2ridetheworld.com : diary

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17-08-2008

For reasons that are obvious we left leaving the hotel for as long as we could, savoring every moment of the luxury we were now getting used to. With the bikes again loaded we made the short 2 mile trip back down to Second Wind and parked up. Darrell was already inside; we were late by 20 minutes.

And so our day began with Darrell and his expert help with Tarzan and Tinkerbelle.

I’d been concerned with Tinks burning a little more oil than normal and the excessive smoke belching out of the exhaust after the morning start up’s. I’d even noticed a real loss of power under hard accelerating, and so with Darrell’s help we set about checking her performance. Both the compression and leak down test came back with good news as they had before. Compression was still 11% on both cylinders and the leak down came back with a reading of 160. You need 100 to get combustion and so anything over that is good. 160 is great and not that far off the reading you get from a new bike!

We topped up the oils, reconnected the speedo cable which had come loose some 2 months ago, balanced up the cylinders and even checked the valve clearances. Everything was looking good and I was feeling better as the minutes passed. We think the loss of power could simply be I’m still using the original injectors and by now they’d seen better days.

Lisa’s bike was next. A general check around and then her forks. The right hand fork seal had gone and her front end was looking more like a pogo stick than a BMW. No wonder...when we opened up the fork it was practically dry. A good clean out, new fork seals both sides and 600mm of new 10wt oil would get her bike feeling like new.

By the time we were all done, both the bikes were feeling better for it. We thanked Darrell for his time and expertise. The grin he’d worn this morning had stayed planted all day. What a great guy. Not only had he given us his time but he’d even opened up the workshop just for us. Too be honest although we’d been working, we’d all had a great day, daft jokes and all!

We’d accepted a very kind offer to stay with Sharon and Cindy, literally a few blocks down the road. Sharon had emailed us prior to the presentation and made the invite after mentioning that she’d just finished reading the ‘entire diary’. For that reason alone we had to meet her. I thought our Mum’s were the only people who had read our entire diary!

With the bikes parked up in the garage of Sharon and Cindy’s beautiful home, we set about enjoying the easy company of new friends and sipping on cold beers.

By late evening we’d moved onto Gran Marnier and were playing pool in one of the purpose built rooms. What an amazing few days this has been. I know I’m going to pay for the drinking in the morning.

18-08-2008

A day of jobs.

True to form we were both feeling a little ‘sensitive’ this morning. Cindy had somehow managed to drag herself out of bed early and had headed to work; we can only imagine her pain.

We needed to get down to the 134 emails that were still waiting for us in the inbox. We tried to leave them in the hope that the ‘email fairy’ would take care of them, but after giving that idea a week, strangely nothing seems to have happened.

We also needed to get some photos processed. I’d spent days with Dan and Judy working from Sun up to early the following morning sorting and selecting photos and readying them for printing, I was now keen to see the results of my hard work. I’d met Terry back in Salt Lake City, the professional photographer who’d shown me how to use my Nikon properly and who’d pointed towards Costco as a photo developer. Terry had signed us up to his Costco account and had sent on our new membership card to Second Wind. With new card in hand we made our way down in Sharon’s huge truck and parked up.

We selected 20 images to be printed 8X12 and the results were…fantastic. We used a variety of printers over the last few months but the Costco prints are without doubt the best and most faithful reproductions we’d seen, details and colour are spot on.

We rushed back to Sharon to share our excitement.

With emails and photos done we spent the evening with Sharon and Cindy, sharing their easy company. I was put to work grilling the beef for dinner.

It really has been a good few days.

19-08-2008

Lisa’s bike has taken the next step in its development.

I’d mentioned off-hand to Darrell a day or two ago, to keep an eye out for anyone that might have a used 21” front rim for Lisa’s bike. It makes sense that since I changed to a 21” on Tinkerbelle that Lisa should follow suit, allowing us to swap tyres if need be.

