THE BIKES WORK!!!

At long last, I am happy to announce that the bikes work.

The guys at S&C Scooters in Fayetteville, Arkansas tuned the bikes. Before I continue, let me say these guys are super awesome. They are the cheapest in the Fayetteville area, and they push a lot of buisness through their doors, which means their guys see different bikes. If you have a chinese knock-off, a frankenstein bike, or any scooter, take it to them.

Leeroy (Chels' bike) worked fine, as per usual, but mine put up a fight. Foiter (my bike) was tuned, and worked okay, but not great. As I rode it around more, the tuning seemed more untuned, and eventually we were back to the scenario of the magical, mystical, moving idle. The idle RPM would climb until they reached a mid throttle rpm, and then fade back down, only to rise again. The culprit was a sneaky air leak on the downstream side of the plastic heat shield between the carburetor and intake manifold. A handful of issues lead me to believe that the surface of the air intake is very barely miscast/damaged, but with some custom O-ring magic and a few squeezes of silicon gasket maker, the leak went away and now Foiter purrs like the kitten she is.

We still need to tighten and Loctite a handful of nuts and bolts, and then figure out Leeroy's turning signals (FYI: Arkansas requires turning signals). We'll both take our motorcycle license test on Leeroy as soon as I get the blinkers working, and then away we go!

Before we head south...

A few folks have voiced varying degrees of concern after reading about us selling everything before we hit the road. More specifically, this concern has been aimed at the fate of our beloved Campbulance. Let me set the record straight here and now. The Campbulance will not be sold.

In fact, before we set off on the two-wheeled vehicles, we're doing a whirlwind trip around the USA to see our family. This was an important decision to make given that we have no timeline for our trip south and therefore no clue when we'd get a chance to see all of our family again. We're on track (at least we hope we are) to leave the Vail Valley this Sunday to start our cross-country trip in the Campbulance. We'll head up to Idaho first, then over to Vermont, down through Cape Cod and Alabama, ending up in Arkansas.

Luckily, the bikes are small enough to fit perfectly in the back of the Campbulance, so taking them along is a breeze.

A decent portion of my family lives in Arkansas, so we'll be parking the Campbulance there and it will act as a storage unit for whatever belongings we've held onto while we're gone.

The other big concern has been the fate of our dear travel-kitty Loulou. Not to worry, she'll be taken care of in Arkansas as well. My grandpa is graciously taking her in and will be keeping her company while we're away. It absolutely breaks our hearts to be leaving her behind, but we have the sneaking suspicion that she'd rather skip the ride on the motorcycles.