Due to the forecast for 106 degrees in Dallas I was up at 2:30 yesterday morning hoping to be on the road by 3:30. I backed the motorcycle out of the garage, started it, and wondered why it was so dark. The brain was moving a little slow, but\u00a0I realized — no head light.<\/p>\n
Back into the garage and I\u00a0pulled the HID bulb only to find out it was a blown fuse. Back in goes the HID, fuse replaced, and I hit the road at 4:20. Of course I’m wondering while I ride what electrical problem I could have that would be blowing fuses.<\/p>\n
The early morning ride went great since I was able to scoot through Dallas in next to no traffic. I even got seriously cold right around dawn when the temperature dropped to the mid 70’s. Due to the heat I was trying shorts and wicking top under mesh jacket and mesh\u00a0pants. I told myself to enjoy the cold since it wasn’t going to last long.<\/p>\n
I made a fuel stop a little after dawn and I could feel the temperature start to rise when I was back on the highway. Around 8:00 I watched my speedometer drop down to\u00a00, come back up, drop again and then settle about 10 miles an hour below my actual speed. About that time the the ABS light came on and stayed on.<\/p>\n
Shorting head light, bad speedo, no ABS\u00a0— just dandy.<\/p>\n
You can imagine was I was thinking about while I rode. I figured I’d keep going and research the problems on the internet when I stopped for the day. I was through Little Rock around 9:30 and turned north\u00a0just west of\u00a0Memphis before noon.<\/p>\n
About that time the speedo spazzed out again and settled at around 20 MPH below actual speed. I kept going.<\/p>\n
I reached my intended destination of Union City, TN for day 1 around 1:00 in the afternoon — not tired and not prepared to be bored for the rest of the afternoon.\u00a0I was told at the Tennessee welcome center that Elizabethtown, KY was about 4 hours out but I didn’t want to go that<\/em> far in the heat.<\/p>\n \u00a0I took Purchase Parkway north into Kentucky and then the Western Kentucky Parkway east —\u00a0little traffic on either so I was making great time. I thought 4:00 would be a good time to call it a day since it was really getting hot, but there just wasn’t any lodging along the parkway so I ended up at Elizabethtown after all.<\/p>\n 815 miles in 100 degree heat. I had grabbed my cooling vest at the last minute and think it’s the only reason I could keep riding. At every fuel stop I would take in a zip lock bag, put a couple inches of ice in it, throw the vest in and fill it with water and close it up. The vest would soak while I got fuel and I would put it on dripping wet (and ice cold). Since my odometer was off due to my speedo malfunctioning I was stopping every 160 miles or so.<\/p>\n I had the Weather Channel on while I was researching on the internet\u00a0last night\u00a0and heard that Little Rock and Memphis had record breaking heat\u00a0indicies of 112 and 116. I certainly pick the days to travel.<\/p>\n I emailed one of the organizers\u00a0of the\u00a0F650 get together in Vermont. He contacted an F650 rider \u00a0in Louisville about 40 miles north of where I was staying.\u00a0That rider, Rick, emailed his phone number and told me to call him in the morning.<\/p>\n My plan was to get up in the morning to check the ABS\/speed sensor on the rear wheel and\u00a0see if I could figure it out myself. 2:30 AM to 10:00 PM. I was pooped and called it a day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Due to the forecast for 106 degrees in Dallas I was up at 2:30 yesterday morning hoping to be on the road by 3:30. I backed the motorcycle out of the garage, started it, and wondered why it was so dark. The brain was moving a little slow, but\u00a0I realized — no head light. Back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-1184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trip_reporting","tag-vermont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1193,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions\/1193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}