Day 3 - Tuesday August 9 - A Most Challenging Day!!!

Sorry for the delay everyone but as the title suggests - it was "A Most Challenging day!" 

The interesting stuff... 

As some of you may know we recently had to put down our beloved lab dog of 15 years, Skye (and 5 years previous his litter-mate brother Angus).  It was very difficult, as many of you know this from experience, and expecially hard on Jeanie.

So when Jeanie met a local dogwalker (a lawyer in St. Johnsbury actually) who told her about the "Dog Chapel" on "Dog Mountain" she just had to go.  I know you may be thinking, "Oookaaayyy" - but in all sincerity it is a wonderful tribute to "man's best friend" by a special man and artist who passed before his time - and it was very close to our Hotel.  Too much to write about it here so enjoy the pictures below and if you are curious follow the links...http://www.dogmt.com/    and     http://www.dogmt.com/stephen-huneck.html  - it's worth it!!!

*** THE CHALLENGING DAY  follows the Dog Chapel photos

Ok - so it was a special time to an early start of our third day and we were looking forward to more of the same on our trek through the bountifully scenic New England States.  So we started back down the mountain to Hwy. 2 - could we find out back?  Noooooooo... after a half an hour I decided to use the GPS - bad idea!  There are soooo many back gravel roads around there that the poor "Garmin gizmo" had us half way up a mountain on gravel roads before I decided to finally turn around drive "down"!!!

Well we did finally get back on the highway we headed out to the most beautiful scenery through Lake Placid.  And that's when the motorcycle started acting up.  Actually an increasingly loud "clacking" sound coming from the engine.  At first I thought maybe it was bad gas (no - not me - from the pumps at Citgo).  So I stopped at another station and purchased some "octane boost" thinking that I was hearing the motorcycle version of engine "knock" from low octane.  Nope - that wasn't it.  My next thought was maybe my V-Twin engine might only be firing one cylindar but there was no performance loss - just an annoying "clack".  Then I my thoughts turned back to when I had the bike serviced before the trip - when I did my own "once over" I felt that they had over-filled the engine oil.  While mulling these things over along our route didn't we come upon a bike shop - a Harley shop but what the hcek - these guys know bikes.  The service manager thought perhaps the engine oil wasn't the proper viscosity for this heat but felt he should refer me up the street to the Honda shop.  So away we went to Absolute Power sports in Gorham, NH. There Paul the mechanic was happy to help and gave it a good going over and even took for a spin on the highway.  Definitely too much oil, but not reponsible for the noise.  Manifold -perfect, transmission - perfect, both cylindars firing, so perhaps a sticky valve?  But nothing he felt was a show stopper.  Just annoying.  So I went in to see what I owed for the service and Colin the Service Manager said "Merry Christmas" and sent us on our way feeling safer if not still puzzled.

As the clacking got louder we decided to stop at McDonalds for a cold drink and that's when I decided that I was going to check the air filter.  Out came the tools I brought, off came the filter cover and out poured the excess oil!!!  See pictures below. 

Bill with the oil soaked air filter!

Oil pouring out of the air filer housing!

Air filter housing cleaned up.

I went in to the MCDonald's and asked if they had anything that I might use to extract excess oil through the oil filler cap and encouraged them use "non-linear" thinking.  That's when a light when on in the young assistant manager's head and he returned with a hand pump that they use for pumping the syrup into the soft drinks.  "Here take this - we have millions of them.  So as you can see in the above photo I extracted about acup or so of engine oil.  And I might add that it is the dirtiest oil I have ever seen!

Bill replacing the air filter.

Bill replacing the cover.

Now I am thinking that the viscosity of the oil is virtually none-existant.  We will have to get the oil changed Wednesday AM.  Somehow this needs to be done before we go on the long ride from Bangor to St. John, NB (270 km) where we have a reservation on the Noon ferry to Digby, NS. 

So we didn't arrive at the hotel near Bangor, ME around 9PM.  The front desk directed us to Dysarts's Truck Stop restaraunt for some FANTASTIC take out (no wonder those truckers are so generously filled out).  Between 10 and 11 PM we dined in our hotel room with some red wine (Yellow Tail Shiraz which we picked up at a variety store for $6.95 - half of what you'd pay in T.O.) 

Well, sorry for the late edition of Eighteen 'Til We Die - but it's just been "one of those day". But all in all...   We haven't had this much fun in decades!!!

BCINGU