and then there was more…

Delia again thinking yesterday would be my last post…..hahaha!

In short (because the Roys will definately be posting)…..Roys bike got towed to Canadian Scooter Corporation and he said that place was the high point of that disappointing day because things going wrong went from bad to worse after the high point.  Roy lost the Vespa bag that I loaned him which contained my Nikon Digital Camera and the new fuel tap, computer part, the cracked thingamajig part that was to be a Cannonball keepsake, clothing etc etc and probably stuff he has not mentioned or yet realized he lost.

Thinking he might recover my bag from the Subway (OMG yeah right) he went back…..but got trapped when the train stopped running while Rocket was waiting and wondering what was taking Roy so long.  In a mad rush to the airport from the trials and tribulations, they missed their flight! 

Stress and more money was spent re-booking a flight.  Calls made to arrange a new pickup (during work hours) and a night spent at the airport.  I picked the Roys up this morning and I have never seen Rocket so happy to be home and he kept saying how good it was to see me hahaha.  Both Roys were so happy to be home, but my Roy’s work was not yet over.  Roy thought I would surely kill him for losing my stuff, but I told him all would be forgiven if he could come to my Office after a shower and fix my computer which had the blue screen of death on it since yesterday.

So I dropped Roy at home for a shower, change and he then drove to my Office with his super-hero-techie Fred Perry jacket and Vespa hat (thanks CSC) to fix my poor computer.  Meanwhile, I made Rocket tea and served up some authentic Aussie Tim Tams, made another cup for him to go, and then off we went on the trip to deliver Rocket home. 

I had an appointment to get to after that, and then off to the Office to find a very exhausted Roy still working on my computer.  As I looked at him, I noticed that he has ‘cheek tans’ on each side of his face where the sun made it through his full face helmet.  It is hard not to stare at these tan triangles hahaha.  At 5pm (at least 5 hours later) my computer was fixed and Roy was finally able to go home too. 

He wanted to watch some TV after dinner – but that was just dream because he was fast asleep right after dinner.  He woke up once in a panic wondering how long he had been sleeping and what he needed to put on his cannonball timesheet and where he had to be tomorrow.  He is now dreaming Cannonball hahaha.

Wait till you hear the stories…..but I think for tonight the lights have gone out and the Roys are getting some much needed rest after the Cannonball that followed the Cannonball….

more from the Roys to follow 🙂

Roy’s scooter bit the biscuit near Niagra

Hello everyone….

Delia here, and this may be my final update before the Roys put up any more posts.

I heard from Roy this morning.  They stopped in Niagra Falls last night because they could not make the entire trip from the end of the Cannonball to Toronto in one go….so they headed out this morning to get to Toronto which I hear is about 1& 1/2 hours away.  Roys scooter broke down on a highway somewhere and he could not see Rocket anymore (who was in front of him).  Roy called CAA for a tow – poor scooter.

They booked a flight back to Vancouver today which arrives at 1am (good grief) and I will be picking them up tonight.  That puts Roy and I home at 2am, but we still need to take care of Rocket who is about another hour away….really putting us back home at 4am- ack!

Hopefully all goes well at Canadian Scooter Corp.

I am sure they will be posting more about the last days when they are back and settled.

bye for now 🙂

the beggining of the end

ok so as i sit here in the hotel, i cant believe its over! but lets go back to yesterday morning and figure out how we got here.

yesterday morning Roy and i woke up and knew what we had to do.

load up the scooters figure out what clothing to where depending on temperature, have breakfast load up the scooters and show up at the riders meeting,

leaving Cincinnati was kinda sad, as when we came into the city the night before we crossed the bridge and had a fantastic view of the skyline, then as our hotel was on the other side we had to drive through downtown, and it would have been nice to see a little more.

once we got to the first gas station and Roy and i knew that kieran was well on his way and on the right road we bid him farewell, as neither Roy nor i could stand another 45 mph day!

so we proceeded on our way, doing really well especially roy with his nice new clutch jb welded on!

