Bye Bye Bike....

We got a call this afternoon from the insurance guy that he had gone to look at the bike. I thought he was going to go to see it tomorrow but we got the call this afternoon that he had already been there. He said it's totaled. When he told me, it was another one of those surreal, "punch in the stomach" moments that we've had too many of lately. Linda and I have both been riding motorcycles since we were young (I started at 17) and riding was one of the common interests that brought us together. She had purchased this bike just before I met her and oddly during our first in-person chat, when she asked me what would be my ideal bike, I said a Yamaha V-Star Classic and that is the one she had just purchased. We've put in a lot of great rides on this bike and it's a weird loss for us. We are so thankful that we didn't get injured, trying to get it off the road or that it didn't wreck us as it skidded but we're still sad to lose it. We've taken it all over the country these last two years and dang it, we just put a brand new tire on it three days ago. We don't plan on buying another for a while. We're gonna wait to see where our job takes us and how much time we'd have to ride. If our job takes us to large cities (such as where we are now) we wouldn't get a whole lot of riding in. We'll wait and see what happens....

Tomorrow we start work at the Union, NJ location. We are excited. We went in this morning to test out the route, driving time in rush hour traffic and pick up our key. It's a busy site and very large (over 900 units). We found out today that the President of the company will be here next Tuesday for a site visit so we have much to do in a short amount of time. Gonna be a busy couple of weeks !

Chambersburg

On Saturday we went to a festival in downtown Chambersburg. There were many booths with lots of neat arts and crafts. A live band was playing in the town square. Linda, Boomer and I walked around, checking out all the vendors. It was a beautiful day for the event, with a nice breeze and comfortable temperatures.

This fountain stands in the town square and the street splits around it.

We've done some work on Bertha while we've been here. We washed and waxed her, then today we touched up the paint on the upright just behind the cab. It gets nicked up from items leaning against it so we bought some spray paint and now it looks much better. Since our style of camping is changing somewhat (due to moving from one job location to another quite frequently), we have sorted through some of the things we normally take with us and will leave them behind. We may be able to pare down even more but we'll see how the next couple of months go and what items we actually need to live on the road.

We will leave here either tomorrow or Tuesday and start back down to Virginia, where the rig is. We bought some soft tubing today so we can give it to the repair guys for use on the wire straps that will hold the grey and black tanks in place. It will cushion the area on the corners where the metal strap meets the plastic and keep it from rubbing. Our friend Tom gave us this idea, as he had to do repairs on his grey water tank recently. If the guys have already re-attached the straps on the grey tank I can unscrew them one by one and add this cushion to the strap and then re-attach it.

We are anxious to get to our first job assignment, in Union, NJ. We won't be able to stay at that property but think that we should be able to stay at another one that is 9 miles away. We've got to work out all the details for our arrival in the coming days.