Trip days: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8-9 | 10-12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
Today I was planning on getting down to the mall and doing the tourist thing for the day, but I also needed to get the fluids in my motorcycle changed. A quick call up to Bob's BMW in Jessup, Maryland and they could get me in and out in an hour so I saddled up and headed north to Jessup. I scrutinized a D.C. for a good 15 minutes before I left so that I could find the quickest way out of the city. Looked easy enough. Well... after 45 minutes of battling stop lights, traffic, wrong turns, and unclearly marked streets I emerged on the beltway and quickly got onto 95 north up to Jessup. Bob's BMW is a GREAT BMW motorcycle shop. Good service, really knowledgable employees, an awesome though somewhat cramped BMW motorcycle museum, and some really good mechanics. The guy that changed the fluids on my bike noticed 3 different little weird things on my bike that nobody expect I notice and wanted to make sure that I was aware of them. Awesome! A service department that actually offers service. Every other shop I've ever been to has the "In and out" philosophy: Blindly do exactly what it says on the work order (usually with marginal results) and push it out the door without noticing that the brake pads are toast, or that the rear tire needs to be replaced, or that the bike isn't running well. Bob's receives the John Meloy "Best BMW Shop of this Trip" Award. Back down to D.C. I bumbled my way back to the Donnegan's and suprisingly found a direct shot off the I-495 beltway, down through Chevy Chase, to within 2 blocks of their house. What luck. I had picked up a new air filter from Bob's and now that I was back in D.C. and had nothing else to do I took it upon myself to take the body work of my bike and replace the filter. I expected to see the filter with stuff in it, but not like this. There were lots of bugs around the edges of the filter and a lot of small pebbles stuck in it. I though to take a photo of it for the records, and then shook out the filter. Just looking at the filter it didn't look so hot, but what came out of it was amazing. By the looks of it 1/3 to 1/2 a cup of sand, gravel, and bugs came out of it. Yowzah! I can't believe the bike was even still running with the filter in that condition. After reassembling the bike it did run a noticeably better though. And that was only after 8,500 miles! Good thing I didn't wait until the 12,000 mile filter changing interval. I enjoyed a leisurely afternoon at the house and figured out what I am going to see at the Smithsonian tomorrow. After all it's something like 14 different buildings. You can't see them all.
Total Mileage for Day: 71 |
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©2003 John Meloy <jam@nas.com>