This is funny, the sayings, “where the wind blows you”… “go with the punches”, we go with the breakages… mechanical failures! We are back in Kingman, the rig just did not feel right yesterday, in right handers… my x ray vision was noticing that the bike was leaning a bit more than the sidecar, it had this spongy feeling… this “wow”… a bit too much. We coasted back to the camp… yes, on edge a bit considering a deja vue of our Louisiana experience was not at all a necessity here, and upon inspection somehow it all looked okay..

However, I was not satisfied, and this morning with the help of a fellow camper, with four eyes we discover, one of us shaking the rig, the other one shining a flashlight… that some bolts, same place as before, front upper arm, must be broken.

It is Sunday, my closest friend in this area is Mark, you remember the airplanes… the yellow ones, three hours from the Park… I scramble as I want to avoid the traffic going through again Hoover Damn, and knowing that Mark works on Mondays, we would have plenty of time to maybe remedy the situation today. We finally leave at nine am… I had almost signed up and paid for two more nights, and on the road we were again.

 Well, I wanted to go through the Park anyhow, but not at this pace, and truly not knowing what the outcome of the rig was going to be, did not put me in the best of disposition to sightsee too much! I have to be honest about it!

The road is a great one… I came across many bikes on their Sunday ride, this was the day we were going to do it in an open air scenario… not in a cage! The Park has quite a few dirt roads, they say accessible with a 4×4, camping allowed up to 14 days… there was no time to stop today… again an area put off for later! I have many years coming up, I hope, living on the road. I just have to remember the areas to come back to. Actually all I need to do is read my own Blog.

 By luck, meaning by reading a sign, I found a shortcut that went directly to the Hoover Dam, which we went through pretty quick, besides your usual check point to figure out your purpose and what you have on board… they really do not like all that fuel that I carry by the way…

By then my phone had a pretty clear signal and I was able to speak with Mark… he was going to be home waiting for me.

We are in!… we are in good hands… again open arms, what else can I say but… I owe… I owe…

Mark has a garage that reminds me of the kitchens are worked in… you can eat off the counters, the floors… The dream garage… one tool box, Snap On mind you, for metric… the other one for standard. I am so glad that he works during the day, the metric tool box has wheels and will roll right up my trailer! How do you like his Honda XR650, immaculate dirt bike just like mine.

It did not take long, tank off… bags off… found the culprit. The long rod that goes across the engine was broken at the thread. We came to the conclusion that the metal was just too soft for the application, specially being the second time, same place. Mark has a friend, Tracy, which owns a machine shop, also does work for those airplanes, and is going to make me a rod from a much stronger material, actually I will have him make me two… just in case.

Finally I had the pleasure to have Pizza again… a few kinds as at Mark’s and Angie’s house you never go hungry. Five dogs tonight… they were having a blast, Spirit is by now snoring as I am writing to let you know what happened. Again Mark and I talked about so many people warning me not to take Spirit on this Journey… Ah! What a vicious dog he could turn out to be… right!!!

You should have seen him play tonight… he was in doggie heaven…

We should be rolling again tomorrow night, probably leave here Wednesday am for… I have no clue yet!… Maybe Snow Canyon, Utah?

You be well… we are now!

Ara & Spirit

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007 at 10:16 pm and is filed under travel, spirituality, pit bull, sidecar, motorcycle, cooking, photography, riding, homeless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.