2014 ALR Charity Run

I picked up the bike on Saturday, courtesy of Greg's limosine service.  The bike has more than enough power to spare, but it could still use a little tweaking on the sound.  I need to deepen the grown a little bit, and will tackle that sometime this summer.  I'm just not sure how much tampering I can do before I'll need to reprogram the power commander.

Anyway - I had the bike back and life was good.  Yes, there was another glitch at the dealership but I'm choosing to believe it was an innocent mistake, and will say no more about it.

Saturday, my ALR chapter put on a charity run to raise funds for two awesome causes; the Olivia Foundation, and Hero Stars of Cape Cod.

The Olivia Foundation is named for a young girl who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and has been displaying an enormous amount of strength and positiveness throughout the whole ordeal she's going through.  Fortunately, she was having a good day on Saturday and was able to come visit us for a short time and it was so awesome to see her playing with her siblings and friends.

Hero Stars is a startup enterprise (not even an official "company"), started by a Vietnam Veteran who wanted to show his appreciation for those that made the ultimate sacrifice for our country's freedom.  He fashions stars out of solid pieces of granite, sometimes painting them, other times; not.  I was talking with him and he fashions these pieces of art with a table saw...and a grinder!  In fact, most of his work is done with a grinder.  If you saw his finished items, you'd be amazed at his talent!

The day was forecast as sunny and beautiful, and the weather folks actually came through for us in a big way - high 70's, sunshine, low humidity - perfect!

No sooner had we gotten the parking lot set up than the bikes began arriving.  Before long, we had an almost full lot - fantastic!  The registration lines were long, the raffles sales were soaring (we had three tables, all jam packed with awesome items!), and things were shaping up nicely.

We had a pre-run pow-wow with the Sharon officer who'd be escorting us, then we made our announcements to the crowds, and then Kevin (our Chaplain) performed a blessing of the bikes for us.  He said afterward that he'd been a little nervous - it was his first time, but he did a fantastic job!

With that - we were off!

The run went almost flawlessly.  I say "almost" because one of our Road Captains spaced out when it came time to make one of the last turns of the run.  It wasn't a big deal.  A quick adjustment and we were soon back on track and then rolling back into the Post's parking lot - greeted with cheers and applause from those who were waiting for us.  (It was still funny, though, and our Road Captain will have to endure some jabs at our next meeting.)

From there, the food lines filled up and food was handed out as fast as we could get it out to the tables.  More raffle ticket sales, 50/50 sales, the DJ was cranking the tunes...this was really a great day!

After the food lines had petered out and folks had filled their bellies, we announced the two charities/organizations we were there for that day.  Olivia's mother came up and spoke to the crowd, thanking and blessing us all.  Then it was Bill's turn; and he had arranged for three Gold Star Mothers to join us today, and he presented each of them with one of his Hero Stars.  (For those that don't know; a Gold Star Mother is one who has lost a child in combat.)  That was a very emotional experience to see those mothers up there!

After a bit of a break, the DJ turned the tunes down a bit and it was time to announce the raffle winners.  Once again, I had bought only losing tickets, but that's ok.  It was money very well spent.

Lastly, it was time to announce the day's take.  We'd raised $1,900!  This meant $950 for each charity!  Not too shabby at all for a group of guys who are just starting to get the hang of this charity event thing.

When we announced the amount that each charity would get, I happened to be looking at Bill's face (Hero Stars) and I saw the look of surprise and amazement cross his face.  He later told us that with that money, he can go out and buy a complete pallet of granite, as well as more diamond pads/blades, and create stones for about 60 more families.  How amazing is that!

Olivia's father came up to us later and couldn't thank us enough.  I can't even imagine the tremendous toll this process has had on their whole family, so it was such a great feeling that we'd been able to help bring a good day to them.

As the day wore into the afternoon, and then into the early evening, folks began to disperse - just as with all runs.  The food had been cleaned up, the parking lot all but cleared, and the DJ had broken camp and headed for home.