so there’s really not much else to tell about yesterday, except that Dave on the 250gti caught up with us and road for most of the afternoon with us, the three of us having a good laugh riding along in the Virginia country side , at one piont we came across one of the vespa gt carburetter 200cc that was dead and would not go, i managed to get it going again, through luck and elimination.

roy and i really pressed on today as yesterdays 45mph nightmare was still fresh in our minds.

it was a relief to arrive in Oakland, early with plenty of day time left, Rolf and i had another look at the gt and seemed to get it going better.

everyone seemed in really good spirits as we knew that that the next day was to be the last.

ok in the morning on the last day it was foggy and cold, personally i hate fog with a passion, what use is it, nope give me the clean and tidy buggless , sterile Nevada desert any day.

so Roy and i set off in the freezing fog if Roy got more that 100ft in front i lost sight of him, i could not wait for the sun to come up, it was at this point that Dave on the buddy, who wanted to ride with us on the last day disappeared from my rear view, after turning around it was determined that he had broken a belt, personally i was gutted for Dave as his machine had done really well for a small no name brand 125, i personally was pretty impressed with it resilience.

so once he made the call and we knew he was fine Roy and i pressed on towards Washington dc, where on the out skirts we were to meet the locals who were to lead us into town for pizza at vespa Washington, once we had all arrived and our times noted, we all rode into this big us capitol city, at this point i should mention that Roy’s scooter did not like the city traffic at all and stalled at every light, of which there were many. seeing Roy having to run and bump his scooter at every light was pretty hard on the guy especially as we were still dressed for the fog only now it was very warm and sunny!

plus in order to get it going you really had to run fast!

so once we had pizza a large group, left for a tour of Washington’s famous spots ending up on the other side of town, where the race would be restarted for the last 105 miles to ocean beach, Roy and i skipped the tour and opted to go directly to the start line, keeping the lights to a minimum.

so once everyone arrived, we were off.

this was to be 100 miles of duel carriage way , and Roy was pretty frustrated by now, so i said hey go as fast as you can your machine loves freeway and this is your last chance!

well Roy took this and went like hell,his machine being pushed to it limits,we arrive in ocean city in quick order, Roy and i weaving in of traffic, like maniacs.

my gps clocked me at 69.8mph on the flat, but neither Roy nor i went below 110 kmh except when we gassed up, this part reminded me of my last cannonball as ashrat and i did this pretty much most of the time.

once in ocean city we received a congratulations and could not believe it was over.

ocean beach is like a mini vegas with an ocean front and a very nice beach.

as i sit here writing this Roy is fast asleep on his bed, glasses still on and a can of 7 up in one hand balanced on his tummy…lol.

oh well were riding to Toronto tomorrow 750 miles to get back into Canada, drop off our scoots for shipping home and try to get some stand by flights. Rocket

oh and there is now way on this planet i could have done this without our sponcers

CHISPA SCOOTERS OF BELLINGHAM

AND VESPA KELOWNA,

A VERY BIG THANKYOU TO THESE GUYS.

and look out for a cannonball bike on display at there shop if they so desire.

when i left my speedo read 54800, it now reads 62840…WOW

like my friend kieran said ” crazy times and crazy fun roy, crazy fun”

i couldn’t have put it better myself… Roy Cross…ocean beach.

ok so as i sit here in the hotel, i cant believe its over! but lets go back to yesterday morning and figure out how we got here.

yesterday morning roy and i woke uo and knew what we had to do.

load up the scooters figure out what clothing to where depending on tempreture, have breakfast load up the scooters and show up at the riders meeting,

leaving cincinatti was kinda sad, as when we came into the city the night before we crossed the bridge and had a fantastic view of the skyline, then as our hotel was on the otherside we had to drive through downtown, and it would have been nice to see a little more.

once we got to the first gas station and roy and i knew that kieran was well on his way and on the right road we bid him fairwell, as neither roy nor i could stand another 45 mph day!

so we proceded on our way, doing really well especially roy with his nice new clutch jb welded on!

so theres really not much else to tell about testerday, except that dave on the 250gti caught up with us and road for most of the afternoon with us, the three of us having a good laugh riding along in the virginia country side , at one piont we came across one of the vespa gt carbatetta 200cc that was dead and would not go, i managed to get it going again, through luck and illimination.

