Today was a very interesting day. After staying over night in Carson City, NV at the Gold Dust Casino Hotel we had breakfast and called the Harley dealership shortly before the check out time in the hotel. The information I got from the service department was not encouraging as they hadn't even looked at the bike, and told me there were two more bikes in front of mine in line before they would attend it. So we felt we better extend our room for another night just to learn that the hotel is fully booked for the day. But a little luck gave us a room, but we had to change rooms. Little effort to have a bed to stay for the night. Whilst talking to the front desk advisor she told me we should go to the HD dealership and make some noise as they have the reputation of not being the most cooperative for travelers and that just last week some guys from New York were stranded for four days. Advise taken, and Elke and I walked over there (our daily exercise and because we are cheap and saved the taxi money, I did ihe walk three times today). Catching the service manager Elke did a little blowfish and told him a story about timing, money, reputation of dealership, and made enough noise that the manager took the bike which was still in the same spot it was left yesterday afternoon when we dropped it off, and moved it immediately into a service bay. Within minutes the front wheel was stripped and the bearing failure confirmed, and about a hour and half later the bike was ready for us to drive out. A big THANK YOU to the Battle Born service manager Corrie for stepping up and providing a service which should have been provided by his team. As a kind of compensation he gave us a good rebate on the repair and thanks to the Front Desk Manager at the Gold Dust Casino Hotel she waved us the extra night fees if we could vacate the room before the check in time for today. Said and done, and because some people were very generous and accommodating, we hit the road before 3 o'clock in the afternoon, running South on Hwy 395 and picking up our trail were we left off yesterday.
We scratched our plan to enter Yosemite Park, we had visited it often enough when we lived in California, and were more than compensated with the smooth and winding roads of Hwy 395 and passing Topaz and Mono Lake, Mammoth Lakes, and Crowley Lake, climbing up to Conway Summit and following the Sierra Nevada to the West going South. Temperatures became quite cool up on that 7,000 to 8,000 ft high road, and with a huge thunderstorm coming in from the East, and earlier rainfalls in this region, we didn't wanted to push our luck today too far, and call it quits in Bishop, CA. We made some mileage today, and hopefully coming from the East into LA tomorrow, not exactly how I wanted to come down there, will not give us too much traffic. But with only about 300 miles to go we should be good in time to meet with Elke's brother's family in Long Beach, CA.
Finally things came together, and the day didn't turn out as bad as it looked to be in the morning.
Crowley Lake, CA and the Sierra Nevada
"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seem as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn." - Harriet Beecher Stowe
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