Paducah KY
While
making the trip to my buddy Neal’s place in Brentwood I made a stop for gas
along the I-40 and met an energetic young businessman named Mark Mendoza saw
Sophia and asked where I was heading. We
shared some stories of Harleys and one thing led to another and I found out he
is a graduate of ASU in Tempe and runs the franchise Sports Clips in addition
to restaurants, etc. His dad is in
Albuquerque and owns/operates Padilla’s, a long standing restaurant in the
city. Mark’s enthusiasm is infectious
and motivating….he rekindled my interest in looking for a business to start up
when I return to CA.
The
ride was uneventful, other than observing 2 very bad accidents in the eastbound
lanes with traffic backed up around 5-7 miles.
The
visit with Neal was great. Unfortunately
my arrival was too late to see his wife Liz before she flew out until returning
Saturday. And of course, I was departing
on Friday morning. However, there was
some bad weather, horrific lightning storms that hit the area hard. Neal’s patio table had the umbrella torn out
and the glass top shattered.
Of
the many things that we worked on to get me ready for the second half of my
trip was the making of a shroud to house the water resistant encased Garmin so
I could see the screen thru the clear plastic face of the case. The plastic is very soft and flexible and
reflects daylight, shirts, gloves, everything….making it very difficult to see
the screen. So I shrouded it was able to
see the screen much better today while riding to Sturgis.
However,
a little drama…the bike was loaded and Neal was going to lead me to the Post
Office to mail a bag of my receipts home.
These receipts are needed to put in my travel log for the SCMA as proof
of visit. So I’m getting concerned
having them in my possession where they could ultimately be lost. Since I wont be working them until I return
to CA in October I decided to just mail them now. And, in fact, may individually mail future
receipts each week just to keep things in safe keeping. Well, we had assembled the shroud and
installed it on Sophia and got everything working. I shut all off and we went into the house to
review the map and round so I could visualize it ahead of the ride. After that we went out into the garage and I
started the bike and backed out, plugging the Garming power adapter into the
fairing’s power plug. Once out of the
garage I put it gear and glanced at the shrouded Garmin to see how it displayed
while out in the bright sunlight. The
screen was blank. No matter what I did I
could not get the Garmin to power up.
Neal
and I consulted owner’s manual, called Garmin support (Closed on weekends),
unplugged the tip of the power cord to see if the fuze was blown, yada yada
yada, all to no avail. Talk about
frustrating!
Next
we decided to go to Auto Zone for a new fuze…they didn’t have it. So off we went to Radio Shack in the hopes
they would carry these small fuses. If
the fuse didn’t solve the problem we would go to Costco and try to exchange
this one as ‘bad’ or just buy a new one.
While at Radio Shack we found the fuses and I came up with the idea of
asking the clerk to test the original ceramic fuse to determine if it was still
good….and it tested good! Then we
thought there may be a fuse internally to the Garmin and the clerk tried to
open it to no avail. This was a good thing
because another employee was consulted for a possible solution. He looked at it, and about 15 seconds later
handed it back to me and it was fully operational! Seems that all one has to do is hold the
power on button down for 7 seconds and the Garmin resets….how about that! So I was saved from buying fuses and a new
Garmin and from losing another 2 hours.
Well,
by the time we got back and got the bike all set up it turned out to be 5pm….a
very unholy late start! But, despite
Neal’s invitation to stay one more day, I insisted on departing as I needed to
complete this next 3000 mile leg of the summer before arriving in El Paso for
the Three Flags Classic (ride from ELP to Nelson BC in 4 days).
So
off I went, no picture taking, just riding.
I made it to Paducah which I believe is the home of Murray State
College. So I only covered about 155
miles for the day…but with luck I can do some long legs the next two days and
get this ride back on schedule.
I
hope, I hope, I hope.
C ya mañana,Gonzo
Twitter: @GonzoCrossUSA
Email: GonzoCrossUSA@gmail.com
Cell: 949-433-0761
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