We took off around 8:30 am heading towards Iowa, expecting to cross the 5 km distance across that state into Illinois at Keokuk. We made a quick stop for a break ahead of schedule…thankfully. As we took off we quickly came upon a “detour”….This detour took us 70 kms out of our route heading south and then north instead of the easterly direction we were headed in. At the end of the day it brought us less than 20 km closer on our route and added another hour to our ride.
We found a gas station in Memphis to fill up our tanks (and in Larry’s case drain his tank) and beside that was a Pizza Hut. Given that we were now noon, we decided to stop here to eat. We both had a great salad, paid and headed out. While we thought the detour was enough interruption to our day, little did we know, we would have a bigger one.
Key in the ignition, turn…..nothing!…no instrumentation…..we turned the key back and forth a bit more, pulled up the kickstand…..finally got some instrumentation but just a “click, click, click” when we tried to start. So we figured that I had a bad ignition switch that finally went kaput without any warning…..change of plans. I called CAA who put me through to AAA for a pick up to the nearest Yamaha dealer. We decided that would be in Keokuk as it had the authorized Yamaha dealer and was also in the direction we were headed….while we were waiting to hear back from AAA we cancelled our room at the next stop and found a hotel in Keokuk for the next three nights as the Yamaha dealer didn’t open until Tuesday morning. The hotel, luckily was only a minute for the Yamaha dealer.
As we are waiting for AAA to get back to us, we are counting our blessings…in all of our trips we have not experienced any mechanical issues. We are very diligent about keeping our bikes maintained properly but given we both have over 100,000 km it is not unrealistic to expect that this might happen at some point. While we wait we are searching FJR forums for possible issues which point back to the ignition switch as it is a known issue for some years (not mine)….an easy fix at the dealer, which generally requires just a quick solder…….Then, as Sponge Bob would say “three hours later” I get two calls at the same time…one from AAA agent who is telling me that I will have to pay for any charges past $500, which I am telling her I don’t because my coverage is by mileage not cost and while trying to have this discussion the company who is supposed to be picking up my bike is calling so the agent tells me to pick it up. I pick up that call, just to find out they only want to confirm the information (big help). At this point I am a little frustrated because this is the 3rd time that AAA has indicated I would have to pay, and the 2nd time that I have had CAA confirm to them that I don’t….while on hold waiting for the “nice lady” to confirm this again with her supervisor, I signalled to Larry to go try the bike again…..I watch out the window as the lights come on the bike and I can see him crank the throttle…wooo…this looks good. He shuts off the bike and tries it again…..yaaaaaa that looks good….while on hold (I am wearing ear buds), we get our gear on and get ready to ride…yup…I will take my chances on getting to Keokuk under my own steam….just as we are fully geared up, the nice lady comes back on (again misinformed by her supervisor) and I advise she can cancel the pick up…..we have power and I will ride it to the dealership.
We did stop to take a picture as we crossed the Missouri River and into Iowa. As I mentioned, it was originally supposed to be a 5 km ride through, crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois, so finding our hotel did not take long…..the Mississippi will have to wait.
Today we slept in until 7 a.m. and started looking into more info around the ignition…what we figure is the real issue is that the ignition switch is just dirty…the solution and trouble shooting information on the forums suggesting turning ignition on/off several times to clean off the contacts…this seems to be what we did to make it work again. Larry finds a motorcycle shop that is open and takes a run down to see if they can do anything….he agrees it is probably just a dirty ignition switch so he uses a dry lubricant and blew it out with the air hose just to make sure no further issues….and doesn’t even charge us for it….
So tomorrow, we are heading out and thankfully we don’t have to lose another day given that the weather is expecting to change a lot next week….looks like we have one more week of good weather until we hit Pennsylvania on Friday….when the rain and cooler temps start.
We are getting closer to home….we were expecting this would be the coolest part of the trip but not in a scenery kind of way so no surprises here.
Tonight, pizza and wine and repacking to head out early tomorrow…hoping to get away by or before 8 a.m. Until then…here is the picture of the Iowa sign….and for today’s chuckle, the signage from a gas station we happened to spot….and no we didn’t stop there.
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