What a fantastic day it had been.  Perfect weather, a great turnout, plenty of food, great music, and helping out two very worthwhile causes.  How can you top that?

I'm not sure, but we're going to try like hell at our next one...

Getting Ahead Of Myself

I realize that I hadn't posted anything about the 'Vous yet, before going on a tirade about my bike at the dealership (the same dealership that again didn't call me back yesterday, after AGAIN saying they would).  At any rate, I got the call this morning; the bike is done and ready and - in their words - sounds great and I will be very happy.  Time will tell (I won't be able to pick it up until Friday).

So let's go back a bit, to happier times, and talk a little about the 'Vous.  And what better way to "talk" about it than with pictures...

Kevin, his sons, and Hilary all met at my house on Wednesday morning for the ride out to the motel.  And what a ride out - just check out the sky in this pic!

And I snapped that pic on 495!  Where was the traffic?  Who cares!  It was a very welcome change from  years past.

Our first gas stop - a nicely re-purposed phone booth was sitting off to the side...

The highlight of the Mohawk Trail - it's no Tail of the Dragon, but it ain't shappy, either!

I think it was after this next pic that I noticed Kev had backed off a bit.  I didn't realize until just now when I looked at this pic, just how close I'd come to the edge of the road.

I guess for me; texting-while-riding isn't the problem, it's snapping pics.

At any rate, you can see the roadways were a bit damp through here.  We'd checked the weather that morning and were supposed to have clear, sunny skies the whole day.  Well, the weather was wrong once again, and the skies had clouded over a bit and we'd dodged a few showers along the way, judging from wet roadways.

Still, though - who cares!  Look at this scenery!

We made it to the top!  The three-state overlook.  Unfortunately, the undergrowth has become more of an overgrowth, so the visibility is blocked a bit, but you can still see some great distances on a good day.  Like for instance; all the sunshine that's way off in the distance, far away from us...

The obligatory bikes-at-the-overlook photo...

Like last year, we stopped at the Penalty Box in Troy for lunch.  We were pretty happy with the traffic in Troy.  Usually it's a real bear, but this time through, everything was flowing quite well.

All too soon, we were back on the road and after a few more miles - we made it to the hotel!

Skrobie with one of his trucker-bomb drinks.  "Here, drink this" he'd keep telling us.  And we did.  They tasted much better than they looked.  I think this one was a maple whiskey.

Gramma's naughty keychain...

I forgot that I'd rigged up this door holder until I saw the pic.  (At least, I think it was me who rigged it...)  (shrug)

Ahh, the showers.  Well, there's one way to have soap in the shower...

Check out that clean mountain water!  I even left it running for a while, hoping it would clear up.  Nope - if anything, it got darker.  The folks at the diner said it was because of the work being done by the town, on the water lines.  (We didn't see any work being done, anywhere.)

Suffice to say I took a very, very quick shower.

We're off to the 'Vous!!  Check out those clear roadways and welcoming skies!

And that scenery!

Whoops, I'm falling further behind...

And further...

We made it!  Lined up and waiting!

Things were moving quite well already.  We probably moved up about 6 times in the first 45 minutes we were there.  The gates were obviously open and folks were getting in!

Poor Ski - he'd been in such a rush to get out here, he'd left without his ticket...and his wallet...and his registration...and his phone.

Luckily, Bruce was coming out today and had swung by Ski's house to pick everything up for him.

Before long, we were in and set up.  And I lost my koozie almost immediately.  Good thing King carries spares on his bike.  And check this out - this guy looks familiar!  (I love seeing these koozies out and about!)

The Sobieski Vodka crew was out again.  Free shots!  I probably shouldn't have gone through the entire list, twice.  I blame Myszka!

A funny side-note; the girl in the pic; I got to chatting with her and asked what she did for a living.  Turns out she's a psychiatric nurse!  We laughed about that - I said she was probably diagnosing everyone she saw that day, and that we all needed to be admitted.

