Day 6: Look familiar ?!

Sorry if this is getting monotonous. I'm sure you can appreciate how this is wearing a little thin for us, too :-( It's 0930h now, pouring rain and the temperature has gone up to 9 degrees. At least, with our new Harley gear, we're waterproof! With the exception of a few hours, my heated grips have been running on 'high' for 3 days. And I can raise and lower my windscreen with a button on my handlebar. That helps a lot. One of Jim's heated grips doesn't work so he's not using his at all. And he has no windscreen. He says he's warm though.

The Canadian FJRs come with factory-installed heated grips; the US models do not. That must be what accounts for the almost $6000 difference in MSRP (she says facetiously). The US models come with sidecase liners and the Canadian ones don't. Go figure. I got my liners - which are essentially softside luggage that fit perfectly inside the sidecases - for Valentine's Day. (they were intended as a Christmas Gift, then they were to be a birthday gift .... but I digress...) I LOVE them. It's very convenient to take them out of the sidecases versus taking the sidecases OFF the bike and reinstalling them everyday. I also have the topcase or 'trunk' in which I carry my sheepskin, rain shell and, these days, my tank bag which is not waterproof. The tank bag has a rubber bottom and big magnets that make it cling to the gas tank. It's the equivalent of a handbag and I use it for: my wallet, ballcap, sunglasses, trail mix, etc. I got the tankbag at CFR 2008 for Best Tip of the Weekend (Gypsy and Kevin, maybe Tom & Pam if they're reading this, will remember that!). I'm hoping I'll get a prize at CFR 2009 for Girl Rider Who Has Travelled the Farthest...I dunno, somethinglike a ...a heated vest would be nice ;-) Perhaps I'll get that for V-Day next year.

Notes from home: By Monday night I'd been away for 4 dinners and John had been invited out for 2 of the 4 evenings. I've heard from Janet, gardener extraordinaire, that the window boxes my sis did for me are beautiful. Thanks Sky!

I see we've picked up 4 new Followers since Monday. Fun! thanks

A postscript to yesterday's post: since we had no connection (yes, Cathy, I should have gotten a turbo stick), I had to type my post in Word and then I trudged off with my 'puter and cord to the Lobby to actually 'publish' there. AND check emails and weather. Well, by the time Jim came along to check HIS email, I was getting an error message on the blog so I converted, with Jim's help, my Word document to a text file and tried that. (I was copying and pasting to the blog) By the time I'd finished 'publishing post' about 6 times and it still wasn't showing up on my Blog page, because, apparently, there was a problem with the Blog site itself, I figured I'd had about 6 of the same post up. Glad to see it was just one. I wrote in a hurry after a long - at times cold and wet - 727 km day and published it at 2350 so it would go under yesterday's date. I had done only a quick proofread and was concerned that I was all over the place with my thoughts. I hope it made sense. My CFR Days and post dates have been off by a day. So I changed the date and time in the computer (duh!) and may have it fixed now.

To clarify and confirm: Today, Wednesday, June 10th, is Day 6 of Mary Ellen's Excellent Adventure.

We're off to Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial. Even though Jim thinks we may not see anything for fog.

Stay tuned....