Saturday, August 26, 2006
Wednesday Aug 23. Aurora Colorado - Dalhart Texas 570 km
We got up in Rick's camper around 07:00 and were on the road only at 9:30 after looking for a set of new 30 amp fuses. We headed for Colorado Springs where we had a meeting with Bill Garrison ("pieceofficer" from LT-forum).
We took Hwy 83 South from Denver instead of Interstate 25 and found Bill's workplace with the help of good old Garmin. We shook hands with Bill, had some LT-related chat (what a surprise, eh?) and I gave him the little led switches to be mounted on the BMW Phoenix housing. Bill explained the things he had done to his bike and showed the nice and proper gear he has bought for his 5-year-old daughter. As we dropped by in the middle of his workday we pretty soon continued our trip towards Raton New Mexico.
From Raton we headed Southeast on Hwy 64 towards Texas and at first we tried to book a motel in Clayton NM. However the hotel had no (working) internet connection , so we decided to continue to Dalhart TX.
We found a Best Western with a working Internet and stayed there.
Finns being wondered by Bill Garrison(third from left) and his work mates.
Somewhere in the plains of New Mexico or Northern Texas.
We took Hwy 83 South from Denver instead of Interstate 25 and found Bill's workplace with the help of good old Garmin. We shook hands with Bill, had some LT-related chat (what a surprise, eh?) and I gave him the little led switches to be mounted on the BMW Phoenix housing. Bill explained the things he had done to his bike and showed the nice and proper gear he has bought for his 5-year-old daughter. As we dropped by in the middle of his workday we pretty soon continued our trip towards Raton New Mexico.
From Raton we headed Southeast on Hwy 64 towards Texas and at first we tried to book a motel in Clayton NM. However the hotel had no (working) internet connection , so we decided to continue to Dalhart TX.
We found a Best Western with a working Internet and stayed there.
Finns being wondered by Bill Garrison(third from left) and his work mates.
Somewhere in the plains of New Mexico or Northern Texas.
Tuesday Aug 22. Laramie WY - Aurora CO 348 km
Now this is the second time I am posting this story ...Last night in Oklahoma City the hotel WiFi went dead and my postings disappeared in the bit heaven :-(
Here is our Tuesday route in yellow:
Anyway... we had decided to leave a little shorter leg for Tuesday as we wanted to be in Aurora (Denver) CO in decent time to meet my American brother Rick Shenkel whom I had not met since 1974.
We left Laramie WY around 08:00 and took Hwy 230 Southwest and further to Hwy 125 towards Denver. This time we were at least on the edge of the mountains and found some interesting curves and nice scenery. And one remarkable thing happened as we were approaching Denver. Our European GSM cell phones came alive! We had been in total radio silence since we crossed the US / Canadian border on Thursday previous week. We made some phone calls home and let them know we were alive and kicking and continued to Rick Shenkel's home address where we arrived already around 13:30 which was way earlier than we were expected.
Roy's Garmin led us right through the city expressways and whatever big time motorways they were and we could not stop wondering the modern technology...Without the GPS we would have surely spent the rest of the week searching for Rick's home in a strange city.
Packing the bikes at Super 8 motel in Laramie WY on Tuesday morning.
We stopped at a small town Walden Colorado to buy some stamps for the postcards we bought at Mt. Rushmore which we still have not even written ...
My helmet camera quit working and after some studying we found the problem to be a broken wire near a water tight connector. Luckily I had an extension cord that had a similar connector and some soldering (yes of course we have a 12V soldering iron with us...) plus some shrink tube (the heat gun I had to borrow from Rick) took care of the problem.
After fixing the helmet camera we found another problem, which was obvious but which I had not thought about before:
I have a total of four HID lights (plus four Hella halogens) on the bike. One of the HIDs is the low beam and the three others are the stock high beam (converted to HID) and two Hella Micro DE Xenons under the nose cone.
The halogens are connected to be operated from the stock high beam switch (via relay of course) and the three HID's are behind another switch and ther respective relays. Now all these have their own fuses under the nose cone and the front fuse block is fed by a 6 mm2 cable through a 70 amp relay but this main feed cable to the front of the bike has a 30 amp in line fuse. And this fuse blew right away when I fired the three HIDs....
For some reason this did not happen at home during my testing four weeks ago after the installation and neither did it happen previous night at Laramie when I aimed all the lights.
I called the HID expert back home and he said that in car use the Micro DE Xenons have a 25 amp fuse EACH...and I am trying to fire up three ballasts simultaneously through a single 30 A fuse ...!!! Stupid me!
Well, looks like I will not be lacking projects this coming winter ;-)
We used all my spare 30 A fuses goofing with this until I believed that let's leave the HID high beams and just rely on the halogens and get some more fuses from Checker Auto parts when they open next morning.
We had a nice dinner at Texas Steakhouse and slept well next to our full tummies in Rick's camper.
Here is our Tuesday route in yellow:
Anyway... we had decided to leave a little shorter leg for Tuesday as we wanted to be in Aurora (Denver) CO in decent time to meet my American brother Rick Shenkel whom I had not met since 1974.
We left Laramie WY around 08:00 and took Hwy 230 Southwest and further to Hwy 125 towards Denver. This time we were at least on the edge of the mountains and found some interesting curves and nice scenery. And one remarkable thing happened as we were approaching Denver. Our European GSM cell phones came alive! We had been in total radio silence since we crossed the US / Canadian border on Thursday previous week. We made some phone calls home and let them know we were alive and kicking and continued to Rick Shenkel's home address where we arrived already around 13:30 which was way earlier than we were expected.
Roy's Garmin led us right through the city expressways and whatever big time motorways they were and we could not stop wondering the modern technology...Without the GPS we would have surely spent the rest of the week searching for Rick's home in a strange city.
Packing the bikes at Super 8 motel in Laramie WY on Tuesday morning.
We stopped at a small town Walden Colorado to buy some stamps for the postcards we bought at Mt. Rushmore which we still have not even written ...
My helmet camera quit working and after some studying we found the problem to be a broken wire near a water tight connector. Luckily I had an extension cord that had a similar connector and some soldering (yes of course we have a 12V soldering iron with us...) plus some shrink tube (the heat gun I had to borrow from Rick) took care of the problem.
After fixing the helmet camera we found another problem, which was obvious but which I had not thought about before:
I have a total of four HID lights (plus four Hella halogens) on the bike. One of the HIDs is the low beam and the three others are the stock high beam (converted to HID) and two Hella Micro DE Xenons under the nose cone.
The halogens are connected to be operated from the stock high beam switch (via relay of course) and the three HID's are behind another switch and ther respective relays. Now all these have their own fuses under the nose cone and the front fuse block is fed by a 6 mm2 cable through a 70 amp relay but this main feed cable to the front of the bike has a 30 amp in line fuse. And this fuse blew right away when I fired the three HIDs....
For some reason this did not happen at home during my testing four weeks ago after the installation and neither did it happen previous night at Laramie when I aimed all the lights.
I called the HID expert back home and he said that in car use the Micro DE Xenons have a 25 amp fuse EACH...and I am trying to fire up three ballasts simultaneously through a single 30 A fuse ...!!! Stupid me!
Well, looks like I will not be lacking projects this coming winter ;-)
We used all my spare 30 A fuses goofing with this until I believed that let's leave the HID high beams and just rely on the halogens and get some more fuses from Checker Auto parts when they open next morning.
We had a nice dinner at Texas Steakhouse and slept well next to our full tummies in Rick's camper.
