Road Trips Involve Detours

[Sept. 26 update] How could I overlook the first theme that set the trip into a proper Westy perspective! It’s included below.

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There are always unexpected moments in any trip. I think back to our Sark adventure from 2017 and how many unexpected detours happened. Some minor, at least one major (and expensive… losing my iPhone in London was a big deal). We got past it all though.

This trip is proving to be an adventure too. One we are up to, as usual. Border crossings have been interesting. Not a problem, the only thing its cost us has been a bag of rice. Babe has made sure we are paying attention to her, she’s raised her voice a few times despite my best efforts to have her trip ready in advance.

So before I get on with describing our adventures I’ll inject this short story of some minor misadventures.

Fix It and Ride On

We’ve bumped up into two themes and have worked our way through them with limited affect on our plan and schedule. The first was problems starting cold in the mornings. That turned out to be glow plugs (as I thought might be the case) and while the symptom is resolved the root cause is still a puzzle. Shouldn’t affect us for the rest of the trip though.

And looking back, with a playful reminder… there’s one theme I commented on earlier but neglected to include it here. We were only a day into this trip before we had our first break-down. It happened on friendly territory and we got very luck. Pete had the solution waiting to be applied. Go back a couple of posts, you’ll find it 🙂

The other (now properly thought of as the third) just showed up and it looks like it’s a failure in part of the clutch hydraulic system. The slave cylinder in particular. This has us stopped just shy of Eugene Oregon, can’t go anywhere until we get this sorted. We’ll know more in the morning… the failed part has been sourced, a reliable mechanic is nearby and the VW family has been looking after us.

This particular part failed on us years ago, it was the cause for us being towed the second time ever. Back then it was in a field after a bike race at Woodnewton. Now it’s in Eugene.

Life is good though. Babe let us get to a point where we could get to a safe harbour and close to a place we could get her fixed. Plus near Hop Valley brewery. The tale will continue tomorrow!

Not going to be where we thought our plan would have us, just how it is. We’ll resume trip tales soon. There have been some awesome rides, great food, amazing beers and stories to be told about all of them. Stay tuned.