There of course were lots of other pictures taken, and laughs aplenty, but those things stay at the 'Vous.  I do have one last pic for ya, though, courtesy of Rex.

Ya see; I'd gone too hard, too late into the evening on Saturday night, so come Sunday, I was quite exhausted.  At one of the food/gas stops, I took advantage of the downtime to grab some slumber.  I never even realize anyone had taken a pic.

Guess I just need to be more selective in who I hang around with.  :-)

It was another successful year, made even better by the absolute fantastic weather we had all weekend long!  We brought some new friends with us this year, too, and I'm sure we will be seeing them again next year.

So until next year; What Happens At The 'Vous, Stays At The 'Vous!

I Obviously Spoke MUCH Too Soon

Forget everything nice I said about the fucking dealership.  They're on the shit list already and it's only been what...two and a half weeks?

When I bought the bike, the Stage 1 upgrade was part of the deal I got them to throw in.  Everything was priced out at the Parts counter and the order for the parts was placed into the system.  I was told the parts would be in, in a few days.  But just to be safe, I pushed the appointment out almost two full weeks; to today.

So imagine my aggravation when I showed up this morning only to be told that not all of the parts were in.  It seems that the engine pipes were "hopefully" showing up on the UPS truck today, but that they didn't have the end caps I'd ordered.

Hoping (against hope, apparently), I selected a model of end caps that they had in-stock, just so I could hopefully get things moving.  As I left, I was assured I would get a call with a status update on things in a little while.

It's now 3:45 and having heard nothing from them, I called to see what the story was.  My bike hasn't even made it to a fucking lift yet.  So why the fuck did I make an appointment almost two weeks ago if they can't even honor the fucking thing?  I asked them that very exact question (minus the expletives) and the answer I got was they didn't know, that they would talk to the tech who was scheduled to work on my bike, find out what the story is, and let me know.

Yeah, and I'll hold my breath waiting for that call to come in, too.

Unfucking real.

'Vous Or Bust

It's that time of year again - time for the Rendezvous.  Usually, I'd put an exclamation on the end of that sentence, but this year I'm just too burned out from work.  I haven't even really started packing yet and kick stands go up @ 8am tomorrow morning.  The good news is that I'm wrapping up my June plan today and once I walk out the doors tonight, then vacation mode will kick in, big time.

Kevin was texting me last night, saying he wanted to depart "now", so I know he's in full 'Vous mode.  Hopefully the weather will give us a bit of a break for the ride out.  Last I checked, there were chances of rain/thunderstorms for the early morning, but then just mostly cloudy for the ride out.  Pattersonville looks like about the same, but with thunderstorms returning around 4pm.  Barring anything unforseen, we'll have set our kickstands in the motel parking lot about an hour prior to that.

For everyone that's making the trip this year; safe travels.  For all those not making it, hopefully you'll be with us next year.

8 more hours 'til kick-back time...

Impressed

I went to the dealership Saturday morning to sign up for their MVP program; "Motorcycle Value Program". It's a bit pricey out of the gate ($2,300), but I'm now paid-up for all my services for the next 10 years.  That's not a typo - 10 years.  And, the plan is transferrable to another bike.  So if I move on to another bike in 5 years, the services on that bike are covered as well (up to a 10 year limit, in total).

In talking to both the finance guy, as well as the service guy, they both were saying that the 20k service on my new bike includes changing the fork oil.  Ok, no biggie, right?  Well, apparently something with this new bike (I haven't delved into the service manual yet to see why) requires a whole lot of work to access the tubes.  The labor charge on that service is 7 hours.  Zoinks.  Just think about what that equates to for cost!  And while I'm capable of doing my own services, I am planning on letting the dealership to them - especially now.  They will do a better job of checking many more things than I would, and; I'll get a free wash and wax each time.

But back to being impressed.  Each visit I've made to this dealership, I've been very impressed with how I'm treated.  Each person seems genuinely interested in getting to know me, making sure I don't have any questions about anything, and just being very helpful and friendly.

