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Today’s schedule would have been to ride far enough to cross the border into North Carolina, around 200 miles away. But, the weather forecast warned us to expect storms and heavy rain in the afternoon, so we set off good and early again hoping to make it past Columbia (about 100 miles) before the storms came in, which would leave us with 250 miles or so tomorrow. If we got further, then that would be a bonus.

By 10am we were already well over halfway to Columbia, but it was starting to get pretty cold, so we stopped at a gas station cum diner for a coffee to warm up. Watching TV as we hugged our coffee mugs to get some life back into our chilly fingertips, the weatherman said there was a 50% chance of snow-showers in Knoxville, TN (about 30 miles west of our destination, Gatlinburg) overnight and into tomorrow morning. Squinting at the map, it looked as though North Carolina was going to escape… Tave and I were contemplating giving up and going back to sunny Florida, but since our condo is already paid we decided to press on and only turn back if the roads became dangerous.

No sooner had we made our decision than the heaven opened, and huge sheets of rain were blown through the forecourt, soaking our bikes, our luggage and our enthusiasm. I dashed outside to push the Harleys under cover, and I was drenched just a minute later when I got back indoors. Stupidly, I had figured that the weather wouldn’t be drastically different just a few hundred miles north of Florida, and we hadn’t brought winter gloves, or waterproofs, and Tave was wearing sandals and no jacket. D’oh! Couldn’t have been much more wrong there.

From USA Today Weather:

Severe weather threat – On the southern end of the storm system, thunderstorms are rolling through parts of western North Carolina, western South Carolina, central Georgia, western Florida and southeastern Alabama this morning. Severe thunderstorm watches are in effect from eastern Georgia through western Florida. The main threats from these storms will be large hail and damaging winds.

10:30 came and went, and the rain wasn’t showing signs of letting up. We’d seen some hotels a junction back down the interstate, so we decided to call it a day and make a run for Orangeburg for the rest of the day. I left the scale on the map this time, so you can see how pathetically short a distance we’d covered…

We picked a hotel with a laundry, and when the rain abated briefly later in the afternoon got directions to Walmart for some fishermans wet weather gear, and Applebys for dinner. Pretty stylish, huh?

Here’s hoping the snow doesn’t stop us from riding into Gatlinburg tomorrow!

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Jetlag is still on our side, so we woke up easily around 6am and had showered, eaten breakfast, checked out and were loaded up and on the road soon after 8am. Long before lunch we had crossed from Florida into Georgia on I-95!

Call me crazy, but I’ve really missed IHOP‘s Eggs Benedict for the six months we’ve been away, and was itching for the chance to set things straight at our lunch stop near Riceboro, GA. As usual we were able to pick up a hotel coupons booklet on the way out of IHOP, and found a decent looking hotel in Hardeeville, South Carolina to spend the night.

The skies grew grayer, and the air colder, as the day progressed, but we still had an hour of daylight when we crossed from GA into SC, so we decided to press on a little further. At a shade over 200 miles for the day when we arrived at the next hotel from the coupon booklet in Walterboro, it was starting to get dark, and we were definitely feeling the cold set in. Amazing that the weather can be so different only a few hundred miles further North than yesterday’s blazing sun!

The Rice Plantation Inn, Walterboro was quite a treat as it turned out. Despite the low price for the night, the room was large, clean and well kept. Better still, there’s a fabulous Steak House right next door, where we enjoyed a very American steak and baked potato dinner.

The weather forecast predicts rain storms moving into the Carolinas around noon tomorrow, so we’ll have to make another early start to cover as many miles as we can, before an early check in at our next stop to avoid getting soaked in the afternoon. Perhaps we should have found out how much colder and wetter it is in these parts before we set off from Florida in our Summer biking gear?

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Wow, if it wasn’t already crazy enough posting from the past, it looks like I’m jumping around randomly in time to fill in on my earlier adventures. I hope you guys are following me in Twitter so that you don’t lose track… ~Al Torigo

I’ve really missed the freedom of the road, and sad as I was to leave Manila behind just as I was starting to get into the rhythm of the place, it’s really great to be back on the Harleys again. Using points from the timeshare we bought in Sedona 18 months ago, we’ve booked a condo in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains National Park for 2 weeks starting on the 27th. That gives us 4 days of riding time to cover the 657 miles from Orlando to Gatlinburg, via both South Carolina and North Carolina.

Although we want to take our time and enjoy the ride, there are flood warnings for South Carolina and storms are forecast for Tuesday, so we plan to cover at least 200 miles a day from the outset incase we are held up by weather later on.

