A Day of Rest - Followed by a One Day Delay

First off, I would like to wish my wife a Happy Anniversary. It is hard to believe that 27 years have passed since we got married at the Third Street Pier on the Milwaukee River followed by a dinner cruise and reception. One sign of the passage of time is that our granddaughter was just a baby and too small to attend the wedding. She now has two beautiful children herself. Here is the cutest picture of them that brings tears to my eyes. God has been good to us over these years together.

DAY #9 – Made it to a Day of Rest in Omaha (or at least I thought)

I left Northwest Indiana shortly after 5:00 AM. That meant that I could get through the construction between the hotel and the state line before the rush hour began. Shortly after entering Illinois, I hit light rain. It continued for around 30 minutes  the front of my lower pantleg was damp, so I stopped and put on the rain suit. Of course, once I did that the rain stopped. It was cool enough that I kept the suit on until I broke for lunch. Immediately after lunch, the sun came out and the temperature jumped into the mid-80’s. The remainder of the ride was pleasant in the bright sun with just a long-sleeved shirt.

I checked into the hotel around 2:00 PM and transferred my gear to the room. It is a nice hotel. The room is small but comfortable. It is part of a Convention Center and Water park, so the facility is quite spread out and somewhat complicated to find things. There is a large convention going on so that hotel is quite busy.

I headed to my client’s offices for what I thought was a quick visit. They were just beginning to discuss a major issue that had just been discovered. Since, I was having a quiet day on Friday, I ended volunteering to come into the office on Friday morning. I then proceeded to drive the motorcycle to local Harley-Davidson dealer for the 55K Maintenance. They then drove me back to the hotel where I ended up having dinner at their restaurant.

DAY #10 – Working and Waiting

One of my co-workers picked me up at the hotel and we went into the office. It was nice to do something other than sit on the bike all day. I figured out a solution and generated the scripts that the client needs to run sometime this weekend. My co-worker dropped me off at the Dealer so that I could wait for the bike to be ready. It looks like it will be a three hour wait. They are waiting for a part for the “Primary”. This gear had become worn and was beginning to fail, so they found the part locally and will get it installed while I am waiting. Fortunately, this is covered by the extended warranty so I only need pay the deductible. This could have caused a serious problem while on the road if it had failed.

I am also having both tires replaced since they didn’t look like they would make another 6K miles which is the next time for scheduled maintenance. Since I might hit serious weather in Florida, I didn’t want to be riding on bald tires. So, I am just sitting out at the dealer’s waiting room and catching up on this blog. I will probably doze off a few times as well.

REALLY BAD NEWS:

Well the shop manager came a spoke with me. They got the part and it needs to be coated with some material which takes 24 hours to cure. Therefore, I will not get the bike back until early Saturday Evening. I extended my hotel for one more night.You can see the chips and burn marks on the gear in these pictures.

Not only have I lost a day because of the broken part, but the Weather Channel gave me more bad news. It appears that Hurricane warnings for later next week are foretasted for Florida.