“I don’t have to, I’ve got rims downstairs in the basement”, Darrell answered in his soft southern accent. A few minutes later and we were downstairs and Darrell was pulling out shiny new rims for the front and back, hubs and all. With a wipe down the shiny new rims sparkled. Lisa was transfixed, practically salivating at the thought of her 650 ‘wearing’ the ‘precious things’…mmm!

We spoke for another 10 minutes to Darrell about cost, not the sort of conversation you’re thinking. We wanted to pay him - Darrell was insistent that he’d not take a penny. We were blown away.

By late afternoon Lisa’s bike was inside and old rims were coming off and the new ‘shiny’ ones were going on. I stripped the rotors and abs sensor ring off the old rims and had screwed them back on to the new and things were looking good. I popped out and bought Lisa and new 21”heavy duty inner tube and Darrell had found a new 21” Conti’ TKC80. Lisa was practically jumping up and down with excitement. She’d lost any pretence of cool reserve.

By 6:30pm work was finished and tools were being put away. Lisa’s bike looked great and I had the first ride. I knew instantly that Lisa was going to love the change. Tarzan felt like a new bike. Sandy and Darrell have been so kind, we been stunned by their hospitality and generosity. There was more to come. We’ve joined them at their home for the evening. A great night with wonderful people.

20-08-2008

Well, things change don’t they?

We’d made a reasonable start and headed into town with Darrell and Sandy to Costco to pick up the new hard drive we’d need to replace the faulty video drive. The 500 GIG drive we’d seen yesterday seemed like a good bet, I’m a guy and it’s all about size?!

By the time we’d Costco’d and headed over to office world for supplies the day was later than we’d planned and for whatever reason I was ‘hanging’’, dog tired. So, we didn’t need much persuasion. With jobs done we headed back to Darrell and Sandy’s home and set about writing up the diary and selectively ripping as many of Darrell’s DVD’s as humanely possible.

21-08-2008

We had an escort to the highway: from when we’d left with Sandy and Darrell and until the first turn off we played follow-em. With a few honks on the horn and a few waives we said adios and blatted off down the highway. They’ve been so good to us.

Well I’m not going to write much up as we sat on the I-95 pretty much all day, well that and the fact that I’m not feeling very philosophical.

We ended our day at Stanford and by 3:00pm were checking in. What a civilized time to finish our day, I could get used to this. Sodding hell we’ve got soft!

22-08-2008

‘O man’, it’s been too long since I felt road dirty, hot, sweaty, tired and strangely good and rewarded. I’ve not quiet got it figured out yet?

We pulled out of the motel car park and had made it 1 block (1/2 mile) to the Shell station and then filled up with gas. The key turned easily in the ignition but something was off. The clutch lever was feeling…weird and then..click, snap…slack. Shit the clutch cable snapped, I thought. Weird as the cable pretty new. There was no point getting stressed though, it wouldn’t take long to just snip off the old cable and attach the new cable I had already routed and put in place.

Things were about to go sideways and not in a good way. With the new cable attached at the lever I was now sat on the floor and looking to attach the lower cable end to the clutch actuating arm, the small ali/magnesium arm that actuates the clutch plate. It wasn’t where it was meant to be. “Oh no..no, no, no”! The arm had snapped, broken. Without it, changing gear would be a lottery. There were no clever solutions, neat tricks, or ingenious remedies.

Lisa thought I was joking when I gave her the news that we had a real problem. Throwing the arm over to her changed that.

We needed to put our thinking hats on. Within 20 minutes I’d made a dozen calls to friends and BMW dealers. No BMW dealer had an arm in stock, they just don’t break, well no dealer I spoke to had heard of one breaking. It was Issa to the rescue, he asked around and one of his tech’ guys had a spare arm after rebuilding a bike. Fantastically he agreed to donate it to the cause and Issa had rushed it to FedEx and arranged a delivery to Cross Country BMW for tomorrow.

I’d explored a number of options re towing but the bottom line is that we need to be at Cross Country for tomorrow’s presentation.

By mid-day we’d hatched a plan. Dan at Cross Country has called Marvin his bike delivery guy and had agreed to go half’s on whatever Marvin charged to come get us. In the meantime we were hoping FedEx was already moving the clutch arm (from Issa) across country, sorry no pun intended.

