The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men ...

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Joe Jones
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The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men ...

Post by Joe Jones »

The summer tour / training session tour was a bust. I was able to stop and work with seven different people before the tour was halted by family responsibilities. The rest of the summer was nothing like I had imagined!

It began with the unexpected trade-in of my 2012 Goldwing for a new 2018 Goldwing DCT. It just fell together, so I did the swap and prepared for the tour. I had my Escapade trailer match painted to the new bike, and set up everything for what was supposed to be a six-month tour, spanning some 35,000 miles, and finally taking me up to Alaska and across Canada from coast to coast.

Well, I finally arrived in southern CommieFornia after a late start, and having to work out shifts in the original plan. My trailer lost a wheel at the Arizona/New Mexico border, so I spent a day on the side of the road waiting for a good friend to drive up from Green Valley, AZ with his pickup truck to retrieve me. We loaded the trailer and stuff into his truck and I followed him back to Green Valley for the six hour ride on my Wing.

Unfortunately, the trailer used proprietary parts that were not readily available in the wind swept desert of Arizona, so my solution was more "redneck" than I had dreamed. I purchased a 4x4 Harbor Freight Trailer and mounted my own trailer on top of it. With the tongue and wheel removed, I was able to tow this hokey looking rig to southern CommieFornia using my motorcycle, where a friend with the necessary tools gave me the means to do a proper repair on my trailer. When my own trailer was back on it's own wheels with the new, beefier frame and spindles, I donated the new HFT trailer to a charity called Bicycle Angels. They will sell it and use the money to buy another bike or something.

I was just regrouping, and prepping to ride up the coast to Alaska when I received a call that my 82-year-old uncle in Chicago was rushed to a hospital for neck surgery. He was diagnosed with Dementia, and there were other problems. So ... I parked my motorcycle and trailer in a garage and ended up buying a nice 2018 Ford F150 4WD truck in SoCA. It was a deal I couldn’t pass up. I drove that truck back to Kentucky (WITH air conditioning!), only to discover that I could not drive it up to Chicago due to a snafu with the CommieFornia registration. It seems CommieFornia doesn’t print a physical Title until the vehicle is OWNED. KY requires a title to issue a plate, so it was frustrating to have to park my new truck in my garage until a plate could be issued. So I parked the truck in my garage and rented a smaller Nissan 4WD truck to drive up to Chicago.

Three weeks later, I received a call from the Annex in KY. telling me that I could come down to get a 30-day permit for my truck. So I returned the rental to Enterprise in Franklin, KY., and drove my own truck back up to Chicago to finish the task of placing my uncle into an assisted living facility, and cleaning up his MASSIVE mess. He was a hoarder. You cannot imagine the chore! We pulled 68 leaf bags of trash out of a one-bedroom condo!

I am now back in Kentucky and prepping to go do some DesignEdge training in northern Florida around Thanksgiving weekend. Then I will set myself up for online training again, as well as one-on-one training as time allows. Now that I have a truck as transportation, it will be much easier to get around to do personal training on DesignEdge and the PlasmaCam tables.

The highlight of the trip was when the owner of PlasmaCam invited me to his home to have dinner with him and his family. We met and talked for quite a while, and discussed many things about the company, the tables, and the software. Jason is a really great guy, and he was open and receptive to our discussion. He thanked me for the things I have done to help PlasmaCam owners gain a better understanding of the tables and software, and we discussed several changes, upgrades, options and such that have been bounced around. I will say that Jason was far more cordial and accommodating than I had imagined he would be. I actually felt quite proud and honored to meet with him, and I left feeling as if I had made a friend!

I don’t know what the future holds for me, with respect to the PlasmaCam tables and software I have, but for the moment, I am letting the dust settle on this chaotic summer tour, and I am trying to decide on which direction to head from here.
Eiklj
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Re: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men ...

Post by Eiklj »

Thanks Joe for the update.

I think things are getting worse over at the PCam owner's forum from what I've been reading.

If you ever come thru Kansas, give me a holler.

jason

(different Jason than the one you mentioned in your post)
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