We had an interesting early morning at the Roper's. There was a while around about 5 a.m. that I thought that they must have had a pet bird. There was this chirping that I heard every few minutes. This went on for what seemed like hours! At about 7:00 Elaine tried to fix it but was unable to get the smoke alarm down. Eric and his new hip aren't up to climbing step ladders. Allan was able to get it down. Each of them took several attempts at trying to get the door to the battery open. Finally, one of them got it open and then the challenge was how to get the old battery out. After several more minutes the problem was solved, new battery in and fire alarm returned to its home in the hall at the top of the stairs. What a struggle.
I wish I could say that they gave us a warm farewell... But, it was 45 degrees when we left at 8:30 this morning. The coldest morning yet. We traveled via 95 through Philly and that road is in need of new pavement. Wow was it rough. We continued to Wilmington, Delaware and took 495 out around that city. At one point we were traveling on a road with 5 lanes for traffic on our side!!!
We drove on through Delaware and into Maryland toward the Bay Bridge. As we have on other days we saw lots of corn fields. We also saw what I suspect were soybean fields. On route 50 there were few if any gas stations and the Silver Streak sputtered and stalled after having traveled about 120 miles on a tank of gas and I had to pull over to the side of the highway to flip the fuel lever to access the reserve fuel. This was the first time I had to do this and just couldn't find the switch at 60 miles an hour. I sure know where it is now and could find it quickly if necessary. Within another 20 miles we found a gas station.
On to D.C. and we made our way to Bekah's apartment building arriving at about 1:00 and having driven 180 miles. She gave us a quick tour of her apartment. She is on the 8th floor of a large building. It has a small galley kitchen, a living room with two couches and a dining room table, three bedrooms and two baths. Following our tour she doubled up with Allan and we rode, under her direction, to her friends parents house near Dupont Circle. We are very fortunate to have the use of this 3 bedroom home the next few days while we are here. (The owners live in FL but are currently traveling in France.) There are even off the road parking spaces that come with the house. Her friend resides in the basement.
We got some lunch and she wanted to headed out to a marina in nearby VA with a good sized parking lot to do some practice driving. When I agreed to ride her bike down from Maine I had it in my mind that once I got it to her apartment I was done. Turned out that was not to be. She rode over to the marina with her Dad and I rode her bike. I parked it when we arrived. She went over to it and couldn't get it to start. We both hoped it was driver inexperience. That turned out not to be the case. Allan looked it all over and decided the battery was a problem. Bekah and I tried to give him a good push to see if he could pop the clutch and start it. We did this several times and no such luck. It would sputter a bit but we couldn't get him going fast enough for this old trick to work and of course we had no jumper cables.
After fiddling with the battery for a bit he got it out and she located a Batteries Plus Store. They went off to buy a new battery for it. I waited at the marina. It was quite a struggle for the two of them to get the new battery installed. It fits in an oh so tiny space in front of the back tire just above the ground. They could get the battery into the tiny space but the real challenge was screwing the leads onto the battery once it was in there. Eventually, they got it and the bike started. Bekah took a couple of spins around the parking lot and we headed back to where we are staying. We had been gone 4 hours on our marina jaunt. Bekah was not happy that there was an issue with the bike but it is 9 years old and the battery was probably the original. She was however delighted that her Dad was present and between them they were able to get it going again.
She will be working tomorrow so we are on our own to explore. (Via the METRO) She is taking Tuesday off and planning to take the DC motorcycle written test and get it registered here. That might entail more city driving for me. Oh, my.
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