With a day of sunshine we spent the entire day at Shell answering a host of questions and meeting such a wash of enthusiasm, interest and people genuinely wanting to help. What should have been a crappy day turned out to be great one. Today has reminded both of us exactly why we’re on this trip. You meet the most wonderful people when you need a little help and just ‘put yourself’ out there.

It was day when we were basically just forced to stop, take a breath and watch the world around us wiz by at its usual break neck speed. We even laughed out loud at the variety of audio advertising blasted out of the shell garage speaker system. Our favourite was their advertisment for the coffee. It’s amazing how an add for something as simple as coffee can be made so…wordy. Here’s the add that we must have heard 200 times today. A woman in a high pitched semi enthusiastic voice explains “Come inside, enjoy a coffee, it’s not just a drink. It’ll heat you up, it’ll wake you up, it’ll refresh you and you can meet new friends…you can even personalise it”. What the f^#*k???! ‘You can even personalise it’. That’s brilliant in it’s over complication of what, to you and I, is just adding milk and sugar. When was the last time you said to a friend “Hi, may I personalise your coffee for you”? C’mon, we both know that even if you did, you’d then slap yourself, well you‘d have too….and your friend probably would want to too!

Marvin pitched up at 6:00pm and we loaded Tinkerbelle into the trailer. Man, I’m tired. Lisa rode with Marvin and I rode her bike down to Metuchen, we finally made it here by 8:30pm. Marvin took us to the local Red Roof Inn just down the road from the dealership.

Right now I need a shower and a good nights sleep.

See ya’ in the morning.

23-08-2008

Marvin came around at 11:40am and within 15 mins we were at Dans. Yesterday had made us quite tired – no riding – but waiting in the heat with all the dust and dirt coming off the I-95 was all a bit tiring. When your stationary, wearing the traffic dirt from 10,000 thousand cars is no fun.

Marvin dropped us off at the dealership and with hellos and handshakes made we wheeled Tinkerbelle into the workshop where the replacement arm for the clutch was waiting. (Many thanks Issa – we don’t know what we’d do without you!) And so the fun began. After 20 minutes of knuckle scraping fun we had to admit defeat., there was no way we were going to get the actuating arm retaining bolt back in what was going to hold the new arm in place. What all that nonsense means is that we were going to have to remove the entire swing arm, yep the whole swing arm just to get one small bolt in place.
After this was all done we managed to have a longer talk with Dan over at the Honda part of the dealership and disappeared quite early back to the Red Roof Inn.

24-08-2008

With the last few tweaks to the presentation finished, we seated the guests, hit the lights and got the projector running. We’ve not had a bad presentation but we’ve absolutely had some that were better than others. Especialy the ones where we can feed from the enrgy of the audience; it can be tangible. The stories flow and the life observations that start inside a small dark helmet get explored and shared.

We shared tales and gasped as we realized how the time had flown. A great audience and fun to be around.

25-08-2008

We decided that we would stay on at Red Roof in and went into NYC. First there was a taxi to the train station in Metuchen – then the train into Penn St Station. On first reflection my reaction was to say that the city looked liked the centre of Buenos Aires! The wide streets with the older tall buildings either side and then there were the trees – so this also reminded me of Mendoza!

We were carrying one of the Nikon cameras, the tripods and the small Canon – it was easy to take all the snapshots of the areas that I had only seen and heard of on TV and in the movies………..Madison Square Gardens, 5th Avenue, the Empire State building…..we were half-way down 5th Avenue taking shots of all the tall glassy high risers when we realized we still had a very long way to walk if we wanted to get to Ground Zero, where the twin towers of the World Trade Centre once stood. So a taxi was needed – fun!! My first NYC yellow cab! Actually he was quite a sedate driver. We were dropped off right on the corner of where the towers used to be – the first reaction was this was the middle of a very large building site. There were barriers up, wire fences, trucks, 4 or 5 very large cranes and dust in the air. We decided to just stay for a little while, take some photos and then just watch. Simon was asked not to put up his tripod – we wondered why at first and then realized that it could be any kind of base for a small weaponised unit.

