Woke up, rode on the back of Kev's bike over to where we left my bike for the night. Tried to start it up (with fingers crossed) and nothing happened. Starter turns it over, but it doesn't catch. Crap. Looks like we're going to have to get Fred towed to a local motorcycle shop. We call AMA (American Motorcycle Association) and a few hours later a tow truck shows up. We get Fred towed to a shop 20 miles down the road who is amazingly open on Saturday. We wait around a couple hours, and then I could hear the distinct sound of Fred's engine running! I walk out to the parking lot, and some guy is driving him around. Awesome. I ask the guy what the problem was, they he said that someone plugged the carb vent hose into the runoff plug form the gas tank. This means that when it rains, the water from the ourside of the gas tank will run into this hose directly into the carburetor. Clearly the last person to work on the carb was a complete moron who hooked up the hoses wrong and had no clue what they were doing. Wait. I think that was me. Anyways, this incorrect hose setup might explain all of my recent Fred troubles. I'm relieved that it was something so simple, and truly hope that this marks the end of Fred's problems.
We hit the road around 3PM, and started looking for camping spots close to sundown. We were in the deep backwoods of Kentucky. (because I decided to go against Jimmy the GPS' reccomendation and do some exploring) All the properties had multiple posting of NO TRESPASSING or WE WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE IF YOU TRESPASS, etc. Kev was concerned that if we camped on someone's property without permission, that there was a very serious chance of actually getting shot. When we knocked on a guys door to ask if we could camp in the woods across the road he informed by locals that the area is "infested" with copperhead snakes that "would get us fer sure" the kind gentleman went on to tell us "I dunno how many a dem I killed this morning". So with that we continued on to the little town of Jellico, TN and moteled it for the night next to a pizza shop. This was a bonus because having wifi let us update the blog and with zero snakebites we fell asleep around midnight.
Also when we went against Jimmy's guidance we ended up discovering some nice twistys.
You definitely want to stay away from Copperheads.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't know, they are copper in color, they may or may not have a pattern. The head is flat and somewhat wide, the nose is blunt. And they smell, it's a strong smell and you don't have to be too close to smell it. Some say it's like cucumbers. I'm guessing you're headed for the Dragon. Be careful going over Jellico mountain on I75, lots of traffic and it moves fast.