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May 02, 2005
There are no problems, only expenses (and time)
GETTYSBURG, PA -- May 2
Yup, Gettysburg. But my prospects have greatly improved since the morning's doubts. After a great, long, and much needed night of sleep, I arose and met Bob who rode into town for breakfast. I took with me a list of every Motorcycle service/dealer in the 30 mile radius, and over a long breakfast session that covered even the 10:00 openings I was treated to dialogs like so:
Me: Do you work on Hondas?
Them: Yeah
Me: Well I'm in tour with this 1982 CB650 and the starter...
Them: We have a backlog of a full week.
Pesci: So in other words I'm fucked...
Deniro: In so many words, yes.
5 calls in, however, I reached the M & S dealer out of Chambersburg, 25 miles due west on US 30. They are a big Honda dealer, and would look at my bike right away. Bob and I hopped on, and after some bump starting hijinks and the ever risky running-engine tank refuelling, we made for Chambersburg. What follows should be immediately familiar to anyone who has tried to have appliances repaired or who works as an engineer by trade. The guy tells us to wait while he does an initial diagnosis. As we ogle the massive showroom stock of Hondas and Suzukis, he comes back out and asks "was this working before?". Sure enough, though it failed on his first attempt where I parked it, he bumped it and brought it around to the back and was then able to engage the starter 5 straight times successfully, long after I had been through the "20 straight failures" that necessitated considering it dead in the first place. Damn intermittent failure.
So we left Diana there to undergo further inspection, the end result of which I hoped was a confident repair. The important thing is that I'll keep going and make this trip with nothing more than one lost day I can make up at the end. Future hosts reading this, adjust your schedules and call me if there's a problem!
There are worse places to be holed up than Gettysburg, PA. I enjoyed a cathartic 10K run with Bob all through the parts of the battlefield I missed in the previous day's misadventures. As something of a history buff of the area, Bob was able to provide a good tour of some of the other key moments of the battle. We simulated Pickett's charge right through the fields along the wooden barrier up past General Lee's statue and the high water mark. I never realized the armies actually met each other from the opposite directions (the Confederates were North of the area and the Union were coming back from points Southward).
Then it was off to a nice lunch at a coffee shop that features wireless internet, really good smoothies, and a sickeningly sweet and gigantic creme-filled cookie Bob got that I leached off of. When you run 6 miles on a so-called vacation, you earn these sorts of indulgences. I called the M & S Honda and heard the best news of the day: they found corroded wires and terminals in the plug that goes to the solenoid in the starter wire. Since fixing that, they reeled off 20 straight starts (and were nice enough to recharge the battery). The intermittent results of the previous day still weigh on my mind, but I like my odds.
Most of my luck runs like a sine wave, so it was inevitable that we'd get ambitious and try to run over there at 5:15 when they close at 6. A brisk walk back from the cafe to the hotel, into the gear, onto Bob's bike, and through 5 pm commuter traffic between the teeming 'Burgs, got us there at the stroke of 6:08 to a wholly dark and empty dealership. Being as I have a place to catch 24 tonight, I did my best Kiefer "dammit!" impression and we made the harrowing trip back down Route 30 Gettysburg to the cafe once more, from where I am finishing this entry.
I'm going to have to take pictures tomorrow, given that it will be the 5th and 6th times down this 25 mile stretch of road which features, among other scenery, a bizarre "Mister Ed's Peanut Shack" complete with candy store, large smiling wooden elephants, and a maze of perfectly planted miniature trees. It also has these bizarre school bus depots that look like tin shacks and have a silhouette of a marching school boy and girl straight out of the 50's. I guess they don't want the kids struck by flying meteors before school.
So the current plan is to arise bright and early tomorrow, load up at a diner so that we may never know hunger again for hours, and arrive at the Chambersburg dealership right when the locks come off. After discharging Diana from the infimary, we can retrieve our luggage from the Best Inn and be on the road by 10 am for the 4-state swing to Skyline Drive.
Playlist and gallery forthcoming when I am in a more internet-friendly locale...
T & D
Posted by Todd at May 2, 2005 07:05 PM