Case in point; when I was there on Saturday, I happened to mention to the service manager (Bob) that my iPod wasn't being recognized by the radio.  (I assume it's because my iPod is ancient, and its software version is completely out of date).  Bob asks me if I have the bike with me and I said yes.  He tells me to bring it right in and they'll flash the radio for me.  I don't even have an appointment, but they took my bike right in and had it looked at.  As it turned out, my radio came with the absolute newest software vesion avaialble - even one vesion newer than what the dealership had.  But they took the time to explain what they found, and said they do expect that it's because my iPod is so old.  They asked if I had any other devices that I could test on it, and I said yep, that I would let them know how I made out.  (I haven't tested any others yet, but will tonight.  If my friend's iPhone works then I'll be buying a new iPod tomorrow.)

When it was time for me to roll out and get going, it had started to rain a bit.  Each service guy within earshot (including Bob), wished me safe riding, watch out for the slick spots, watch out for the idiots, etc.  It was like I was leaving a buddy's house or something.  Nobody just walked by and said nothing as I rolled out of the service area - every person was wishing me well.  I could get used to that kind of treatment.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Interesting Position

I find myself in an unusual position.  I've reached (and now exceeded) the break-in period of 500 miles...

...and the next 500 will be a piece of cake since I'm heading out to the 'Vous on Wednesday (and taking the long route to get there).

However, my service date at the dealership isn't until the 24th.  This means I'm currently facing the possibility of going over 1,000 miles before the service gets done.  I'm not worried about a couple hundred miles, but I definitely don't want to go much beyond that.  So do I temper things and tone down the riding this weekend?

Decisions, decisions...

Out with the Old and in With the New

Well, as most of you correctly guessed; the plug wires did not fix the problem (not had anyone really expected they would). I’d already made up my mind that if (when) they didn’t fix things, I’d trade the bike in and get a new one.

I already knew what I was going to look at; the new Street Glides – with the Daytona Blue Pearl color option. I talked to a few dealerships to get some initial information and then headed off to Boston Harley to see the color in person. It wasn’t as bright as it looked on-line, but I still liked it. The sales guy I talked to saw my notepad with the other dealership info on it and commented that he didn’t want me shopping anywhere else – IE: what would it take to get me to sign on something that day? Well, for starters, how about if you came down to (X) on your price. Let me check with the sales manager. He comes back; yes, we can do that price. Ok great, we have a starting price, now let’s talk about my bike for trade-in value (I told them about the skipping problem). Let me get a number from the sales manager – he came back and I thought to myself hmmm, that’s kinda low. So, we continued the dance. Me; I’m still not signing today. This is still just informational only. Him; Well, what would it take to get you to sign? Me; Ok, how about you toss in a Stage 1 upgrade? Him; Let me see if we can do that – yes, we can. Me; Great! But I’m still not signing today. Him; Well, what would it take to get a signature? Me; Hmmm…well, this (X) is the number I had in mind for my trade-in. If you can come up to this number, then we have a deal. Him; Let me check – we can do that.

At this point, I figured I had about as good a deal as I was going to get anywhere – let’s sign this deal!

That was Wednesday, they didn’t have that exact bike in stock but would let me know when it was in (prob withing a few days). How about I come down on Saturday to finalize the transaction? Then I got the call the next day (Thursday); the bike was in! Ok, now the fever started hitting me hard. It was like just before heading out on a bike trip; I couldn’t sleep at all! I called the dealership and said I had to come in the next day (Friday) – I needed to ride!!! They had to shuffle some scheduling around to accommodate me, but they said ok, come on down.

I arrived and we started in with the process. They came out to look at my old bike and started it up – it sprang to life no problem. He shut it off and then we went in and did the paperwork thing. The finance guy was cool, we had each other laughing pretty good. At one point, he noted the year and mileage on the bike I was trading in and says “You’ve got 50k miles on your ’08 – you definitely ride, huh?” I just said “Yep”, but thought to myself “Well, I had 40k on the first ’08, and I put 40k on the 2nd ’08... 40k + 40k means I technically have 80k on my ’08!!”

