, followed by Stef. We were now 1 hour behind schedule, and suffering from heat exhaustion and mosquito bites.

We were quite pleased with ourselves though, and when the next "bridge out" sign came along we quite fancied our chances. The bridge was not there. The bridge when finished was going to cross a ditch 40 feet across and 30 feet deep, and there were steep tracks down to the center of the ditch. The problems were based purely around the consistency of the mud it was knee deep gloop. If we wanted to save time we had little choice but to have a go. To cut a long story short Jon was fine, Stef looked like a moto x star as he shot up the other side of the bank on his back wheel! I bogged down, got within 2 feet of the top and slowly slipped 20 feet backwards and collapsed under the bike in knee deep gloop. Typical.

My next attempt was more successful and we were soon moving along at a good pace. As we pulled into our motel for the night we marveled at how a 400-acre casino site could exist in such a desolate place.

I gambled .25 cents that night, smug in the knowledge that if everybody else won 125 percent of their stake like I did, the casino would collapse. (Obviously I then spent my $1.50 on food, but you can’t have everything!)

Day 3: Mississippi/Arkansas

An early start saw Stef navigating for the first time. This means that he takes the maps and road book (detailed directions) and leads us as quickly as he can along the route.

Coming out of the fuel stop Stef shot off like a torpedo out of a tub. After 10 minutes my wrist ached from constantly wrapping my hand around the throttle and trying to open it further, the bike was flying along and had begun to get the floating feeling which comes from riding a dirt bike very fast over loose gravel. The steering becomes strangely light and the bike jitters and kicks from left to right. I wasn’t happy.

However, that was easier said than done. Another ten miles saw us hitting some really hideous mud and often the way the bike was pointing had little to do with the direction it was going. My boots were full of swamp water and mud and we had already had tough morning when our next 200-yard water crossing loomed into view. A quick wade up to the knee level showed that a bike crossing was clearly not going to happen. A quick map session showed a possible way around to the north and plan was formed.

Stef was having problems. He had commented earlier that he had found this trail particularly hard. I propped my bike against a tree and ran back through the heat and sweat haze to find Stef sideways as usual with a huge 4 foot rooster tail of watery mud being ejected from his back tire as he fought with another pool. Hmmmm…nothing wrong here.

I walked back to my bike and headed further on down the trail to find a different story with Jon. He had gotten tired fighting the trees on his huge 640 and tried to ride the center of the trail. At 30-40 mph he had tried to lift his front wheel over a short puddle by opening the throttle on his bike. The rear had slipped out and the front plowed into the puddle. This puddle turned out to be the perfect shape to trap a 21-foot front wheel and had a vertical back wall. Jon when head over the bars hitting a previously broken collar bone on the screen, wrenching a previously broken wrist, and hitting his balls on the wing mirror as he passed overhead.

He looked a little annoyed but O.K. and we traveled on to lunch in a little railroad, cowboy style town. At the petrol stop I noticed an unhealthy flow of liquid from his bike’s lower front fork region. Initial worries of brake failure were soon dispersed by a little logical thought. It was clear that John had blown both his front fork seals when hitting the back wall of the pool. A KTM dealership was needed! A local Honda dealership provided us with the information we needed to order the parts and was quite happy to do the work if we stayed in town overnight. The parts could be couriered to us in the morning to save a 140-mile ride over to the KTM dealers in Fayetteville.

Jon asked the shop assistant if she knew where there was a motel with a bar nearby, after all it had been an eventful morning. Her reply wasn’t good news

Assistant, "Bar"?

Jon, "Yes, a bar…"

Assistant (with accent), "There’ll be no bar around here, this here is a dry county."

Jon looked at me, I looked at Stef, and Stef looked at Jon.

Later that night in Clinton over in the next county as we sat down to a Mexican feast (normal sized meals without pie are just not available in the states), we reflected on how close a call we had had. We could have been stuck in a dry country for the night!

Day 4: Arkansas

Dry roads and beautiful mountain scenery coupled with miles and miles of winding trails saw us all at a lunch stop by 11:00 the next morning. We were at Oark Stores. It was truly remarkable place. The type of spot that you want everyone you know to visit because it’s such a unique experience. The great food, the single track dirt road that led to it, the photos n the walls the hand written menus on paper bags, the smell of barbecue meat oozing from the walls. You really need to visit it yourself and find a piece of the America you see on Wild West films is still alive and very much kicking. We stayed until 1:00 p.m. eating the customary huge amounts of food and chocolate pie (it’s rude to refuse food this good and this cheap!)

The next day I split from Stef and Jon to visit an old friend in the hills of Arkansas. Seven acres of beautiful forest and a home built wood house is as close to paradise as I’ve seen in a while, I ate great food (not fried, pasta!) had a few beers, and slept like a log wishing I could stay in this fantastic place longer that a single night.

As it turns out I seem to have more than my fair share of wishes come true this trip. As I rode down Stacy’s drive I got 200 yards from his house and tried to change gears. My clutch lever pulled straight in and my bike ground to a halt. A quick clutch cover removal showed that the head of the thrust shaft had snapped of! I’d never heard of this happening before, and was a little upset. But what a great place for it to happen! Life’s tough…but not around here!

p.s. Internet opportunities are few and far between, this could be the last for a while!

www.transamtrail.com

email Sam