Finally got out of Den­ver, later than I should have. I spent about 30 min­utes in a hard­ware store try­ing to find a lock for my newly attatched cam­era case (yes­ter­day I found a nice Pel­i­can case to attach where my pas­sen­ger seat goes — this way I can step off my bike, and eas­ily take pic­tures.) I went through 8 dif­fer­ent sets of locks, and never found one that worked. Frus­trat­ing. An indi­ca­tion of what was to come.

South of Den­ver, around Col­orado Spring, it was rain­ing hard. When I pulled over to put on my rain gear, I dis­coverd it at the very bot­tom of my bags. By the time I got it on I was soaked. Col­orado Springs ended up get­ting 3 inches of rain that day, and there were sev­eral flash floods. Luck­ily I missed most of _that_ rain.

Once I got out of the rain, it was once again 1000 degrees. Pulling over to take off my gear

I noticed my bike mak­ing a hor­ri­ble sound. Ack.. My valve job didn’t hold. I knew what it was right away. When I did the valve job, I didn’t tighten the lock nuts down very tight, since I was wor­ried about strip­ping them (you have to tighten them to 7 ft/lbs or was it 7 nm?) If you use a small wrench — 6mm, choke up on it, and tighten it by hand, you can strip it the bolt. Either way, I screwed up.

It was get­ting late, I had just gone over a pass in New Mex­ico, and it was pretty cold, so I fig­ured it was time to pull over. Couldn’t find a hotel with Inter­net Access, so I got just a hotel. The town was called Raton, which is span­ish for Rat. If you ever get a chance to avoid this town, do it.

Next morn­ing I pulled my bike apart to tighten the valves — to fix my prob­lem. The lock nut was com­pletely gone. I don’t cry, so I didn’t. But I do curse, and boy did I. Once the shock of what hap­pened wore off, I real­ized it wasn’t TOO bad of a prob­lem. As luck would have it, the thing the lock nut is sup­pose to hold in place (I don’t know the name) had backed all the way off. Had it gone the other way — extended all the way to the valve, hold­ing it tight, there would have been dire con­se­quences. The valve could have bent or the lifter could have been dam­aged. The only other issue is where the nut has gone. I’m not too wor­ried about the nut get­ting into sen­si­tive engine parts, since I’ve got an oil filter.

Once I got the bike back together, my plans changed once again. There is a BMW dealer in Santa Fe, so off I go. The bike sounds like hell, but I don’t think it has any per­ma­nent damage.

On the way to Santa Fe, I passed through a town called Las Vegas. It should be called “Not that Los Vegas.” It was an unre­mark­able town, except for lunch. The place was called Taco Express. Every­body was nice, but I don’t know how they stayed in busi­ness. At lunch time there were less than a six peo­ple in the place. The woman behind the counter didn’t know how to ring up items dis­played on the wall behind her. Now the cool part was the gui­tar player. This fast food joint employed him to play for lunches. He was pretty good, and friendly (he asked me if I want to play.) Wouldn’t it be cool if McDon­alds had some­thing like that?

I found the BMW dealer pretty eas­ily, and every­one was very nice. By nice, no one laughed at what I did. They were able to take my bike right away. I let them keep it, hop­ing to pick it up Fri­day morn­ing. I hope they find that nut.

Across the street was a Com­fort Inn adver­tis­ing free High Speed Inter­net. Huzzah!

If these things are going to hap­pen, Santa Fe, New Mex­ico, is bet­ter than Santa Fe, Mexico.