Southern States

Day 16  Monday 18^th April 2011

Breakfast finished we loaded the bikes and had a chat about our trip to a couple of other hotel guests in the car park. Mark had set his sat nav to take us south west to Stone Mountain using back roads. We were headed that way to meet up with a fellow traveller, Thomas Reckersdrees and his wife Pia. Thomas is moving to Germany in May 2012 and is currently in the process of selling his house and all his wordly goods with the exception of his beloved BMW 1200 GSA which he is going to use to take him on a similar route across Russia and to his new home in Hamburg.

Mark’s route was excellent taking along the backroads of North Carolina and continued the same theme when we crossed the State line into Georgia but no change in the number of churches which have now started to present themselves next to each other – I saw four churches side by side in one small town in North Carolina.

We reached Stone Mountain and tried to locate Thomas’s condo. Mark had the address written down and his sat nav dropped us close to our destination with the exception that when we knocked the door of 219 it was not Thomas who answered but some miserable guy who did not take too kindly to having two motorbikes parked on his drive.

We drove around for an hour or so and then I discovered that my phone wouldn’t let me connect to Thomas’s telephone number. Eventually, I went into a nearby health food shop and asked the owner if he could telephone Thomas’s number for me. Thankfully Thomas answered and he was outside the shop in a jiffy and we followed his car back to his house which we discovered was 2191 not 219 – no wonder we couldn’t find it !

There to greet us was Thomas’s charming wife, Pia and after a cold beer or two and a shower Thomas and Pia took us to Stone Mountain Park to show us the stone mountain that gives the area it’s name. It is impressive – like a miniature Ayres Rock with a huge carving in its side depicting heroes of the civil war. 

                 
                        Stone Mountain
Thomas continued the drive around the park showing us some more of its delights and then he continued into Atlanta where we went to the Vortex Bar & Grill on Moreland Avenue and munched our way through bison burgers –  check out their website . Thomas told us that Thursday nights is bike night and the place is heaving with bikes of all sorts – sadly for us it was a Monday. Thomas also tells us that Stone Mountain on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia was once the headquarters of the Klu Klux Klan but we didn’t see any pointy hats on our travels.  

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Thomas & Pia 

Thomas & Pia had very kindly offered to put us up for the night, an offer for which we were very grateful and they looked after us very well. You can read Thomas’s blog here  You can read Thomas's blog by clicking here


Day 17  Tuesday 19^th April 2011

Blue sky and sun greeted us as Thomas guided us from his house to the interstate. We headed west until we hit route 31 and we followed this all the way to Mobile in Alabama. We also crossed a time zone today which means that we are now on Central Time making us an hour more at 6 hours behind the UK but also giving us an extra hour’s riding.

En route we found a small township called Ashland which sported a MacDonalds and a good wifi connection which I put to good use with a Facetime connection (similar to Skype) with everybody back at home – it was good to see them all but poor Immy, my two year old granddaughter, still cannot quite get the concept of talking to granddad in a two dimensional way.

The 405 mile ride south has brought with it the added bonus of increased temperatures and today we reached 86 degrees at one point but the downside is that the heat has made my legs swell and makes wearing motorcycle clothing uncomfortable to say the least.

We managed to find ourselves a cheap Motel 6 and celebrated with a 35 dollar meal at the nearby  Indian restaurant. Destination for tomorrow was discussed and a 200 mile trip to New Orleans looks like the most likely. An email from Thomas tells me that I have left my Blackberry mobile at his house but we work out a cunning plan to get it back – Thomas will FedEx it to cousin Penny in Arizona and I can pick it up from her when we call in next week.

Click here to see a map of our progress so far