We made an early start this morning to give us time to return our hire car to the airport before checking out of the hotel and enjoying a leisurely ride to Daytona Beach for a late lunch in Tail Gators Grill & Bar at the intersection of Atlantic Drive and International Speedway Blvd. I ate alligator for the second time, washed down with a Guinness while I watched the custom bikes chugging by in the run up to bike week.

As if my hands haven’t taken enough punishment recently, by the time we stopped in Jacksonville, FL for the night, I noticed that while cruising along the A1A on the Fat Boy in the afternoon sun, I had burnt the backs of my hands pretty badly.

Note to self: Even if there is a nice cooling breeze while I’m riding in Florida, I still have to cake any bare skin in SPF50!

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As soon as Octavia and I moved out of our hotel in Pasay City last month, I began looking in earnest for a Pekiti-Tirsia Kali instructor. I was very lucky that a friend-of-a-friend used to be involved in the URCC (more or less the Filipino UFC), and that he very kindly introduced me to his old instructor.

Following a month of progressively harder training, and despite the fact that I had carefully taped my thumb and forefinger beforehand, after 300 full power strikes to a stack of tyres with a heavy baston, my hand is a mess of blisters :-)

Training Times

This isn’t a formal club, and training is at mutually convenient times in the instructor’s back yard. My hands can only hold up for a couple of hours at most, and my head is usually full to bursting with new information to process by then. I’m trying to make it twice a week, and leave enough time between visits to recover a little :-D

Lesson Structure

Even with the informal atmosphere, and the steep learning curve, each session builds carefully on the last. So far the two hours generally consists of an initial warm up, with many repetitions of basic strikes and footwork leading into a new technique or two for the day. After a short break, the middle part of the lesson works on variations of the day’s new techniques, first in the air, and then with a partner (either as a drill, or defending against multiple angles). The final part of the lesson works on conditioning and fitness, either sparring or striking a dummy or stack of tyres.

Students and Instructor

Often there are one or two other students already training when I arrive, or who turn up while I am training, and when that’s the case it’s always interesting to compare notes on our martial backgrounds. Just as often I’m lucky enough to have the entire two hours of one-on-one learning all to myself.

Because training is by invitation only, I feel extremely privileged to have the opportunity to train here; the structure reminds me very much of my Jeet Kune Do Sifu, Andre Martin, with his real world experience and no frills teaching style. After years of study with several Filipino Martial Arts, what he teaches can’t be pigeon-holed as a particular style or lineage… it is a combination of techniques and principles that he has successfully applied and refined in real combat.

Style and Techniques

As Andre had already begun to show me, FMA has techniques that can be applied with a variety of weapons, or even empty handed. Had I not known this when I started training here in Manila, I would likely have been a little perturbed when 30 minutes into my first lesson I had to swap my steel pipe for a machete (a blunt machete, but a real metal blade none-the-less) and execute the swings I had just been taught.

Pekiti-Tirsia Kali proper takes this idea to its logical conclusion, where the swings and angles are shown to work equally well, and be just as damaging to your opponent whether you’re armed with an Escrima baston, a pen knife, a chop stick or even just a cell phone.

What I’m learning isn’t just PTK though, as all the flamboyant moves have been discarded, and the emphasis is placed very strictly on effectiveness in combat. Though I hadn’t thought so previously, I’m coming around to the idea that even though you can strike your opponent extremely hard with a wooden stick, if you don’t hit a vulnerable spot then it’s very unlikely to end a fight. Especially if your attacker is pumped on adrenaline at the time. The antidote to this is to develop a hugely powerful swing, and the accuracy to repeatedly hit those vulnerable points with it.

And that, in turn, is why I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time killing tyres at the moment!

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Due to the wonders of time travel, I’m currently living simultaneously in two separate times from your point of view. One of me is in the here and now, and will continue to make posts two or three times every week for your delight and amusement. The other me is working diligently to reduce size of the azazil.net blog post void between October 23rd 2007 and January 30th 2008, and will make an additional post or two per week covering my adventures between those dates that prevented me posting at that time.

If you don’t want to miss reading about my travels in America, India and the Philippines over the last few months, the easiest way to survive the timewarp is to subscribe to the RSS feed. Alternatively, now that all my posts are announced there, you can follow me on twitter. Either way you’ll get all the posts as I write them, rather than missing out on what my time traveling alter-ego is posting…

Sorry if you thought this post was going to be more exciting ~Al Torigo