DAY 57
Week 9
AUSTIN (Texas, USA)
Wednesday August 16th, 2006
TODAYS MILEAGE – 0 miles or 0 kilometres
TRIP MILEAGE – 7577 miles or 12194 kilometres
Today was "Harley Stuff" day or maybe it was Harley Stuffed day??? 
Seeing as I was 99% sure that the starter motor was the cause of all yesterdays evils, Christine and I jumped on line looking for a replacement unit. We also called the both the local dealers in search of the starter.
Just to give you an indication as to what just a little bit of service and initive can do, I'd like to recount the tale of two dealers.
Cowboy Harley Davidson is located not 6 miles (10 kilometres) from Dash and Christine's place, here on the South side of Austin (Texas). We called them to order a starter motor and they informed us that there would be a 2 week lead time on getting the part. I can accept that due to the Night Train model having a black wrinkle finish on all the motor and transmission, that parts would not be as common as the rest of the model range, but two weeks for a current model vehicle is bullshit. I know, I used to work for a parts company (REPCO) back in Australia.
We then rang Central Texas Harley Davidson over on the North side of Austin (Texas), 26 miles (42 kilometres) away and got a hold of Ray in their parts department. He did not have one in stock, but without prompting he did a parts search of all Texas Harley dealers and found one in Fort Hood and another in Houston. He said he'd call back in 20 minutes to see if he could get one shipped overnight.
15 minutes later Ray was on the blower and he had got his nose pickers on the one in Houston, as the one in Fort Hood was for a customers bike that dealer had in their workshop. An exchange of credit card details in the amount of $364.00 was all it took to get the starter motor on the move.
With that sorted, it was time to get the bike to the dealer. Chris got a hold of the insurance company and she managed to get them to commit to having a tow truck at the house around 5PM. Sure enough, 5 bells rolls along and the towie was at the door. Even though he had no real idea as to where to tie down a motorbike (the top of the handlebars is the worst place), with more than a little assistance from me, the bike was on it's way to Central Texas Harley.
Ideally, this would not be the best way to start out, what I hope to be a long and rewarding association between myself and the products of Harley Davidson Motor Company, but you can only play the hand your dealt with. Getting upset over it doesn't do anything positive in the long run - so why bother I reckon.
See ya.