roy and i really pressed on today as yesterdays 45mph nightmare was still fresh in our minds.

it was a relief to arrive in oakland, early with plenty of day time left, rolf and i had another look at the gt and seemed to get it going better.

everyone seemed in really good spirits as we knew that that the next day was to be the last.

ok in the morning on the last day it was foggy and cold, personally i hate fog with a passion, what use is it, nope give me the clean and tidy buggless , sterile navada desset any day.

so roy and i set off in the frezzin fog if roy got more that 100ft in front i lost sight of him, i could not wait for the sun to come up, it was at this point that dave on the buddy, who wanted to ride with us on the last day dessapeared from my rear view, after turning around it was determined that he had broken a belt, personally i was gutted for dave as his machine had done really well for a small no name brand 125, i personlly was pretty impressed with it resilience.

so once he made the call and we knew he was fine roy and i pressed on towards washington dc, where on the out skirts we were to meet the locals who were to lead us into town for pizza at vespa washington, once we had all arrived and our times noted, we all rode into this big us capitol city, at this point i should mention that roys scooter did not like the city traffic at all and stalled at every light, of which there were many. seeing roy having to run and bump his scooter at every light was pretty hard on the guy especially as we were still dressed for the fog only now it was very warm and sunny!

plus in order to get it going you really had to run fast!

so once we had pizza a large group, left for a tour of washingtons famous spots ending up on th other side of town, where the race would be restarted for the last 105 miles to ocean beach, roy and i skipped the tour and opted to go directly to the start line, keeping the lights to a minimum.

so once everyone arrived, we were off.

this was to be 100 miles of duel carriage way , and roy was pretty frustrated by now, so i said hey go as fast as you can your machine loves freeway and this is your last chance!

well roy took this and went like hell,his machine being pushed to it limits,we arrive in ocean city in quick order, roy and i weveing in of traffic, like maniacs.

my gps clocked me at 69.8mph on the flat, but neither roy nor i went below 110 kmh except when we gassed up, this part reminded me of my last cannonball as ashrat and i did this pretty much most of the time.

once in ocean city we reiceved a congratulations and could not believe it was over.

ocean beach is like a mini vegas with an ocean front and a very nice beach.

as i sit here writing this roy is fast asleep on his bed, glases still on and a can of 7 up in one hand balenced on his tummy…lol.

oh well were riding to toronto tomorrow 750 miles to get back into canada, drop off our scoots for shipping home and try to get some stand by flights. Rocket

oh and there is now way on this planet i could have done this without our sponcers

CHISPA SCOOTERS OF BELLINGHAM

AND VESPA KELOWNA,

A VERY BIG THANKYOU TO THESE GUYS.

and look out for a cannonball bike on display at there shop if they so desire.

when i left my speedo read 54800, it now reads 62840…WOW

like my friend kieran said ” crazy times and crazy fun roy, crazy fun”

i couldnt have put it better myself… Roy Cross…ocean beach.

The Roys make it :)

Delia here…..the boys just called to say they arrived in Ocean City at 5:45pm today and it’s over….well sort of.  Tomorow morning begins the ride to Toronto where they will head to Canadian Scooter Corp to box up the scoots to ship back thanks to Canadian Scooter Corp and Vespa Kelowna.

Roys bike is worse for wear and Rocket says he could have won a sweating contest from bump starting it at every red light and stop sign.  Maybe he gets extra points for pushing that bike to the end lol and Rocket should get extra points for being roadside mechanic to more than Roy!

The Roys were in good spirits and Rocket is ready to chat up some locals (women lol).  Rocket says his scooter was timed by GPS at 69.9 miles per hour on the flat – fast! Roy was timed at 68.7 mph.  Rocket says he ‘aint doin the Cannonball again” but like Vegas nearing, the boys are already talking about driving hahaha.

They are going to blog later, but they were on their way to celebrate tonight with everyone……

looking forward to reading their words 🙂

This pic is not from the finish line, but I’ll bet they looked this happy!  Oh yes…they said they made it in before the energizer bunny !!!

