Back in the USA…

After a short but emotional farewell, I boarded the boat that would take me to Provo, to catch my direct flight to Newark in New Jersey… The fact that Patricia and I would be separated for the next four months did not sit well with us, and telling ourselves that this was “just a moment in time”, was just as difficult…

Last photo together for quite some time…

Guest Dock at Parrot Cay begins to fade into the distance as the smaller boat than I am used to, takes the “Inland Channel Route” back to Provo…

My brother-in-law Ken collected me from Newark Airport, and drove us out to his home in Freehold… Although it was dark by the time we arrived there, I could see that the recent snowfall in the area had done much damage to the trees in the neighborhood…

The snow that had fallen a few days before was still piled up on the sidewalks and in the gardens…. The roads were dry however, so I had no qualms about riding the bike to Pennsylvania over the weekend…

Ken and Karen drove me over to Jack’s house in Monmouth Beach to collect the Big Fella… I was excited at the prospect of being on the bike again, and looking forward to the ride to my good friend Doug McIllwain’s home near Pottsville in Pennsylvania…

At times on Parrot Cay I had felt lost without the bike close by… I often thought about the times I would go and stand near the bike and run my eyes over every inch of it to see if there was anything amiss before my next ride… Lately, since my fall in Alaska, there had been many things “amiss”…!!

A block away from Jack’s home, excavators were hard at work piling the debris from the recent “Megastorm” that had devastated the area…

We wheeled the Big Fella out of the garage and hooked the battery up to Ken’s car to jump-start the bike…

We tried a number of times but the engine would not turn over… It sounded like there was no compression…. I removed the exhaust to see if that would help somehow and was amazed to see a torrent of water pour from it…!! Clearly the water level in the garage had been higher than Jack had originally estimated…!!

The red ring shows the height of the exhaust, which must have been below the water level in the garage when the lower levels of Jack’s house were flooded… I could only imagine what must have gone through their minds as they watched the waters rise around their home…!!

A large puddle of water lies below the bike… Confirmation that the Big Fella had “been drinking” during the storm…!!

We removed the spark plugs, and all four coils and found that they were soaking wet… While Jack cleaned them off, I began saying a prayer that there was no serious damage to the engine, and that it would eventually start up…

We tried several times to get the bike started after this and were just about to give up, when with a loud burp, the engine turned over and my trusty companion roared to life…!!

“Ah… There you are…!! And about time too…!!” he seemed to shout over the noise…. “A funny thing happened while you were away…!!”

I did not hear the rest, because Jack came up to high-five me, saying that he never would have believed we would get the bike started…

“It’s a BMW…!!” I shouted… “Of course it was always going to start…!!” Jack leans in close to give the Big Fella a congratulatory kiss…!! I think he was as relieved as I was to hear the bike running again after its recent ordeal…!!

Just as I was preparing to put all the bits and pieces back onto the bike, I noticed that there was a red light flashing on the dash and the oil indicator was also flashing…!! I checked the manual and saw that it indicated low oil pressure… I then checked the sight-glass and noticed a milky shadow where there is usually just oil to be seen…!!

I quickly switched the motor off and after consulting with Jack and he in turn chatting to a BMW service technician, we decided that it would not be a good idea to ride the bike anywhere just yet, let alone to Pennsylvania…!!

Despite starting up with a throaty roar, all is not well with the Big Fella…!! Seems he has water in the engine…!!

I put in a call to Doug, who very kindly suggested that he bring a trailer over to New Jersey to collect both the bike and I, and take us back to his place in Pennsylvania…

Once again the Biker Brotherhood had come through for me…!! As I write this, Doug and his friend who owns the trailer are on their way to the house, from where we will drive another half hour over to Jack’s place to collect the Big Fella…

We will spend the next few days draining and replacing the engine oil and filters a few times until we are satisfied that the water has been purged from the system… I hope to fire it up tomorrow and take the Big Fella for a short ride before leaving him with Doug for the next few months until I return in April next year…

Will keep y’all posted on how things go…!!