50 States, Day 214

  50 States, Day 214 Frankfort to Elizabethtown,  133 miles

"If it's important to you, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse."

~Anonymous

I stood on the road and stared at the carnage. The bike sat on the side stand, and three feet behind it, the trailer set on the pavement with the trailer hitch, receiver and frame lying in pieces on the pavement. We had hit a bump getting onto the road and the trailer fell off the bike in Bardsville, Kentucky.

Now what?

Almost before the trailer stopped sliding along the pavement, Larry appeared. He  told us where to find a welding/ trailer repair shop close by. 

I rode the bike to a nearby convenience store and rolled the trailer beside it, then like a NASCAR crew, walked along the asphalt and picked up bits and pieces of the bike. Next we abandoned the trailer and rode straight to the welder, a miracle since the directions were like, "Go past the church, turn right, turn past the courthouse then three lights, no four... three."

Lanham's Truck and Trailer was in a time warp from the seventies. Old school, old stuff, and a real live junkyard dog on the end of it's chain greeted us. 

And the two guys, Dad and son, were 'blind in one eye and can't see out the other' (his words) from a lifetime of welding, and a bad back from bridge building. The shop was stacked with dead engines, generators, pipes, steel and metal. Dad smoked Swisher Sweets as he worked.

But they could weld and fabricate. 

They rewelded the hitch (yep, it sheared right off) and pulled out the broken bolts (yep, they sheared right off) and replaced them with grade 8 bolts. The son assured me, "You won't have to worry about that hitch, ever again." Wonderful.

We returned to the trailer and I got the dubious honor of rewiring the plug, as the wires ripped out of it during the divorce. Brace yourself. I checked the wires on the bike, installed the wires in the trailer, plugged it in and... (drumroll please) the right turn signal lit the right turn signal light! And so on. It worked! 

A shout out to Mike at Green Valley Cycle in Henderson for installing the wiring with color coding, making my job easy. 

"So what do I owe you?" I asked the old guy.

"Oh, forty... fifty? dollars I s'pose."

I gave him sixty. 

Off we went after our three hour adventure, the trailer following behind like a junkyard dog following a biker across the yard. Wonder where I got that analogy? Instead of making our goal of Bowling Green, we stopped at Elizabethtown, as Mr. Sun was going down, the temperatures were reverting to freezing, and a half dozen deer carcasses along the shoulder reminded us to get parked before dark. 

We stopped at a Super 8 and feasted on dinner at Waffle House. I ate the best ribeye steak I'd tasted all day and QG enjoyed a fine sandwich. For some reason, I like Waffle Houses, probably for the ambience as the booths are adjacent to the kitchen so you can watch the cook slinging grease, and banter with the crew.

Sometimes you have to look past people's exteriors to see the angels in our midst. We saw some real angels today.

Tomorrow, Lord willin' and the creek don't rise (and the trailer stays behind the bike), we'll get to  Bowling Green. See you then.