Monday morning greetings to all!

It was kind of like how “Gilligan’s Island” started with what was supposed to be a three hour cruise! I didn’t get to ride my Harley very much last year because of being out of town and swamped with work. This year I’ve vowed to change that! Most of us here in the Midwest knew that the weekend was going to be gorgeous and I wanted to get out for my first “real” ride of the year. On Saturday morning I headed down to Hannibal, Mo. and then worked my way north along the Mississippi River. I stopped for a late lunch in Keokuk, Ia. and when I went to restart the bike, the battery was dead. I tried to push start it with the help of a good samaritan and had no luck getting it going. Now, you just don’t run over to Wal-mart to get a battery for a Harley and the closest dealership was an hour away. After trying a couple of different options locally, I called my lovely girlfriend Jan, who drove over to Keokuk with a battery charger in hopes that we could get the bike started that evening. We ended up spending he night and charged the battery overnight. I had talked with my local service guy at the Harley dealership and he told me one of two things that could happen. If it was the battery and I could get the bike started, once I got it running and didn’t shut the bike off, I could ride back to Peoria and the bike’s alternator would power the bike and I’d be fine. If the problem was with the alternator, the bike would run until the battery went dead and the bike would shut down. On Sunday morning, we got the somewhat charged battery back in the bike and we’re able to get it started. As we started back to Peoria, I was watching the bikes volt meter drop and when the dashboard electronics went dead and the bike was still running, I thought I was going to be fine and make it home. About two minutes later the bike started to sputter and I knew that I’d better find a spot to pull off on the side of the road! Sure enough, it was the alternator and the bike was completely dead.

After making a number of phone calls with the cell phone (never leave home without it), I was able to get a flat bed wrecker to pick up the bike on Sunday morning out in the middle of nowhere and take the bike up to the Galesburg, Il. dealership and drop it off. The bike is there now and they should be able to get it all fixed up at some point this week! We ended up getting back to Peoria around 2:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon, so my little day ride became a two day adventure!!!!!!

Oh well, sometimes that the way life goes and all you can do is keep a smile on your face and realize that things could be a whole lot worse!!!!! Sure it’s inconvenient and a pain in the butt to deal with, but in the grand scheme of life, it’s not all that bad!!!!!!

I hope that you have a great week and know that you’re weekend was probably a lot less eventful than mine!!!!

Kev

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