We went around the corner to the local fire station and found the large plaque the whole length of the fire station where the names of just the firefighters who died on 9-11 were engraved.

Sat for a while in the Winter Gardens – a total glass building which, we later heard from Scott, had been totally obliterated during the explosions – now fully re-built as most of the building around were – now all back to their floor upon floor of glass.

Then went out to the Statue of Liberty on the ferry – made the last ferry out after a little problem with a knife that Simon was carrying! We told the security lady and she helped Simon go and find a man to hold it for us – they can’t keep it as they would confiscate it and not return it…..?........so Simon found a guy on a stall nearby who said he’d keep it…..we weren’t sure we’d get it back!

Amazing to get off the ferry and see the statue close up – Simon got some great photos.
Made it back in time to go and get Simons knife from the stall-holder who was still there.

A long and very tiring but enjoyable day.

26-08-2008

Stayed at Red Roof but what a treat. We were up early and on the bikes riding the hour down to the small local airport where Scott keeps his plane. We were taking a flight over New York city. It was a small 4 seater plane but the day was good and clear so hopefully we won’t get much buffeting!

We flew up the Hudson and then right over the statue of Liberty – going around quite steeply a few times and then back up the Hudson and passing alongside the city – which was just as great from above as it is to be walking through it.

I got air sick for the first time in my life, but wow, what an experience.

27-08-2008

One last day at Red Roof. Today was a day for catching up on the diary and emails.

28-08-2008

Left Red Roof and headed over to the Finger Lakes rally. Had a few beers and met Notch and his wife Margaret. Also Gretchen.

They didn’t charge us. And we’ve agreed to show our presentation tomorrow night for fun.

Turned in early

29-08-2008

People started to arrive early and by mid-day the rally site was packed.

Chilled and mingled and gave our presentation in the evening at 7:00pm

30-08-2008

Finger lakes – hung around Bobs ‘stall’ – got a few pieces for Simons bike from the second hand stall – and answered loads of questions – sold calendars……etc.

31-08-2008

Finger lakes. Went out on Bobs, brunch run which Lisa (from Bobs BMW) father Martin paid for us! All the riders met at the front gates but we needed to head off and get some gas – which was a shame as we had hoped to catch the other riders on the road but somehow we missed them and arrived at the hall a few mins before all the other riders.
Afterwards we decided to join Bob and a few other riders on a small ride around some of the smaller country roads. The countryside was reminding us of Somerset as it was rolling green hills with farmsteads tucked away all connected with small country roads.

Got back to the rally a little after 4pm and once the bikes were parked up we didn’t even have the chance to go and get out of our bike kit before people were all over the bikes and asking loads of questions!
Simon became a hairdresser this evening!! Two ladies both in their late 50’s had decided to trust Simon with their new hari cuts and so 60 minutes after starting both ladies had shaven heads. Both had wanted to do this once in the lives. The crowd Simon drew was larger than some of the stalls.

01-09-2008

Left the Finger Lakes Rally, and yes I’ve got a hangover. Chris had waited patiently for us as people were still asking questions and quizzing us over our journey. We finally made a move around 11:30 and promptly stopped 15 minutes later at a Friendly’s restaurant.

What a stunning ride back, one of the best curve rides we’ve had in the States so far.

Joined Chris and his family for a bbq in the evening. Met his mum Judy.

02 to 04-09-2008

It's been a couple of cool days, hanging out with Chris and his mum, we've even managed to take a couple fo fun dirt rides, edning up at a locla creek, set deep in the forest. A sunny mid-day swim seemed too good to miss.

We've managed to catch up on diary and emails.

05-09-2008

Strange but before leaving, Chris and I decided to clean the bikes.

Left Chris’s beautiful countryside and had good weather all the way.

Arrived at Cliffs BMW dealership and dropped in to say hi.

Cliff put us up in the Best Western Hotel.

Ran around to Costco and staples getting our prints and calendar made up, got it all done by 9:00pm