Day 1 - Catching You Guys Up

Ok, I really apologize for the lack of posts but this trip has had so many unexpected twists, turns, mishaps, and delays that I hardly know where to begin. This is a rain day and I'm sitting in a campground pavillion in Gros Morne National Park on the western shores of Newfoundland waiting for Roger to travel by land from Matane, Quebec to Sidney, Nova Scotia and ferry over to Newfoundland to rejoin the trip. (more on that a little later). Since this is really the first real free time I've found on this journey, and I have a wifi signal, I thought I'd take this day to try and play catch up to let everyone know what has been going on.

First of all, we're somewhat safe, alive, and unbroken for the most part.  A bit banged and bruised up, but very fortunate to remain unbroken and out of a hospital emergency room.

Day 1:  Friday - August 22, 2014     2:00pm Departure  
Miles Traveled = 219.1  /  Jackson, Michigan - London, Ontario Canada
The trip got started a day and half late as a result of my hair brain idea for some last minute (midnight the night before departure) improvements to the bikes which I felt would make packing our loads and keeping them on the bike during the Trans-Labrador journey, much easier. From that standpoint, the fabrication of the rear racks for both bikes and the modification to Roger's side stand to allow his bike to support itself better in soft sand/soil, was time well spent despite costing us a lengthy day and a half delay getting out of town.  Finally, we got underway around 2:00pm on Friday August 22nd.

Approximately three hours into the trip, Roger's bike developed a weird electrical problem which at first appeared to be a simple burned out brake light bulb. We're thinking a simple bulb change from the spares in my tool kit and we'll be on our merry way. Since Roger didn't have any spares of his own with him he wanted to stop at a Wal-Mart and grab the replacement and a spare for his own tool kit which was not a bad idea.  So, as he goes in to grab a two-pack replacement I started pulling his rear brake lens to expedite the replacement process and figured at most we'd be back on the road within ten minutes.  No such luck!  NOTHING is simple when Murphy comes along!

Nothing was wrong with his bulb and by now the problem had "evolved" to the point of his brake lights working in reverse!  By that, I mean he started having a "two filament" burn when the brakes were not engaged, and would turn off to a "single-filament" burn when either the rear or front brakes were applied, the exact opposite of how they should be working. Not good since we still had several large cities to travel through including Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City on our way up the northern shore of the St. Lawrence River.  Not having brake lights could mean you end up being someones hood ornament before the trip even begins, so we had to get this resolved one way or another.  Out came the tools, voltmeter, etc and the next two hours or so spent trying to figure out what the heck was going on with his electrical system. Multiple calls to two different BMW dealerships just before they closed for the day left us with a few suggestions from their service technicians, but no resolution to the problem.

Access to the microswitches for troubleshooting requires a fair amount of disassembly and with dark approaching, we frantically tried to get it tracked down by removing and testing the switches with a volt meter. All indications were that the switches were working correctly when tested with a meter but would not produce the desired effect once reinstalled on the bike.  I was stumped and thinking the problem must lie deeper within the bikes complicated CanBus electrical system, we decided to put everything back together and press on into the night.  By this time it was getting dark and we had to press on with the temporary solution being that we put Roger in the lead and me running as a tail gunner using my brake lights to serve for the both of us.  Our hopes were that we could make it to the BMW motorcycle dealership in Toronto the following day for assistance.

Trouble at the Pumps:
Not long after getting back on the road we both required fuel and decided to exit the interstate for a quick break while refilling the tanks.  As Roger went to turn into the station, his bike went down so suddenly and unexpectedly that I almost hit him myself from the rear.  Other than a rather large curb and a very small amount of sand at the tangent of the road and station lot, I couldn't see any reason for what had just happened.  By the time I got into the lot and stopped, several other guys had come to Roger's assistance and together we got the bike upright for evaluation.  Roger, obviously a bit shaken and bewildered himself had gone down pretty hard on his right shoulder and hip but fortunately nothing broken.
We fill the bikes than get them to the side to see about making repairs to the handguards and something involving the rear brake actuator that now appeared to be amiss.  Roger made the comment that something had not felt right in the rear pedal since putting the bike back together.  As if there was more travel to the rear pedal than before but I was unaware of this until after he had gone down.  We come to the conclusion that during reassembly of the rear brake master cylinder/switch assembly, the actuator assembly did not get completely inserted into the cylinder correctly.  When he went to slow down turning in for fuel, the unexpected lack of braking undoubtedly contributed/caused him to impact the entry curb at a speed greater than expected and resulted in the go down.

As best we could figure out, the plunger/actuator for the rear brake apparently did not get replaced solidly and had jumped out of place enough to affect braking at the wrong possible time.  As if there is a good time for that to happen.  After another 30-45 minutes repairing the brakes and handguards, we were back on the road but still without a properly working brake lamb on Roger's bike.  He led, I followed to provide brake indication to trailing traffic.  Made it as far as London, Ontario for the night with 219 miles behind us and crawled into bed around midnight.