Last day of January

WOW, did January ever go out as a beautiful day and great day to ride a motorcycle. Two of the best days of the month were Jan 1 and Jan 31!! My friend Johnny took a day of vacation today and he and I went around 290 miles across Southside Virginia. Started off by meeting at 10 am in Amelia.

Had to take a picture of a US flag - bungee corded to a power pole near the parking lot. Something about this just seemed so down to earth patriotic!!

Just beautiful clear blue skies all days and warm temps! Saw a high temperature of 72 degrees on the bike thermometer.

Johnny had heard about a place in South Boston called Windmill Farm Bake Shop. Reported to be a great place for lunch. This was a solid recommendation, as it was great. I had chicken salad on home made whole wheat bread with a piece of home made chocolate pie for dessert. (Hey, I don't need to say "home made" anymore as everything in the bake shop was "home made" right there at the shop!!). Johnny had chicken salad in addition to a bologna sandwich and the chocolate pie too. It was so rich and so much to eat that Johnny couldn't finish his bologna sandwich! Now if anyone knows Johnny and how he can eat, you know that was a lot! Oh yes, forgot about the potato salad we had too. Delicious!! We both brought home a container of potato salad and a few other goodies to enjoy later with our wives!

We took country roads out of South Boston through Volens and Cody over to Altavista. Took SR 43 from Altavista to Bedford. A GREAT motorcycle road. Very little traffic and lots of nice twists and turns. Headed back on US 460/360. Had one stop for gas and a rest in Appomattox.

Another great day of riding with a great friend. It does seem that every time I go out on my motorcycle now, something happens to my bike!! This time the rubber insert in my footboard broke loose! The rubber mounts just were wore out. (Isn't that hard to imagine on my bike!!)

I guess this can be expected with a motorcycle with 72,000 miles on it and has been to Cape Spear, Newfoundland; Arctic Circle, Alaska; Mt. St. Helens, Washington; Grand Canyon, Arizona and Key West, Florida!! No big deal, I just had to keep my foot on it so it wouldn't blow away on the road. Now I have an excuse to get a nice chrome footboard insert!!!

We got back around 5 pm. Don't really know what the winter weather will be like for February, but December and January has been great here in Virginia for motorcycle riding.

New Year's Day 2012

Had to take a 2012 New Year's Day ride with the weather forecast temps to be in the mid 60's! Decided on a ride through southside Virginia of about 180 miles to South Hill and lunch at the Glass House Grill. Had never visited this grill before. It had some good reviews on the internet so it became the destination of the ride. 


Went with my friend, Johnny. He on his 2008 SE Ultra and me on my 2007 Ultra. We met at a parking lot in Amelia and headed out from there. Just a pleasant nice ride on country roads through towns such as Blackstone and Kenbridge. Beautiful old Victorian house along tree lined streets. Not much traffic, but did see several motorcycles. Don't think we had to pass a single vehicle on the entire trip on the two lane roads! Had my camera today, but didn't take any pictures, so you will just have to use your imagination!


Got to the Glass House Grill around 11:45 am. It was an interesting place actually attached to a 6 lane bowling alley! They had an all day New Year's bowling tournament going on. (I guess that is a big thing to do on New Year's Day in South Hill!). The food was pretty good and the waitress was friendly. The she crab soup was very good and they did have great homemade desserts!


We decided to take a different way back on some other country roads after we gassed up in South Hill. A few miles outside of South Hill heading up US 1 was where things got interesting on my bike!



I had a strange electrical problem that occurred. All of a sudden my cruise control tripped off. I tried to reset/resume and would not work. The red cruise symbol just stayed red. My throttle idle cable had gone bad about 6 months ago and was replaced. It had the same cruise control symptoms and my first thought was that it had gone bad again, but in a matter of seconds my radio cut off and turned back on by itself and then shut back off completely (all blank, no clock numbers even) in another couple of seconds. That's when I noticed my red cruise symbol light went off too. In addition, my horn wouldn't work, my signal lights and brake lights wouldn't work, and anything connected to the auxillary switch on the dash (my Air Zeppelin seat and saddle bag lid latch lights). The only indicator light that was now on for the dash rocker switches was the spot switch. 


Johnny and I had been talking on the CB radio, but that was out too, of course with the radio! I gave hand signals to Johnny and we stopped. I verified all of this stuff not working but did not turn the engine off for fear it would not start back! We decided to head straight back home to my garage with Johnny following me with brake lights and signal lights. I just knew I had a blown fuse, but the stuff affected seemed a little odd to me (I didn't think one fuse would feed the cruise control, horn, signal lights and the other stuff!).


When I arrived back home, the first thing I did was stop the engine & turn all power off, then back on and restarted the engine. No problems restarting the engine so that was good but, still no radio, horn, signal/brake lights, cruise and aux items. I turned everything back off. The next thing I did was remove the seat to look under to make sure I didn't see a wire broken. I decided to check here first before looking at the fuses. Everything looked good under the seat so I decided to turn the switch back on and presto, everything came back on! The radio came back on with the correct time on it even. I didn't do anything except take the seat off and look at the wires!!


I followed up with some more diagnostics. The check engine light never came on at anytime. I did check for trouble codes and I had two under the TSM/TSSM module: B1121-Turn signal will not flash and B1122-Right Turn Signal Open. Both of these were temporary codes as I cleared them and they never came back. Everything else was clear. I took the bike back out and rode for 40 miles without any problems. Everything seems to be fine now.


I suspect some loose/corroded connection in some connector, but I don't understand what could be common to the horn, signal lights, brake lights, cruise control and aux switch on the bike. This seems really odd. I plan to do some connector checking, cleaning and put dielectric grease on all the connectors I can get to


I really hate these kind of problems that seem to get fixed and you don't do anything (or know what you did) to fix it! Anyway, hopefully this wasn't a "sign of things to come" on my 2007 Ultra with over 71,000 miles for the rest of 2012!! In any case, it was a great ride on some great roads with a great friend for the first day of 2012!