CB Day 8 + 9 – The end is near!

Roy:

Riding my patched scooter is still a challenge at times, but I am very thankful just to be able to ride my scooters and hopefully making it to Ocean City without more problems.

Day 8 we rode with Kieran the entire day. We couldn’t let anything happen to the President of the Lambretta Club of USA. 😉
Seriously though, as a single rider on a slower scooter, You don’t want to ride on the Interstate at 45-5-mph during rush hour. It ended up being a long day and we didn’t arrive in Cincinatti until 9:30 pm.

Day 9 was supposed to bring us to Maryland, the final state that we would ride across during this years Cannonball. I really enjoyed the route and the scenery. riding through the mountain region of West Virginia and Maryland was very cool. West Virginia reminded me a bit of the Black Forest region.

We started together with Kieran from the Hotel in Cincinatti.

However, today we decided that we only wanted to ride together until we have some open road. We really wanted to arrive at our hotel as early as possible. So for a while it was Rocket and myself again making our way from checkpoint to checkpoint, however it wasn’t very long until we saw Dave.

Dave wanted to ride with us today and the three of us rode most of the route together until we arrived at the hotel, however not before Rocket was helping Marcus on the side of the road.

Marcus’ scooter would not run. Rocket got it to the point where Marcus at least could ride the scooter carefully and off we went.

Rolf later on was able to help and improve the situation with Marcus’ scooter even more.

When we finally crossed the border to Maryland we were all cheering and we had to take a quick shot of the Welcome to Maryland sign.

One last day on Saturday…let’s hope my clutch and cruciform can survive the abuse they are receiving one last day.

CB Day 7 – The Day the clutch said bye bye

Roy:

What a day that was…Rocket summarized it pretty good. Everything was going well and we had a great ride with twisty turns on Road 42 in the Ozarks Mountain region in Missouri. After Kansas that was a welcome change. Although idling badly after getting some bad gas, our scooters were running great and on the twisty roads we were able to catch up to some of the smaller automatic scooters. Too bad that we had to pull over for gas. Rocket would have so liked to pass them on his scooter, which I am sure he would have been able to do if we would have had a few more miles of twisties.

I noticed that my clutch felt looser compared to previous day, but I was able to switch gears and therefore chose to ignore it until the end of the last leg of the day, but suddenly things go way worse and shifting became nearly impossible…the rest you probably already read in Rockets post. I managed to finish the last stretch to St. Louis either banging in gears or bump starting the bike when necessary.

Vespa St. Louis invited us to come to their shop and their mechanics helped getting work done getting the scooters again in shape for the remaining days. We really appreciated their hospitality and help. When we found out what the situation was with the clutch I was very frustrated knowing that this could have been the end for my scooter.

We talked to the mechanics..in a town like St. Louis there must be a person who works on vintage scooters. Luckily there was Robert Craven. We persuaded the mechanics to get us in touch with Robert. I can’t thank him enough!!!

He drove across the city a couple times for parts we were missing and he agreed to pull a matching clutch out of his running shop scooter. It always amazes me how much help scooterists offer to other scooterists they have never met when help is needed.

Rocket and Robert got my scooter patched up and going again and I was able to ride back to the hotel. Although the scooter doesn’t idle properly anymore and it is no longer on auto-lube, however the main thing is that this gave me the chance to complete the Cannonball.

By the way…you may have seen pictures of Rocket’s scooter that show something yellow on his side panel…here is a close-up…the sign says”Hair Dryers are available at the Front Desk” 🙂

A few pics Roy put up on our hosting site…

This is Rocket when he located the lost tire…he looks really happy hahaha

I have no comment on this one….

The bars attempt at lavalife is on the ceiling….pretty cheap though as it costs you a buck to get your ad up and another buck to buy one hahaha….

The alien highway lol

This is a cowpie for a different planet !

Hahaha…I was joking when I said Alien

I see why Rocket wants another Chispa (Vespa Bellingham) Decal….looks cool!