When I’d signed on all the dotted lines, it was time to ring the large “ship” style bell. As I did it, I heard another bell ring out – then another! Looking around, I saw that the sales manager had rung one, and the boutique ladies had rung one as well. Then everyone in the place started clapping and cheering. Hey thanks everyone! Now who’s chipping in to help me with the payments? (cue crickets chirping…)

Then it was time to take my old bike off the trailer – again, it started up just fine. I mentally crossed my fingers as the sales guy rode it across their parking lot and into the innards of their building. I was afraid it would stall or start bucking wildly, and we’d have some discussions to do. But it seemed to run smoothly enough and I exhaled thankfully as she passed through the garage door and the rumble of the Rineharts faded into the bowels of the building.

And just like that, she was gone… Yes I’ll miss her…but not the problems she gave me!

A few minutes later, I could hear the approaching sound of a much quieter bike. And then, there she was! The sales guy reappeared, exiting the garage door astride my shiny, spotless new bike! He brought her around and we got her loaded onto the trailer. A hearty handshake was exchanged, and I was off, headed back to the homestead!

A quick text to Matty to see if he’d be around to give me a hand "with something". Ya see; I hadn’t mentioned to anyone that I was getting a new bike. For some reason, I’d felt very superstitious about the whole thing, fearing that if I said anything before the new bike was signed/sealed and in my driveway, that the deal would fall through. Maybe it was because of all the headaches and heartaches I’d had with the old one, but I just wanted to keep things under wraps until the deal was done.

When Matt pulled into my driveway, I saw him begin nodding when he spotted the bike on the trailer. As he stepped out of his truck, he said he’d surmised that a new bike was a strong possibility of what I’d needed help with. It didn’t take long to get her unloaded and then a quick celebratory beer, and he was off to get cleaned up for that night’s ‘Vous planning party.

And there you have it – the story of my new ride! I took it over to Aaron’s house that night for the planning party and it felt AMAZING to have a reliable ride again! Then on Saturday, Matt and I rode up to Rex’s house to enjoy the great weather that this past weekend brought us. The ride home yesterday was good as well, and I now have ~440 miles on it. I’ve been going easy on it – the break-in is 500 miles. After that, I get to ride it normally.

The first service gets done after 1,000 miles. I’m bringing the bike back in, in two weeks, for the Stage 1 upgrade. I will probably need to have the 1k service done at the same time…or maybe even sooner…

Not a bad way to start a new relationship…

What Was The Outcome?

Arriving home last night, I set about installing the new plug wires.  The rear one was fairly easy, since hiking up the back of the gas tank gave me enough room to finagle things.  The front plug wire, however, required me to remove the front tank bolts, and hike that up as well;

It's tough to make out due to sun shining directly into the camera, but you can make out the dual-clip which holds the front plug wire up and off of the front head.

After installing the wires and getting the tank and seat bolted back into place, I took her for a spin.  What was the outcome?

Let's see if you can guess.

I'll give you this picture as a hint.  Feel free to comment with your guesses...

Down to the...Wire. Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk

I ran out to the closest dealership at lunchtime (Boston Harley) and picked up the plug wires.  They will get installed tonight and we'll see how things fare.  If by some miracle this takes care of things then I will be ecstatic.

However, if (as I am expecting) this does not fix the problem, then it will be making one last trip - to a dealership to be traded in.

I perused the bikes on the floor at Boston Harley - those new Street Glides look sharp!  Everything on them is sweet!  Well, not everything; the $27k price tag gives me pause...  But I need to bite the bullet and get something reliable - Summer is here and I can't be saddled with a non-running bike.

