Good Morning!!!! 61F @ 7:30AM. Partly cloudy. High 79F. Winds light and variable.
You folks are nothing if not prolific; it took me nearly two hours this AM to get caught up. Keep up the good work!:laughing:
I hope your batteries stay up on the wall, David, and that you never have to replace them again.
I went from a pickup with a shell to an SUV, Jay, and regretted it since all the noise and dirt that used to stay in the bed of the truck now came inside to the cargo area of the SUV. The truck rode better, too.
The veneer of civilization is very thin, but our veterans make up a very big part of it. There will always be those who think they can just take what they want, so I think there will always be veterans who have shown them how wrong they are. It's human nature. We would all be leading very different lives without the sacrifices of our military. Thanks to every one of you that have served.
Nice trip this weekend, ate some really great food, revisited some favorite roads, found some new ones, too. Best of all, got to see some friends from SoCal that only come to this event, so a fair amount of catching up was done. Some odd things, too. First day out, the GPS kept trying to tell me I wouldn't make my destination until 9PM, and even though I didn't believe it, it had me rushing to beat sundown. Then about 2/3 of the way there, it reconsidered, and surprise, I'd be there by 3:30.:laughing: Used the new found time to enjoy a leisurely lunch overlooking the ocean, knowing I'd be done in an hour or so. Then on the second day, someone pointed to the left cylinder after I arrived at camp, where I quickly spotted a dangling plug lead. The next morning we learned that the little aluminum cap on the top of the spark plug had stripped out. Managed to get it out of the spark plug lead, then reverse it so there were still threads to hold it on. I think that's why my other bikes use caps that don't use those aluminum toppers, and I'll be switching this bike over, too. We also found a new oil leak on the front of the engine, more of a mess than a problem, but one that will need some bench time to correct. The big red dirt bike ran great all weekend, other than that, and didn't skip a beat. Saturday a bunch of us went out for breakfast, then hit local attractions like Salvation Mountain, Slab City, and East Jesus, and some little mud pots that had formed near one of may geothermal power plants in the area. That night our host organized tacos, and I joined the kitchen crew chopping and dicing peppers and tomatoes. A twelve pack of Tecate donated to the communal beer cooler didn't hurt, either. Nothing like starting off at sunrise with a full tank and a long way to go, but as things worked out, breakfast turned out to be 300 miles away and tasted more like lunch. Thats when I learned that the next day's morning temps would be in the high 20s if I overnighted in the Eastern Sierra, so a last minute course change had me navigating the last three hours of the trip in the dark, some of it coming down into Sacramento on I80. I learned I have some work to do to improve my headlights, and after 730 miles, my butt tells me we need to go visit the custom saddle maker. but other than that, I was warm and glad to sleep in my own bed last night.
And now I have an extra day at home to tinker with who knows what. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their long weekend.
