Newsletter No. 25
September 10, 2022

There must be something about Kansas!

We put the Red One on the road outside Casey's General Store, gassed it up and hit the road. Willie filmed me cruising past “Crankshaft” Kansas where the ride ended for me in 2019. About 35 miles of riding later, she started skipping and within a couple miles was missing badly. I pulled over and checked the plug wires and all seemed fine so we pressed on a couple more miles.

After a bit, it was impossible so I stopped. We got it started but it was only hitting spark on #1 and #2 cylinders. Willie was checking the spark on #4 plug wire and I saw the problem just the same time Glen did. The plug wires for #3 and #4 had gotten hot and melted in one spot and were arcing bad against the cylinder.

We were 2.4 miles east of Council Grove so we loaded the Red One into the trailer and dispatched Glen ahead to find the top local lunch spot… turn out it was Hays House Restaurant. I walked into NAPA auto parts and picked up a set of wire core plug wires. They were out of the Henderson OEM wires but they sold me a set for a tractor. So after lunch rewired it and rode on heading for Dodge City.

We made it to the marker at the intersection of Chisholm and Santa Fe Trails three miles west of Lehigh, Kansas.

That’s me and Glen Pyle, safety rider … Willie (Guillermo) Fernandez, support truck driver and mechanic, took the photo

We actually rode the old road through ”downtown” Lehigh… about 5 miles on gravel road! Managed to ride about 20mph on most but it was pretty soft in spots so a good practice for more challenging off pavement riding out west.

But the sky had unloaded rain on us in Council Grove and, by the time we got the new plug wires in, it was still raining pretty hard. Decision time.

We rode... 65+ miles in the rain.

Between the crappy weather and the delays due to plug wires, I made a command decision to trailer the bikes and make haste to Dodge City. Pulled in here about 7:30, ate dinner, and will head out tomorrow morning around 7:00am.

Rinse and repeat.

If you have not checked it out, I have a live tracking page on Garmin:

https://share.garmin.com/ND86G

Thanks for all the support and encouragement. On to Pueblo tomorrow,

Mark