The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the color selection.  They had some black ones, a burnt orange one, a flat cream one, a charcoal pearl, and a flat grey.   At first glance, the flat grey caught my eye and my new bestest buddy PJ (salesguy) was more than happy to show me all the bells and whistles the new HD's come with.  Pretty impressive, I have to say.  And it's comfortable to sit on, too.  I asked if they'd have any interest in an '08 with 50k miles on it and he said absolutely.  (I'm sure he'd temper his answer if he knew it was running like el crapola.)

Anyway - since the 2014 model year no longer offers the Electra Glide Classic version (which is what I'd really like), I will either pick up a late model ECG or a new Street Glide.  Either way, it'll be from a dealership.

I like the Boston dealership - I bought my '02 Fatboy from them and they always treated me great, even well after the sale.  The '08, I bought from Ocean State, in RI.  They were awesome to deal with when Zig and I were buying, but then...when he went back 3 weeks later with that fuel pump housing problem, they basically told him to beat it.  So, I'm not crazy about buying from them again.

The only downside to Boston is they don't have a color I'm crazy about.  I think they have agreements with a couple of other dealerships in New England so I will look into their inventory as well and when my new bestest buddy PJ calls me in two days for his follow-up contact, maybe I'll have found one that we can start moving forward on.

Either way, it all comes down to the wire(s) tonight...

Beer, Breafast, and Bike

Thursday evening, my phone pings.  Hey, someone is texting me!  It's Matty - he's planning to ride to CT to buy beer on Saturday, am I around/interested?  Hell yeah - and my schedule is open too!  Let's do this!   Saturday morning dawned with a bit of a chill in the air, but the sky was pleasant and the forecast was decent.  We rolled out of Matt's driveway with high hopes on the day...   ...just as I'm sure the driver of this car did, when he headed out that morning.  No idea what the back story on this was, but when we got to it, there was a cop car blocking the slow lane of travel, and there were folks standing further back up on the road, so it looked like everyone was safe.  The white spray patter on the pavement under the front of the car gave the impression that a fire extinguisher had been tried, but as you can tell from the pic; the fire was winning.

As we passed by the car, I turned back and looked - the front end was even more engulfed than it looks in the pic.  I think it's safe to say the car was a goner.

Furhter along, we were hammering down Rte 91 and my bike started acting up even worse than it had been.  Really skipping and lurching, even to the point of almost stalling at one point.  Yep - the saga continues, but more on that later.

Ta da!  We made it!!  New England Brewing Company!

This place has some awesome label art for their beers, and they've framed and mounted some of the more popular ones.  I snapped pics of the ones I liked.

The Neighbor of the Beast - the font is done in the same style as Iron Maiden's album cover of the same name - very cool!

I didn't pick up on this, but Craig (our newest friend, and purveyor of beer samples) pointed out that the background on this label is the exact same pattern on the rugs in The Shining.  It's little touches like this that really are impressive!

Imperial Stout Trooper - this is the one I'd had my hopes up for trying, but alas; their stouts (and a fantastic porter, we were told) are done as a seasonal thing.  No problem, we'll just have to pencil in a return trip in the Fall!

Premeditated Murder.  A group of crows is called a Murder.  Here in this label, a crow is thinking (premeditating) about a Murder of crows.  This stuff is ingenious!!

The beer!  We loved the little glasses the samples came in, and the beer wasn't too bad at all.  Being the start of Summer, their beers on tap were all of the hoppy style - not really my thing, but still, the beer was enjoyable.  I really am looking forward to coming back and trying their stout and porter.

They had little shelves on the walls, all the way around the tasting room, and they were lined with cool and funny cans & bottles.  Some were their own beers, many were from other breweries.

Here's where the magic happens.  Craig was off to the side helping someone else when I snapped the pic.  He was a really cool guy.  Laid back, funny to talk with.

We'd tasted all the beers and I figured we'd be rolling soon.  Matty threw a large bill into their tip jar and headed off to the bathroom to prep for the departure.  I strolled outside to snap the obligatory bike pic, and Zig stuck around inside to finish off his beer sample.

