And They're Off

Here is my scoot and trailer all packed-up for the trip. I did not put any fuel in the 5-gal Jerry Can because I wanted to keep the toung weight to a minimum, particularly in areas where fuel was plentyful. In the more remote regions I filled the can to the brim because some of the fuel stops were more than 150 miles apart and when you got there, they may or may not have gasoline.

Well, Cris (Brooklyn) and Dan (Screw Loose) arrived in good form last night. We were showing each other our scoots when I decided to show off my new 139db Stebel Air Horn. Well it beeped once and then quit. After some sloothing we discovered that the horn relay had gone bad. Cris had another relay (starter relay) so we decided to use it. What I did not realize was that the starter relay has a diode bypass. We hooked it up backwards (diode was forward biased) and nothing happened (so we thought). Upon further investigation we found that we had blown the diode and a 15A fuse. I went to replace the fuse from my stash of fuses only to find that I had purchased the wrong size.

So off to Auto Zone and purchase the correct size of fuse and off to Liberty North to purchase two more (one for me and one for Cris to replace the one we burned out) starter relays. We replaced the relay and all is well, for now (The horn quit for good in Anchorage).

Friday morning, the bikes are all loaded and we are ready to strike out. I start up my bike and "put-put-put" it sounds like a Buell Blast on Valium. It's only running on one cylinder. So Dan and I troubleshoot the problem and settle on a bad spark plug. I replace the offending plug and voila, the engine sounds fine. The plug was only two weeks old so I don't know if there is a problem there. Maybe just bad plug.

Anyway, we are off to Alaska this morning. Our first stop is Ludington, MI to catch the Ferry over to WI.

Here we are getting ready to load ourselves onto the Ferry. Notice the "Jolly Roger" on the piece of equipment to the left between and above Tom's and Ron's heads. Arggghhh!

Here we are on the deck of the Ferry. We had to bring tie downs for each bike but the water was so smooth that we really didn't need them, this time.