Pretty shattered, we finally reached Terre Haute, Indiana, in the middle of our second night at maybe 4.00 am. It was bitterly cold outside but cosily warm in the small terminal waiting-room. Way too early to look for Lawrie, we settled in for the remainder of the night. With no one else there except the night clerk, we stretched out on the empty seating. Almost immediately he was on us. “You can’t lie down Bud … you gotta sit!” Every time we slumped to the side and fell into an exhausted sleep, he would poke us awake. This seemed irrational and didn’t endear him to us or us to him. Even if Head-office rules did preclude sleeping in the public areas, we felt he could have demonstrated some leniency. It was almost like it was a crusade … if he had to be awake, so did we! Ultimately dawn finally rescued us and we could escape this tyrant and stagger off into the sub-zero murk that is a mid-west winter. I recall neon signs proclaiming it to be 15° Fahrenheit and 7.45 am.
Lawrie was looking good and it was great to have the brotherhood finally together. He and Roly hadn’t previously met. Now we could get started and have our adventure. The pleasure of seeing my good mate was tempered slightly by the news that he hadn’t a whole sack-load of money to tip into the coffers. This was a trifle that we could address later. Apart from a few hours in Miami I had never been to the US and had nothing to judge Terre Haute by, but my observations of the time record disappointment that for a city of about 70,000 it seemed soul-less. I was astonished to learn that most people ate out at least once a day and that the Central Business District was dominated by franchised eateries. This was something I hadn’t encountered before and would be decades before this blight would also be endemic in New Zealand. McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell etc. all fought to capture your trade with lurid neon signs and tempting offers. There were
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very few independent cafes and restaurants, except for a small number of places for breakfast, which I quickly decided was the best meal of the day. It was almost ritualistic … you met a couple of mates, ordered anything you liked incorporating bacon, eggs, hash-browns etc and chewed the fat, all the while being regularly attended to by a roaming coffee girl who topped you up without cost. Subsequent mid-sized towns all showed the same dull formula of a couple of burger joints, a couple of chicken places, a couple of pizza parlours and maybe a couple of Mexican eateries … all being the big names we now recognise but back in the 1970s had not yet spread their invasive tentacles worldwide.
We only stayed a couple of days as we were eager to get going. We were also eager to get warm as we didn’t really have clothes suitable for the often sub-zero temperatures. Lawrie’s low-key farewell was held in a bar and was a friendly, inclusive evening. It seemed that not many of his acquaintances knew of his plans and the word was being spread with some incredulity. “Hey Mac, Lawrie’s going to Mexico!” It was interesting that none of the group could grasp that we were not going to Mexico … we were going through Mexico to far, far beyond. Even when we would say we were going to ride through Central and South America, it would come back to Mexico. “Woah, you need a lot of spare tyres for Mexico! How many you got?” I remember telling an earnest, seemingly competent, blue-collar worker who appeared to be their resident Mexico expert, that we each had two spare tyres and all the bikes ran the same size front and back, so in effect, we had six spares. “Might be enough, but’ll be touch and go … Mexico is hard on tyres!” With some emotion, one of the guys gave Lawrie a family heirloom, a US Treasury Sherriff’s badge from the days of prohibition. Lawrie promised to look after it and wrapped it in a plastic covering and put it at the bottom of the leather pouch he always wore on his hip. Months later it would cause an interesting interlude.
For reasons lost in the mists of time, we decided that it was too expensive to use the Greyhound service down to New Orleans. It was deemed unlikely that three of us hitch-hiking together would be successful, so a split was proposed. Roly would take the bus and Lawrie and I would hit the road with our thumbs out. On reflection this seems a strange and flawed decision as Roly had no experience of this sort of independent travelling. He was more or less straight out of New Zealand and his natural reticence would make it a big challenge for him. A better mix would have been for me to go ahead by bus and Roly and Lawrie do the hitching thing.
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Tilbury Plus
As it happened it wasn’t great for either party. Lawrie and I struggled with rides and Roly had a pretty nightmarish ride to New Orleans then a daunting stay in the bus terminus. We’d told him to just wait and we’d turn up sooner or later. If this meant sleeping there, so be it. I seem to recall Lawrie and I arrived a day or so after Roly who was naturally a very relieved and happy boy, seeing as we didn't really have any backup plans or instructions for him should we not appear. He recalls he’d had to adopt a tough streetwise persona so as to not appear vulnerable. He’d done well for a scrawny little boy from Berhampore. A ranting ‘shell-shocked’ fellow passenger had kept him on edge for most of the 24 hr ride.
We had quite a few days to wait before we could uplift Bessie so we settled into life living in the New Orleans Greyhound Bus Station. It was a busy and vibrant place with buses coming and going at all times which meant that we could merge with the people waiting for connections. There were always passengers in transit, as well as people awaiting arriving kin etc, an ever-changing throng of humanity. We soon realised that we were also part of a community of the lower-levels of society or itinerants who were using the station as somewhere to live. Nights were times to be wary, as the police would often do a sweep. Word would spread quickly and quite a number a people would discreetly as possible, arise and make their way to the toilets. Here we would cram into a cubicle and have only one pair of legs showing under the door. This took some gymnastic ability for the non-feet show-ers, involving standing on the seat, crouching to keep your heads from showing over the top of the partitions. We didn’t quite manage a week there before we decided we were beginning to stand out, so we moved a few streets over to the Continental Trailways’ terminal, amusingly finding some familiar faces there. We’d investigated cheap and skody hotels but in our price range even Lawrie was daunted and he was my arbiter for this sort of thing. The fear-factor was adjudged to be too high, especially as we witnessed what looked to be a knife-standoff outside the one we were considering.
One night the police arrived catching us unawares and woke the black guy next to me. “Ticket!”
The guy convincingly mumbled in a slumberous fashion and fished out a ticket.
“Hey, this is for Toosday!”
The purported rider didn’t open his eyes but again mumbled under his breath.
“Hang on, this is for last Toosday … no, it is not, it's for last year! On your feet!"
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Whilst the supposed felon was being awoken and escorted from the concourse, I made my way to the toilets as nonchalantly as I could.
Once we had Bessie, we moved out of town to the Fontainebleau State Park on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain. The ride took us over The Causeway which is two parallel bridges, recognized as the longest bridges over water in the world. The slightly longer of the two is about 24 miles long. They both have a scary section of steel web-grating near the middle where the draw-bridges are. Web-grating causes motorbike tyres to squirm alarmingly and there is always the feeling that a pending disaster is about to befall you. Needless to say, this section of the bridge was dreaded on every crossing. With only one bike but three people, this had meant quite a bit of riding before we were together, tent-up in the park. Although Lousiana was going through an unseasonal cold-snap, we felt better out here than precariously living in a bus station constantly on edge, guarding against pick-pockets and police. Here there were people to openly