Hello all,
I am happy to say that my entire family made it back alive from the Great American Road Trip. As expected, the driving was the real challenge... 2,550 miles roundtrip. Luckily, my wife and I were armed with an arsenal of technology that we normally limit our children from extensively using. Tablets, Nintendo Switch, the DVD player in my car - all without limit. This is how you keep kids happy in a car, at least in 2021.
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Just look at their little brains rotting!
The real fun began when my alternator called it quits outside of Atlanta (probably due to the increased load of continuously charging all of the aforementioned devices). I've had my Honda Pilot for years and it has never given me a bit of trouble... Of course, if would happen driving cross-country
. I managed to keep it running (barely) while we phoned around for shops, no easy task on a Saturday at 3:00 pm. Found some good ole' boys that agreed to the job. I pitched in and we got it done in a couple of hours.
Kids had a blast at the beach. To a land-locked Missourian - the ocean is an amazing thing.
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We were in Manasota Key in Florida and found it to be a wonderful, family-friendly location. Nice calm waves and generous sandbars.
Now. Onto more important matters!
I finally got a minute to finish installing the mufflers. If you are keeping up with COVID-19, you may have heard that SW Missouri is a hotspot at present for the Delta variant. As I run one of the few labs in the area that can test for this, I was greeted back with an absolute frenzy of testing
Nevertheless, I was
so pleasantly surprised when I finally got the time and worked up the nerve to try and start this bike:
Haha! It worked, even with the DIY wiring job!
I think this is a tribute just as much to my Dad as it is to the fine people on this site who have helped me along the way. I made it pretty clear that I had no idea in hell what I was doing with the wiring, or the carbs, or paint, or anything else, but you guys got me there. Thank you.
Still plenty to do on it, but hopefully the next time you see it... it will be out in the sunshine on the open road where it belongs.