This will be an occasional blog where I write up the various clumsy episodes that seem to befall me on a regular basis.  Alex swears this is because I’m left handed, I simply look at it as bad luck.

So, starting with the first incident of note, rolling my ankle in Detroit.  We visited Detroit in our hire car the weekend of Saturday and Sunday 29th and 30th of October.  After checking into our lovely hotel, Aloft in the David Whitney building, we set off to take a look at the Greek quarter of Detroit (yup, allegedly a number of Greeks live in Detroit) apart from the disappointment of not finding any Greeks in the two streets that compose the ‘quarter’ on crossing one of the many poorly maintained roads I fell into a pothole and rolled my ankle.  As several of you have seen this results in a string of profanity and general ill feeling towards the rest of mankind, this was no exception despite kind offers of assistance from both Alex and a total stranger passing on the opposite side walk.  Fortunately, a few beers followed by a decent meal at Wright and Company made me feel a little better.

The second mishap was two days after picking up Reggie from the dealership we took a wrong turn off an interstate looking for the ubiquitous Walmart that we spent a lot of our time in buying stuff for Reggie.  Having taken the wrong exit, the satellite navigation was telling me to turn right and go around the block, Alex was recommending we simply continue and turn left and make our way cross country.  Having decided to follow the SatNav I executed a sharp right turn which resulted in whacking Reggie into a kerb with a large amount of force, so much in fact that we pulled over in the next residential street to discover that I’d burst one of the two rear passenger side tyres.  This resulted in a two hour wait outside a house, during which the owner returned from his work at the hospital (given away by his wearing medical scrubs) and asked what we were doing.  On explaining he was far happier and stated he’d been worried it was his in-laws come to stay unexpectedly (no idea either why this would fill anyone with dread).

Third mishap was when we were walking around a small town called St Genevieve, which is on the Missouri river and very proud of its heritage as an early French founded town in the 1790’s.  While strolling one of the main streets our US mobile phone rang, on answering I discovered it was the Emergency services in the vicinity asking if I’d made a call and did we need assistance.  After profusely apologising for the fact I’d inadvertently dialled the emergency number from my pocket they cancelled the SWAT response team (that last is a little exaggeration).

Fourth mishap was my inability to understand how to operate a standpipe at our campsite in Cape Girardeau, again another French founded town on the Missouri.  On arrival, rather than a tap (or faucet as it is called in the US) for connecting Reggie to the town water service I was greeted by what looks like a slender standpipe, on connecting the hose to this I could not figure out how to switch it on.  I consequently removed the hose and then figured out you had to lift a lever on the standpipe, so far so good, unfortunately the issue was now I couldn’t figure out how to switch off the strong stream of water coming from the pipe.  With typical Matt desperation, I therefore tried to put the connector on while the water was coming out of the tap, resulting in the unsurprising state of getting both myself and Reggie soaking wet in the resultant spray of several gallons of water under pressure out of the pipe.

Fifth mishap was on our new identical mountain bikes (now christened the Thompson twins after the bumbling detectives in Tintin stories).  We had purchased them from the reputable bike store called Walmart (they sell everything, including guns!) and were surprised to find that they were totally rubbish (hard to believe for the minimal amount expended I know).  On our first ride from the Chain of Rocks Bridge in St Louis into the city centre St Louis Arch neither of the bikes would change gear properly and my handle bar decided to invert itself whereby the break handles were now on the top and the gear levers on the bottom.  Consequently, we took our bikes (and with Reggie taking up the whole of the parking lot) to a proper cycle store, Cyclewerks, in Cape Girardeau where the guy took over 1.5 hours correcting the gears and brakes on our bikes and discussing politics (anti-establishment, Alex suspects Trump supporter) and where we could take our bikes.  We also took the trouble to buy a set of allen keys, adjustable wrench and plyers to help fix them ourselves in the future.  So now all set for our second attempt at a bike ride along a converted railroad line from a town in Illinois called Vienna (couldn’t stop singing the blasted song on the way there) we set off on the Tunnel Hill ride.  After about a mile my handle bars decided to invert themselves again, and why this is a Matt Mishap is that of course I had left our new tools in Reggie and consequently couldn’t fix the bike immediately.