It's a Monday.

I was heading home from work riding Pork Chop on a fine and cool monday morning. I was all suited up, and even had the gloves plugged in.  Just south of Palmetto on US 29 I went to shift and no power.  The engine revved but there was no power being applied to the rear wheel.  I knew I hadn't broken a chain because when the chain does break, I seem to have a little too much experience in that department, it will bunch around the drive sprocket and with too much torque being applied the engine will shut off.  It's a nifty little safety feature that keeps the failing around and becoming a whip that have been known to rip off legs and such.  But something was wrong.

I tried to coast down to a right hand turning lane for the subdivision street across from Weldon Rd but the bike accelerated too fast and being Monday morning I was acquiring a line of commuters behind me who were probably screeching at me at the top of their lungs, with veins on their foreheads bulging and threatening to erupt, to get out of the way so that they could resume their speed of 90 mph in this normally 55 mph zone.  I pulled into the driveway of Lewis Taxidermy Shop, seeing that there was no vehicles that I could possibly block that would exit in Dagwood style to make some tender legal.  Once stopped, I looked down to behold a steady stream of oil coming out.

Uh Oh.  Not Good!

I dismounted and got on the ground to look, no small feat since I was impersonating Randy Parker from A Christmas Story, but I could detect nothing amiss.  I checked the oil in the sight glass and realize that nearly all had been dumped.  Well, time to call up a tow truck.  Being a Monday morning my chances of getting ahold of someone to take me home to get my truck and stay around long enough to help load Pork Chop was... Zilch.  Well, I did a google search on the phone, it was fully charged this time, and found Charlie's Towing out of Newnan.  They could be there in 45 minutes.  Doubt anyone else was going to be any faster so I told them to come on.  I figured that 45 minutes was being very optimistic and thought that an hour would be more like it.  It was.  An hour later, my chariot arrived.

Got loaded up and down the road we go.  By the time we reached SMF it was just time for them to open.  Unloaded and I explained to Matt what was going on.  By now Chris has came up and quipped, "Well, We aren't letting you changed out the head-light anymore."  That was a reference to about a week earlier when I purchased a head-light from them to replace the one I have.  The low beam was burned out.  I quipped back, "The bad thing is that I haven't had time to changed it yet."

Matt said that it would probably be the morrow before he could give me a prognosis and Chris said that I could leave my stuff behind the counter since I was going to have to hoof it home.  It is only 8 miles and since I am going to be doing the Silver Comet Trail again in March and then the Pinhoti trail in May this would be a good warm up.

But instead of walking all the way home, I happen to run into an old friend, Buck Rayburn, right about at Kroger.  He offered me a ride home and I excepted.  We spent time on catching up until he dropped me off at the house.  From there I slopped cats, who were at first skittish because they didn't recognize the sound of Buck's truck and weren't really sure that it was me until they could get a sniff.  I had to call out for Socks several times before he showed up.  I'm sure it took him by surprise that he heard me calling but not the sound of either Pork Chop or the Truck pulling up to herald my arrival.

A course I went back and retrieved my stuff.  The only thing I could think was that a seal had blew but since I have though many of time that the fuel filter was clogged only to find out that it was something else entirely I kept my diagnosis to myself.  But we shall see.