Tear it up, fix it, repeat: Shovelfest 6 getting there.

So Ed shows up on Monday afternoon. It was heavy trash day. I told him to not park in the street or the junkers would get his bike. He thought I was just talking noise. So we parked it in the garage and promptly had to make his bike as cool as mine.

Sure as the world the Tuesday afternoon(heavy trash day takes about a week) he parks on the street and some junkers come by and actually ask him to help them load it up. True story.

We tweaked my bike a bit Tuesday and at 0600 Wednesday we were ready to go.

Well maybe not. My bike is first kick running and ready and Ed's bike won't e-start with a dead battery. The regulator was no longer bolted down. Easy fix.

Fix the regulator and turn it and all the smoke came out from the dash. I have never seen so much magical smoke come out of anything that didn't burn to the ground.

No bare wires. What's hot? The badlander lightbox.

Cut out the box and do things different. Now only one tail and three brake lights, instead of three taillights.

There's the box.

That wet spot is were the smoke came out.

Two hours behind and at our first rest stop. We were going slow and easy on my fresh top end.

Next stop shopping at the Dollar General.

Seaba Station on Route 66.

Closed on Wednesdays.

Ed lost his P-pad. He didn't notice, but luckily our chase car did and Trish stopped and got it. Did you really think velcro would hold it?

This was sitting behind Seaba Station.

Hey look who we found in Stroud. HDracer and Suzie they were headed to Davenport first then Shovelfest.

Finally rendezvous point one. Vinita, Oklahoma. Rob from Lawton beat us there and waited about three hours for us. Lunch at 3 O'clock. Texas Mark had a flat near Lake Eufaula and didn't make Vinita at all, but would catch us at the Joplin KOA.

About an hour on the road and getting lost in Joplin, too, camp was set mostly.

Texas Mark rolled in. Corkpuller(in a truck and trailer from Galveston) had found him in Oklahoma with the flat tire. Somehow they lost each other when they hit the road again and Mark's phone was in the truck. No one had Corkpuller's number at this point.

Corkpuller finally came in and life was good.

Get up get gone again. Before the tire went flat Mark hit a road gator that destroyed one of his Redwings. So he bought the ugliest and most uncomfortable pair of boots he could find in Atoka, OK.

The Truckstop in Joplin is really nice. Something for my other blog.

Rob's ignition switch was sketchy.

And his brake light switch. Good to go and rolling again.

We went from Joplin to Springfield on I-44, then to Cabool via 60. North on 63 to Licking. East on 32 until it tees into 21. Then 21 to St Louis. Beautiful motorcycle roads, smooth as glass and nice sweepers without any crazy switchbacks or hairpins.

We still had issues though. Mark's throttle grip was loose on the tube so we used the left grip on the tube and the right grip on the left bar with some duct tape.

My bike was acting like it was running out of gas, but it was really vapor locking. I tried to get a picture of the bubbles in the filter. The wire hoop to keep the fuel line off the cylinder had rolled over and put the fuel line real close to the cylinder. So we fixed that.

Remember when I added a voltage meter to my dash because this plug likes to get loose? I am pretty good reaching down wiggling it while I am riding, but even that didn't work.

I have pulled the pins out of the stator and bent them to a V shape and all that hasn't worked, but Ed's trick did. A few bare wire strands in each hole..