This morning I want to take care at first of my faulty ignition switch. Yesterday I called already the Harley shop and got an answering machine telling me their office hours are Mon thru Sat from 9 AM to 6 PM. So I’m at the Javelina H-D in Boerne, TX at 8 AM just to make sure that I’m the first in line. Strange the gate to the lot is still closed and a huge lock and chain is in place, but since I’m so early I don’t think of it very much. When at 8:30 there are no signs of anybody preparing fro business I jump the gate and sneak around the shop. Here I find at the service door a sign that they are closed on Sundays and Mondays. Wonder who was in charge of updating the phone message. So this dealership gets definitely a thumbs down from me.
With almost three hours lost of riding time, I finally make it then onto I-10 toward El Paso, TX, the next destination for a H-D dealer who perhaps can take care of my problem.
The sky is hung close with gray clouds, keeping the sun away and riding is quite comfortable. Off course is I-10 again a huge construction around San Antonio and Boerne, but after that it becomes a very good conditioned Interstate, with a speed limit of 80 mph. The landscape I’m passing through is nicely going up and down, and the vegetation reminds me very much of that in the Bushveld in South Africa, low trees, brush, cacti, and sisal. There is not very much grass, and cattle have a hard time to find and enough to eat. At about Sonora, TX it starts to rain, and as I come closer to this stretch I drive through the middle of it, left and right of the Interstate it is raining, and I’m riding through the middle dry. I can’t help to think about Moses dividing the sea. At Ft. Stockton, TX the cloud cover finally disappears completely, and the sun is baking me now with brute force. Temperatures immediately rise to over 100, and the landscape also changes immediately. Everything becomes more barren, the sparse vegetation makes room for more cacti and sand. With the Rio Grande to the left, and the Guadeloupe mountains to the right, I’m making my way into El Paso, TX. I didn’t like the city 20 years ago when we passed through on our move from TX to CA, and it hasn’t changed. The Interstate becomes again a construction site with new on and off ramps and bridge overs, but the town is still a spaghetti I haven’t figured out. I find the Barnett H-D dealership and spend another almost three hours in there to get the bike halfway fixed. Even though those folks could help me to some extend, they also do not get an attaboy from me. Hope the fix will last till I can bring the bike to my trusted mechanics at home. Anyway, leaving the dealership at about 6 PM I was still determined to reach Las Cruces, NM but could not reject a road sign for a proper bed and shower for the same price a camp site would cost me, so I call it the day.
Impression of the day is the heavily guarded and fortified border to the southern neighbor. The formerly border between West and East Germany was nothing compared to this “monster”. I wonder what that is all about, what is it keeping out, or what is it keeping inside? I hear the words of Ronald Reagan telling Mikhail Gorbachev “... tear this wall down.” in my head, and think perhaps that could be a better way. But not in my life time anymore.
“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.” - Joseph Fort Newton, American Baptist Minister
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