During the previous day’s wanderings, they had another near out-of-gas experience in the west
Texas outback along US 380. It seems that these desert Bible-belt, God-fearing folks don’t operate
their gasoline stations on the Lord’s Day.
Their engines-off coasting into a Rotan Texas gasoline and quickie mart station occasioned several
new candidate nicknames for Augustus and his less than a tenth of a gallon of gas remaining bike.
Gas Guzzler, Mileage Master and Most Excellent Estimator seemed too mundane, too ironic or
more than a bit untruthful. Later while they topped off their tanks for a last, speed-of-heat, slab
segment to the Fort Worth area, they settled on Gasturbator as his new moniker.
With this day in the book, Marlow had journeyed 35 days on this trip and over 10,000 miles. He
had ridden Wilma more than 35,000 miles since he picked her up in Scranton Pennsylvania 29
months earlier.
On Monday they slabbed eastward and then southward 500 miles to the next overnight location in
the Bayou state. They repeatedly rode through narrow rain-band showers that were the remnants of
Tropical Storm Faye.
After a long, hot and humid outing, they arrived with t-shirts fully drenched in sweat.
They were pleasantly surprised by an outstanding dinner at a local Baton Rouge fish house,
Parrain’s, that Steve had discovered during a State Department assignment to Louisiana for the
Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts in 2005.
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