Gorham to Plattsburgh

I don’t know why but Plattsburgh seems to give me writer’s block. We were there for a week, arriving last Tuesday evening after another wonderful day in the hills of old Vermont and New Hampshire.

Wednesday I took the bike in to the dealer to have the brake job done and asked them to repair the oil leak that had gotten a bit worse. I also needed to have a bracket made to raise the exhaust pipes up since the number of times I have bottomed out had caused them to start to rest on the primary cover and wear on it.

When they pulled off the primary cover to replace the seal they found that the main shaft from the transmission had worked loose from a torque of 170 foot/pounds to just a little more than finger tight. This had caused some wear on other parts but nothing catastrophic although it was a near thing. The oil leak also had damaged the alternator and it needed to be replaced as well so it was another thousand dollars all together for all the repairs.

We also had to wait a day for parts and they didn’t finish up the job until Saturday. On top of that the weather here has been spotty at best with rain and wind coming down from Canada so we have been holed up in Mark’s trailer watching movies and reading for the most part of the time there.

Yesterday, Monday, we rode highway 9 120 miles to Lake George and the Americade rally. The dealer of the trailers is staying in the same hotel and he delivered the new trailer to us last night. We set it up in the parking lot. It is a really well thought out design and solid construction. They have been building this trailer for nearly 20 years and the design reflects a lot of thought and ideas to make it more convenient. We will be setting it up at an RV park this afternoon.

It does not have nearly the storage capacity inside as the old one while travelling but it does have a large flat roof that has a waterproof bag that should take up the slack. We also will be shipping some stuff to Aaron in Oregon to hold for us in his garage until we get there. Set up it has twice the inside space as our tent with a queen bed, a table and lots of room in the lounging space. Bentley climbed in and he approves to we wrote a check.

The weather forecast has improved for this area and the rain that was forecast for today and tomorrow appears to be going away. Tomorrow we will head for Buffalo/Niagara Falls. That is about 300 miles from here and I hope to do it in one day. At any rate, we will be westbound finally. We have been on the road for 87 days and ridden nearly 9000 miles. I suspect our daily average will be going up substantially on the way back. We are still undecided about our route back. We had talked about US 2 all the way but that is pretty far north and we are ready for some good weather so we may take US 20 or even Route 66. We will need to decide that after this weekend. I am hoping to hit the upper peninsula in Michigan by Sunday if not sooner.