Low tech GPS lol

Here are some pics I swiped from Modern Vespa

Shamelessly swiped, but not everyone visits every forum (incl me) 🙂

goodbye kansas

well on the last day crossing kansas i was hoping to see something a little more interesting but this was not the case, the scooters were running fine and it was all going well and another 300 miler was out of the way.

well the nest day saw us going into missouri and like night and day withing 50 miles of entering the scenery changed into rolling country sid, it was at about 3/4 the way through that roy said theres something wrong with my clutch, so we stopped and after i had a look i though that the clutch needed adjustment and that the cable had mearly slipped.

well were were only one hour from a scoot shop that was to be our destination at the end of the day, so after trying all external measure to reradjust roys clutch, it was decided to press on to there workshop and look there.

well to cut along story short, once we got to the scooter shop, lifted the scooter removed the clutch, it was there that we discoverd that the spring in the center of the pressure plate had somehow come lose and dissapeared completely, but not untill it had split the clutch hub center,which had then jammed, tearing the wodruff key from the slot and finally damaging roys auto lube gears!

oh and i could not find the spring!

so after much discussion with the others there in the know, plus seeing what parts were available for a vintage scooter at a modern scooter shop, which were slim to none, we needed a new clutch at the bare minimum. so we managed to locate one on a local home mechanic named robert , who said we could have one out of his shop lonerfor replacement value.

so off we went in search of roberts house, where he removed the clutch, talk about robbing peter to pay paul.

then it was back to the shop to jb weld[glue] in the woodruff key in the crankshaft, so after a lot of messing about it was finally glued in and set up enough to install the new clutch, which was half roys old one and half of the

new one. it went ok after a lont of persuading as the crank was a mess and no longer up for a nice new clutch.

the clutch was toqued up to its max plus some more so that the nut would take the load and not the woodruff key. this was good as it was going to get asit was now well past ten, i was falling asleep in vespa st louis shop , while robert was going back and forward to his house robbing all the bits we needed to get it roilling , in the end robert put in the clutch and got it all tightened up while i changed my oil.

which was well over due as i now have an aditional 7 thousand kilometers on my scooter from when we started and were were still no where near being there yet.

in the resturant i fell asleep, like really gone, waiting for my meal, after this finally i was in bed and roys scooter seemed to be going ok , even though the idle was a little high id rectify that in the morning.

well the next day was to be 412 miles in one day! and roy had a glued in clutch, when i tried to set the idle it was pretty obvious that there was some damage to the oil seal and that the idle was to be zero or about 2000 rpm…ouch.

so roy managed to nurse this scooter for 412 miles banging it into gear at the red light and working really hard to try not to destroy it some more.

it only has 2.5 more days to go to complete the cannonball.

on this day we decided to stay with kieran on the lambretta as roys bike would well to maintain the 45/50 mph that kieran was doing, also there was about 90 miles of freeway, to get us out of st louis missori and the two slower bikes would stand a much greater chance of survival if they stuck together, well talk about suiside, holy cow, it took all my strengh not to gun it off at 65 every time a semi truck came up behind us and finally slowed down to 45 mph, trust me they were not impressed, at one point , a car and a trailer/caravan pulled on to the freeway and managed to force his way between kieran and roy, so roy pulled over in to the shoulder and slowed down, kieran on the lambretta gunned it and tried to slowly overtake then, so they were moving in a circle around this old boy on the freeway and they couldnt see each other, then when kieran finally got in front roy was not there, roy finally realising what was going un gunned it to get bck to kieran and overtook the car/trailer on the shoulder, talk about comerdy of errors, i was laughing so had i could hardly ride.

once we got off the freeway and back on to the slowe road we soon started banging away the miles at 45 mph!

but i will say this there were quite a few streatchs of road where following cars simply could not get by as it was to twisty,on one point when we pulled over to faster vehicles go by, i counted 28 cars and at least 5 trucks, there were quite a few people that we pissed off today.

14 hours later and 4 states[misouri, illinio, indiana, ohio] we arrived in cincinatii!

so here we are, roys scotter does not sound well but is running fine, kierans scooter is very painfully slow, [your on your own tomoz m8] and my small end bearing is chattering under full loads, hardly suprising after 2 cannonballs!