DAY 56
Week 8
AUSTIN (Texas, USA)
Tuesday August 15th, 2006
TODAYS MILEAGE – 30 miles or 48 kilometres
TRIP MILEAGE – 7577 miles or 12194 kilometres
Another day another mechanical drama??? 
Seeing as I forgot to go to work yesterday, I decided to get stuck in and clean up my web site a bit. That took me the best part of a day to rationalize, not that you'd notice it.
Late in the afternoon, I decided to take a ride over to the Barton Creek Square shopping center for a new set of brothel creepers. After wondering around the "purchasers palace" for about an hour and only finding a pair of runners that I liked (at $159.00 they stayed there as well), I decided to head to downtown 6th street for some dinner.
I go to start the Harley after dinner and get just a click from the starter motor. It looks as if the Man Pad mechanical curse has struck again. I played around with the bike for about 20 minutes before narrowing it down to a seized starter. Dash has said he replaced it about a year ago, but trolling the internet reveals that stock starters can't handle the abuse the get from non-stock motors, which this is. This is a 95 cubic inch engine which is up from the stock 88 cubic inches.
Whoever came up with the saying "I'd rather push my Harley than ride Jap crap" obviously hasn't tried to push start a 682 pound vehicle in the middle of a Texas Summer on their own.
I managed to get it fired up & running after several attempts and summarily abandoned all plans of a ride around Austin to seek the relative safety of Dash's garage.
Bugger it, I'll sort it out tomorrow.
See ya.