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across my shoulders and Roz was more than ready for a break, so we parked up at the small town of Newburg just short of the bridge into Virginia, pulling in at the local ‘strip’ of restaurants and drive-in stores. We opted for fast food primarily because the air-conditioning in the likes of Taco Bell was as perfect as any on the planet. We also discovered at the outset that the two of us could refuel reliably and nutritiously for $3 or even less, so long as we only drank tap water.
    Noël Coward, that great philosopher and dietary expert, recommended his public, ‘Never be tempted by water.’ Under different circumstances, I would concur with this, but midday alcohol intake is not smart under these temperatures, even to mad dogs, and any alternatives mass-produced in the US are too sweet for our taste. Iced water is therefore a seductive option, especially as it is free. The Latino youth serving us observed that while it might be tasteless, a glass from the kitchen faucet was at least mas economico . The last time I had heard this natty phrase had been from a bum in a tatty poncho extolling the benefits of B & B under a Bolivian market stall in preference to facing the cockroaches in the local doss-house.
    With lunch inside us, we crossed the wide Potomac into Virginia. The first useful chart of this waterway was drawn by John Smith of Pocahontas fame in 1612, by which time it was carrying ships servicing the early colonial plantations, yet even in this most historic region of America, the paradox of its newness compared with my own land was always with me.
    Bursting out over the dappled water from the noonday heat was bliss. The bridge was engineered from typical open girders, looking like the sort of structure every British schoolboy used to build with his Meccano set. Beneath us, the navigable waterway was defined by buoys, the very business of my other life. An osprey nesting in the topmark of a navigation beacon far below peered up at me. Normally, he would have been part of my world. Now, I squinted at him like a tourist as I rode steadily by, pressed onwards by the flowing traffic.
    The state line at the far side of the bridge heralded a surprising change in conditions. Straight away my bike started bouncing on rougher roads and soon my butt was feeling the strain. Every so often I had to swerve to dodge a pothole. Roz kept right on going ahead of me, but I was curious about how she was faring. Road surfaces can pass almost unnoticed in a car, but to a motorcyclist they are the beginning and, in the worst cases, the end of everything. Within a half-hour, I had stopped to remove my riding leathers as the afternoon temperature cranked a notch higher than even Washington had served up.
    Opening the throttle to catch Roz, I enjoyed a few minutes of free riding, passing cars and trucks and letting my engine sing for a change instead of chugging. Soon I was back in her slipstream, following down an uncharacteristically twisty road through 50 miles of forest. She was taking her time, leaning gently, getting used to negotiating bends on the Harley that a modern sports bike wouldn’t have noticed. I had a black moment when she lurched sideways to avoid a huge crack in the tarmac only to twitch back again double-quick to leave breathing space for a speeding truck coming the other way. The humidity must have been turning her to liquid inside her black jacket, until final meltdown came at around about the 92-degree mark.
    â€˜Take it off,’ I suggested tactfully as we dismounted at our next drink stop, pointing out my own protective cowhide strapped across my pillion pack. Roz, of course, had been suffering this massive discomfort to give her some chance of escaping injury in case of an unscheduled meeting with the grit. Nonetheless, she was giving my proposition serious thought when two young lads wandered over from a car filling up at the adjacent fuel pump. They looked like adverts for ‘what