Day 5

Got on the road an hour earlier today. Which makes me very happy. Starting at 9 or 10 am and driving thru the worst part of the day was getting old. I would be happy getting on the road by 7 or 7:30. That would give us a couple of hours of cool weather now that we are in the SouthWest US.

Kraken Master finally got to ride. And other than a quickly remedied mishap with his fuel line has not reported any problems. We leap frogged him a couple of times just trying to stay in a reasonable distance in case something happened. He is riding on a brand new motor and is getting pretty mush all his break in miles in one day. I'm certain he will make some adjustments tonight.

Scooray & ScootChef left early to beat the heat and made it to Roswell without incident and in good times as usual. Modern twist&go scoots are having an easy time of this so far.

We came upon my favorite Cannonballer, Sir Paul, just outside Abilene early in our day. He was only getting a topspeed of about 35 mph and was bogging down severely. We pulled over so he could get at his tools that we carry so that he could remove his airbox. THe new filter wasn't working for him and if there's no filter why have an airbox in the first place. We let get ahead of us about a quarter mile before cathing up and passing him. As we approached he got into a tuck position and threwhis legs back so his toes were by his tail light. It looked like a cafe racer or jockey postion. We didn't get a picture. It would have been a priceless picture.

15 miles into New Mexico, in the town of Tatum, we found ScootRaton sitting under a tree between the Municipal bldg. and the gas station working on his scoot. He stopped to get some gas real fast (Splash&Dash) couldn't start his engine afterward. He replaced the top end of his motor in Lufkin yesterday and can't be sure what the cause his. Frank & NuStar tried to give him a bump start but nothing happened. So we, not being the types to leave a scooterists behind, loaded him on to the now full trailer and gave him a ride to the final stop.

While in Tatum an interesting local came riding up on him homemade moped, cobbeled together from old dirt bike parts and a Schwinn bicycle. He couldn't get a license so he went with a low displacement vehicle instead.

Kraken Master made it in at around 5:30pm. Welcomed by applause by the Cannonballers present. Everyone was glad to see him finally join the event after 4 days of no riding and entirely too many hours wrenching.

Sir Paul arriving after 17 hours in the saddle.

At 6:45p Frank received a garbled voicemail from Sir Paul. All we could make out after several listenings was "heat...tumbleweed...wild west...few hours". Images of an overheating scooter being attacked or chased by tumbleweeds somewhere near the Texas/New Mexico border came to mind. We interpretted the voicemail to mean that we could expect him around 8:45-9 o'clock. By 9:30 we thought about backtracking along the route to see if we could find him. Perhaps guide him in since we know he has a shitty headlight. Nerves got twitchier as we waited. Finally at 10pm on the dot he rolls in and with a short victory lap announces that his time for the day was 17 hours on the scooter. Turns out he had to clean his carburator twice and that the vibration of all the riding had caused the tip of his spark plug to unscrew part way. He had misfires for some time before he figured it out. It's a shame that no one sees him come in and therefore don't understand the challenges he is overcoming in finishing each day. And every mile is on a full stock 1966 motor scooter. None of the other 'vintage' scooters can say that.

Sir Paul (GBanks66) outside Abilene.

ScootRaton, his copilot Alf, NuStar & Frank in Tatum,NM. Note the beer in Frnks hand, the towns municpal bldg is just to the right out of frame 10feet away.