But then...what's this?  Zig popped his head out and said Craig said we could have one more - sweet!

Here's the troublemakers, doing what they do...

We shot the breeze with Craig for a bit more and were prepping to head out.  We'd procured directions to an apparent great restaurant down the street, and were going to grab some grub before hitting the road.  Then kinda of suddenly, Craig just turned around and walked into the back room.  (shrug)...ok, I guess we're done here.

But then he came back...and he was holding somerthing...couldn't see what it was, due to it being wrapped in a plastic bag.

He walked up with a surreptitious air about him, lowered his voice and said "Because you guys rode all the way here..." and then opened the bag and then unwrapped some ancient looking paper to reveal two bottles - one was a bourbon barrel aged Imperial Stout, and the other was a Belgian style ale.

He explained that these were "out of print" so to speak, that they'd been hugely popular and that the brewery only had a few bottles of this stuff left and enjoyed them on special occasions.  What a grand gesture on his part, to gift us two bottles of their own private, secret stash!!  How F'ng cool is that!!

You can bet you ass we'll be back in the Fall!!

Jumping forward to Sunday.  Our Legion Riders chapter is putting on a charity run at the end of June, and we needed to lock in a route to take folks on.  We'd pitched some ideas and this morning we'd be doing recon to see how things flowed and see what the condition of the roadways were.

Rally time at the Post was 7am.  7am?!?!  There'd been some grumbling about such an early time, but to our surprise; 7am came, and we had NINE bikes!  That's impressive!!

We ran the route and things went well, overall.  Some of the turns were too sharp, so we made some adjustments and will use a route that is softer and safer for a run.

The only real notable thing that happened was that my bike - acting up even worse than the day before, decided to completely cut out when I was taking a very shap right turn.  Thankfully, my speed was almost nil, but the lean was pretty steep due to the sharpness of the turn.  Well, when you lose power from the engine, you lose centripetal force...which means the bike falls over.  Again, thankfully I was going very slowly, so I managed to plop the bike down gently enough that there wasn't any damage...other than to my ego...and a bruised ego is great motivation for picking a bike up and getting rolling again.

The bike did stall again, later on at a stop sign.  Dare I say I've reached my limit with this thing?  But again; more on that later.

Breakfast!  The other half of this morning's agenda was to grab breakfast after doing the recon.  Our Road Captain said he knew of a great place and off we headed.  The place was pretty busy, but we lucked out and found a few parking spots clumped together and got ourselves lined up pretty well.

Look at all this food!  Only $9!  I think I'm going to have to put this place on my regualr-visit list..

Everyone had things to do so after breakfast we broke up and headed off in our own directions.

My bike was doing an almost-constant skip/misfire and I just wanted to get it home.  I'd done a little more research on-line and I'm now looking at replacing the spark plug wires (even though this (2nd hand) bike only has 50k miles on it).

Have you looked at the plug wires?  They're not like the old bikes where the wires were about 6" long.  These run under the tank and are clipped to the frame.  Wonderful.  Thankfully, unbolting the gas tank at the bottom and jacking it up seems to give enough access room.

Here's a shot looking up under the tank, you can see the clips that hold the rear jug's wire in place.  The front wire is going to be a little tricky - I may need to unbolt the front of the tank as well, but I'm going to see if I can succeed without doing that.

So where does this leave me?  It leaves me very frustrated with a bike that has had a misfire problem for almost an entire year.  A bike that I've thrown about $5,000 into, in an effort to fix the problem.  Granted, some of the work also gave me upgraded performance, but the bottom line is the problem still exists.  I've had the bike at two local mechanics, as well as an official HD dealership.  And no one can find the problem, let alone fix it.

So I've come to the decision that if the new plug wires don't fix the problem, I am getting rid of the bike.

As I said to Matty; I'm not going to lose any more riding time because of an unreliable bike.  Life's too short.

Wish me luck.