I had an early start this morning after saying goodbye to my son, daughter in law and that special little grandchild.
I used the Garmin to follow a combination of back roads and avoiding major highways . All was going very well and I decided to stop at a motorcycle shop about one hour north of my starting point in a small town called Blairsville, Georgia. I tried to see if they might have the reflector I lost off my motorcycle a week or so ago. They did not have the reflector but they were very nice people to talk with. I then suited up and when I pushed the starter button, there was nothing, nadda, zero. We did the obvious quick checks like verifying the kill switch location, was the bike in neutral, is the side stand up and anything else we could think of. Nothing solved the problem so they rolled the bike into their shop and within a few minutes they were able to detect that the starter switch on the handle bar was defective. They did not have any original parts in stock, but they were able to jury rig a switch from some other product to replace the defective switch. The only difference now is that the head light does not go off when the starter button is pushed, so as long as my battery remains strong I should be OK until I get home when I can replace the switch . I was very impressed how they solved the problem with what appears to be a robust temporary solution. How lucky could I be having this failure in the parking lot of a motorcycle dealer and they knew what to do to solve the problem. Amazing.
After this one and half hour delay I continued north and found some terrific roads that twist and turn through the hills of North Carolina and Tennessee. The most famous twisty road in the area is known as The Dragon that begins at Deals Gap and runs north. In eleven miles there are three hundred and eighteen curves. The starting point was full of bikes. Remember, this is Tuesday, a working day, and after Labour Day. There were two police cruisers with radar guns keeping an eye on everyone.
I then entered into Kentucky and because of my lost time in the morning I jumped onto the I75 interstate and rode hard for a few hours until I arrived in Lexington. I hope to make it over the border into Ontario, Canada tomorrow.
Distance travelled: 376 Miles 600 Kms