Not much of an exciting trip coming out of Quebec, had some issues at customs but that’s to be expected since terrorists are bald, white, over 40 and drive big red semi trucks loaded with custom motorcycles. Got to spend most of Monday in the US customs yard at Champlain while they went through absolutely everything. Oh well.
I made it back to home late Wednesday night, done a bunch of laundry then was at the factory early Thursday morning. I wound up being there most of the day, I had one of the choppers that had given us some problems while in Quebec so I took it over to engineering to have it checked out and they went through it completely but couldn't find the primary drive noise. After all was said and done, they had it up on the lift running with 4 people standing around it looking for the source of the noise and it turned out to be a loose bolt in the rear fender bracket. A 30 second fix that cost 8 hours of mechanics time to find. Oh well, it got a new clutch, new front primary drive and a full service.
I made it to the Hilton Anatole near the Dallas Market at about 9:30pm Thursday night. When I left Kansas it was all of 50 degrees but somewhere near Ardmore, OK the temp jumped almost 30 degrees and by the time I got to Dallas it was 78 and humid as hell. Well my suitcase was inside the trailer with the cold bikes so as soon as I opened the side door the humidity condensates on everything inside the trailer and it looked like it was raining. Now I had 20 bikes that were going to have to be cleaned and polished again!
Friday morning I woke to the cold front that I had run out of and it was back down in the low 50's and raining. Thankfully I hadn't spent the money getting the truck washed. I headed over to Strokers to get positioned and start setting up but the rain never stopped so I just parked the truck, got my personal bike out and went right back to the hotel.
Saturday the weatherman said was supposed to be partly cloudy and 70, well he lied, it wound up being cloudy all day and the temp never made it above 58. Usually Strokers draws 5,000+ people for this party and by the time I put the bikes back in the trailer Saturday evening there may have been 500 throughout the entire day.
Sunday the weatherman said was supposed to be mostly cloudy, cold and drizzle all day. We hoped he was wrong just like he was wrong on Saturday but this time he got it right so the turn out was maybe 300 for the entire day. Then about 5:00 just as they were getting ready to start the Bikini Contest, it started raining so I got to miss the contest and try to get all the bikes loaded ASAP. I had help so I was rolling out of the deserted parking lot by 6:00 and back in my room by 6:30.
I'm spending the day today taking my 34 restart (I was at a 4.5 hour deficit this morning) at the hotel. I still need to load my bike and get a few things taken care of with the trailer before heading to California but I have all afternoon to get to it.
Here are a couple pictures from Strokers. Unfortunately I was busy putting bikes away Saturday during the Wet T Shirt contest and Sunday during the Bikini Contest so I didn't get any pictures of those. I'll try harder in California. Oh and don't mind the date on the pictures, my camera was confused and off a day. They were taken on Saturday the 10th.
Tomorrow morning I hit I-30 headed towards (hopefully) sunny Southern California