Setting of at 6am, after a lovely shave and meal the night before all was well. With steadie eddie taking the first shift for 2 hours, then Matt the tarmac was smooth, the crazyness was limited and life was good. Around 11am Mike Gibbo (girly) Gibson jumps in and 20 mins later good old trigger dies a long painful death at the side of the road….
with much chunterring in the back and biting of lip from steady eddie we had no choice but to get a tow from our friends following team “she’s a Goa”.
After 10 kms of fun, we hit the town Guruda, some 250kms from where we wanted to be, but it had a mechanic. The usual crowd ensued around our dead trigger, and it was decided that mechanic jo could fix her, but he would need to go the the next town on the bus to get a new piston.
Matt n Mike once again absolved themselves of all responsibility and left steadie eddie to do his magic and expected him to whittle an new piston from cow dung with his trusty leathermans. Apparently this is where his skills end, fat lot of good it was bringing him then!!
He managed to work hard with the mechanic to get things on the way to being fixed, and once suitably bored matt n mike wandered off again to harass more locals. Upon noticing a local temple was looking very busy we decided to enter, and we were soon invited in to see the head guy, the founder of the temple.
It was explained to us that today was holy day, and the temple feeds around 1000 people for free, all of which were sat waiting to be served.
Feeling very humble and especially after being invited to sit with the head honcho, we offered to help and promptly began serving the throng.
After the second sitting we were then invited to eat, which we did sat on the floor with the other people after insisting we were not special and did not require a table or cutlery.
Feeling very humble it was then explained that the founder of the very large temple was an indian surgeon, now 80- years old and still insisted on showing around. Not only did he run the temple, but also a hospital and a school and a college, all in the same town. He organised a car to take us to his hospital which he proudly toured us around, and then took us into his own home after organising a hotel for us.
Some 4 hours passed on a fantastic trip that would never have happened if good old trigger had not fallen at the final post.
