Harley Dave's

Thursday, June 16, 2005

My trips, better known as Lost in America

It has been awhile since I have updated the travels of being lost in America. But this is the latest. We Left Florida ( the wife and I ) for Laconia, NH. on Sunday the 12th at 11:30 A.M.. We shut down in North Carolina the first day. The second day brought more heat than I expected, around Washington DC the temp on my air gauge showed 104 degrees. Now that said we were caught in a traffic jam that was at a stand still most of the time. For the better part of an hour I was beginning to think my legs were going to catch on fire.

Anyway we finally got up and running to Aberdeen, Maryland and shut it down for the night. The third day before we rolled into Laconia we were in rain most of the way. It has been raining every day now. And cold. The temp here, during the day is 48 to 52 degrees. We did not pack for that kind of temp change. But have managed to stay half way comfortable. Here are some pictures of the main drag at Weirs beach.

As you can see by the pictures it is a wet damp day. Everyone of the store owners that we talked to were more than friendly and took the time out to help you find your way around the area. That is something that the Daytona bunch should get a lesson on how to treat the people that are coming to their events. Also one of the pictures shows you some of the prices on goodies. The scenery all around the area is just fantastic to take photos or just to ride through.

Traffic around town is very slow to move. You spend a great deal of your time sitting waiting for someone to move a few feet at a time. So I hope that anyone that goes up here has a very strong left wrist for the clutch lever LOL. I if you are wondering how I got the semi-Arial photo on main street, they have a wooden tower set up that for a few dollars you can go up the steps and take pictures.

Just a short note on when we left here we went down through Vermont which has some very beautiful photogenic areas to take a ton of pictures and good roads for riding.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

The Three Mile Island power station is near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in USA. It had two pressurized water reactors. One PWR was of 800 MWe and entered service in 1974. It remains one of the best-performing units in USA. Unit 2 was of 900 MWe and almost brand new.

The accident to unit 2 happened at 4 am on 28 March 1979 when the reactor was operating at 97% power. It involved a relatively minor malfunction in the secondary cooling circuit which caused the temperature in the primary coolant to rise. This in turn caused the reactor to shut down automatically. Shut down took about one second. At this point a relief valve failed to close, but instrumentation did not reveal the fact, and so much of the primary coolant drained away that the residual decay heat in the reactor core was not removed. The core suffered severe damage as a result.

The operators were unable to diagnose or respond properly to the unplanned automatic shutdown of the reactor. Deficient control room instrumentation and inadequate emergency response training proved to be root causes of the accident.After that ride we had to see if we were going to Glow in the dark.

So on to the Harley Davidson factory in York, Pennsylvania where we took the guided tour. That is a trip all should take. It is well worth the hour it takes to go through it. NOTE you cannot take pictures in the plant or even carry a camera or any knives, so if you carry a leatherman on ya leave it with your bike. September 25,26 is open house days there and you will get to see more than you do the rest of the year.

 

Here is a picture in the Lobby at York,P.A. Harley-Davidson plant.

Sorry I havn't updated in awhile. There seems to be a problem with 50% of the hotels with internet connections. But that is another story. So for a quick update here are a couple of pictures from the way back from Laconia. There are many of the old covered bridges to look at this just happens to be one in Newfield, New York.

While we were at it. It seemed like a good time to do a little Soar Plane riding. This was a real gas. It is on Harris Hill in Elmira, New York. We both took the ride, but they wouldn't let us dog fight up there. Oh well it sounded like a good idea to me.