Day thirty five, blue ridGe, georgia to Decatur, alabama

When we headed south toward Elijah, Georgia, you know the drill, about and hour and a half down the road apiece, we were looking for coffee. We stopped at a McD to be on the safe side and I asked the troops the answer to this School C geography question, 5 mark question, short answer, a line, maybe a paragraph. What have you noticed about farming practices in The State of Georgia since we left Blue Ridge this morning that are different to all the other States we have visited north of here. ? Red and Janelle were onto it, like 3 out of 5 for their answer. Long story short, riding through rural Georgia, a bloke could imagine he was in the Naki or maybe the Waikato. Gone are the feed silo’s, gone are the loafing barns and spot the reappearance of road boundary fences, fully fenced farmland and pastures grazed by stock rather than all cut and carry. Just like NZ on a Sunday drive in the country. We were surmising we must be far enough south now that they don’t have fierce cold winters and snow so they don’t need to farm indoors? Could be the answer.

Highlight of the day at this stop was a young fella driving in in a rusty Jed Clampett style 1917 Model T Ford, original az. As expected, Marie approached him to ask if she could have her photo taken in the car. Chatting to him, his real job is restoring vintage cars. He found this Model T in a barn in Rhode Island, bought it and did a full mechanical front to back, restored the engine to its original state and it purrs like clockwork, crank to start. He had to get new wooden wheels made by an Amish guy in Ohio as the Amish still know how to make wooden wheels. He divided it was time he had a holiday so drove the car from his home In Virginia across to California where he was going to ship it home. Now the car was loaded up with his worldly possessions, the original soft top roof is rotten and he hadn’t fixed it but he had only been rained on twice.

Couple issues he told us about, reckons it’s much like a horse, needs water and fuel. It uses as Musca water as it does petrol.

He carries extra cans of petrol, the tank is under the drivers seat, if he is a bit low on gas the car won’t get to the top of the hill as the gas goes to the back of the tank and won’t siphon to the carb, thus he needs to stop before a hill and top up the gas tank. Tolerable idiosyncrasy he thought.

Top speed is about 35 mph so he said he had received a number of waves where people waved with a single finger pointing skyward, fingernail facing outward if you catch my drift, he grew the beard specially to look the part but was at pains to tell us he was not a homeless guy.

I digress…… he got to California and decided to turn around and drive home again, wanted to drive all the bottom 40 and he has, he is almost home, Kentucky, North and South Carolina to go and he’s home. Great guy to talk to, a very cool adventure.

We are meeting some great people on our road trip, one of the highlights is the people ya meet and run into.

We rode on to Decatur to our accomm for the night. Now I point out here that Decatur is just a stop in a town on our way to Memphis. Decatur is like an industrial/ commercial suburb of Huntsville it seems, weird, it has no footpaths, very difficult to walk anywhere. Not the most appealing place to stay, but the Quality had a pool, it was hot, the servo sold Bud Light. It will do eh?

Photos to follow, you gotta see this model T.