We left San
Simeon around 8:30 to a typical California overcast morning. By San Luis Obispo
(SLO) the grey sky had turned sunny and pleasant.
Pretty much dodged a bullet today.
Remember I
mentioned my R1200GSA was cranking a little hard and I suspected the battery
was going to go to hell in a hand basket soon. But the battery had tested good
in the Scotts Valley Batteries Plus when I had them load test it.
Weelll, this
morning at a gas stop in San Luis Obispo it wouldn't restart - Scheiße!
As luck
would have it I had been talking to a guy at the gas station about his very
cool '63 Matchless. He pushed down a small hill in the gas station. There was
enough juice in the battery for the fuel pump and ignition and I was able to
bump start it.
Then of all
things I found a Batteries Plus store within five miles that was open on
Sunday. They had a battery and I replaced the old one, which once again load
tested OK. I did test the charging system and it's seems just fine. The battery
was three years old, so who knows. Engine cranks over just fine now.
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| This is the '63 Matchless I was looking at - really nice bike and a really nice guy that owns it and bailed me out. |
Next stop
was breakfast at The Madonna Inn in SLO. This is a funny place, built by a
wealthy building contractor for his wife. There are 110 rooms, each with a
different goofy theme. The overall theme is sort of Bavarian like, and the
color theme is a weird pink.
 |
| Madonna Inn: Picture form the Internet |
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| Sinks in the Madonna Inn Coffee Shop Men's Room |
After
breakfast we headed east over CA 166 to CA 33. CA 166 is not so interesting,
but CA 33 is a nice twisty road up over the mountains and drops into Ojai (or as an old friend refers to it Oh Jeez Another Idiot), sort
of an art community above Ventura.
 |
| In Ojai, across from a gas stop - we knew we were going the right direction towards Oxnard |
From there
we headed to Oxnard and to our hotel in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood. It
actually was probably a just fine neighborhood; there was something that didn’t
feel right about leaving the bikes out in the parking lot.
I came up
with the genius idea of putting them in the room.
First I
moved in Judith’s bike, which fit through the door with no problem.
 |
| Judith's riding mascot, Tony the Tiger, was happy to spend a night indoors |
Tis’ a scratch. Nothing but a flesh wound.
However,
when it came to mine there was a different story. As I started to try to wiggle
it through the door I smacked the right side auxiliary light into the door jam
and promptly broke it off – it is plastic after all.
Plan B was
to move the now wounded bike around in back, with the idea of an out of sight out
of mind thing. Next thing was to tend to the busted light.
 |
| Ouch! |
The magic of duct tap came through once again. In this case WD-40 was not required.
The
remainder of the evening was uneventful… Thank God.
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