1.2.09

Day 49: August 9

Day 49: August 9th 38,710 miles on the odometer.

The End. Damn the bells. We actually get a good start in the morning, unusual for us. We are tempted to visit Ruby Falls, but decide against it. There are a lot of touristy places to visit around here, but I am eager to finish the trip and loathe to spend any more money. We also skip the world’s largest yard sale, as we have no room to store any purchases anyway.
We start off on 41 north, which has a few curves and some scenery that makes it worth skipping the interstate. Then we start racking up miles on highways 64 and 412. Over 300 miles into the day, we still have plenty of daylight and the Mississippi river just ahead of us. Unfortunately, while the river and daylight is just ahead of us, a check of my mirror reveals that my wife is no longer just behind me. I am concerned. I slow down to see if she just needs to catch up, but no sign of her. I am able to exit and u-turn about a mile later. As I head back east at a rather high rate of speed I see my wife alive and well parked on the side of the interstate. It takes another 5 miles for me to find a place to u-turn back to her.
Her trip is done. The motor is running fine, but she has 5 gears of useless neutral. As we would discover later, workers at the Kawasaki factory are pretty lazy. The drive shaft is dry, not lubricated by the oil that keeps the rear gears working. The only protection for the shaft is the grease it gets on assembly at the factory. My wife’s Vulcan is one of thousands that workers neglected to grease. As a result the shaft splines no longer exist and the bike will no longer move under its own power. We discover all this later when we find an online forum with extensive documentation and remedies for the issue. Too bad we didn’t look for forums BEFORE the trip.
We are now stuck over 300 miles from our next destination, and 1000 miles short of completing our intended trip.
We get a break when Harley rider Tommy Tillman of Caruthersville, Missouri stops to help us out. He cuts his ride short to go back to his house and get a truck and trailer to haul her broken down bike to Hayti, Missouri. Thank You Tommy. A GoldWing rider with a toddler strapped pillion keeps us company for a bit while Tommy is fetching his truck. We get a room at the Econolodge in Hayti. It is not particularly scenic, but it gives us a place to figure out what to do next.
I neglect to write down the mileage as it no longer seems important. I find it sadly ironic that my abused neglected cobbled together Bandit is still going while her formerly pampered Vulcan sits useless. I never really expected both bikes to make the whole trip; I just always figured mine was the one that would let us down.

No comments:

Post a Comment