Polyphemus

On departure 3676.5

On Thursday evening I headed out for a ride on Bishop Hollow Rd.  My intention was to head out on Bishop Hollow to 352, make the left there and go the my gun club to check and see if the pistol league had started already.  Then the plan was to come back on 352 to Bishop Hollow again and take that back home.

But plans are just that.  As I headed out on Bishop Hollow I remarked to myself how much improvement had been done on the roads since our last trip there.  A lot of the preliminary work had been completed and big portions of the road had been completely resurfaced.  However, soon after passing Chapel Hill Rd, the road was mostly in a state of preparation with no repairs completed.  Large portions of the road had been torn up leaving large rectangular open pits with at least a four inch drop from the primary road surface.  I hit the first one pretty fast, to the point that I worried I might blow a tire.  From there I slowed down to me the transitions in and out of the pits but by pit number five or six the rattling must have been too much for the Bullet.

After negotiating the jump out of that pit, somewhere past Featherling Lane but not quite to Steeplechase, the headlight jump out of the bucket.  Luckily the wires held and the headlight remained attached to the bike and light but dangling like a large cyclopean eye from its optic nerve stalk.

Polyphemus after meeting Odysseus

I pulled over on the side of the road and assessed the situation to see what could be done.  Nothing had fallen out and been lost although one of the clips holding in main bulb was lose in the housing.  I reattached that and determined that it was all a matter of resitting the bulb and tightening the top screw on the light housing.  Since I was here, however, I took advantage to make a mod that I've been wanting to do for quite a time: the removal of the jumper cable disabling the light on/off switch.

The jumper cable is the short group of wires between the two read connectors on the lower starboard side of the headlight nacelle.

Here's the jumper cable after I pulled it away from the nacelle.  From here it's just a matter of disconnecting the two white couplers from each other, removing the cable and connecting the red couplers together.

Red couplers with the jumper removed before being attached to each other.

Jumper cable

All back together with the top screw nice and tight now.

Once this simple operation was done I was out on the road but by this time I did not want to continue on down Ridley Creek Rd because I could see several more pits from my vantage point.  So I just turned around just past Steeplechase and headed back on Ridley Creek/Bishop Hollow.  The return lanes had all been fixed to this point so there were no hazards to negotiate on the way back.

At Providence I took a left and headed towards the Pike.  I crossed the Pike with the intention on staying on Providence to its end at Sugartown.  At the intersection with Goshen I saw a dark blue Maserati making a left in front of me onto Goshen.  This was not the same Maserati we saw on Sunday afternoon on Goshen because although they both appeared to be the same model this one was a much darker blue than the one on Sunday.

I continued on to Sugartown took the left there and another left at Goshen for the trip back home.  Despite the hassle with the headlight and the fact that I cut the ride short after that it was a good ride with not too much traffic and with good roads in the portions that have been repaired.  I will wait at least a week before I venture out on Bishop Hollow again.

On the way out the odo had 3676.5 miles and on return 3698.2 miles for about 22 miles on this run.

The exotic tally stands at 15 Ferraris, 13 Teslas, 11 Maseratis, 4 Bentleys, 3 Cobras, 2 McLarens,  2 Austin-Healeys, 2 Lambos, 2 Unknowns,1 Rolls Royce, and 1 DeLorean.

3698.2 on return