12-14 hour days gradually became 15-16 hour days as the grapes really started coming in. My bike had been sitting idle in the garage since we had arrived, and though I was itching to get out for a ride to shake off the stress of the days and enjoy the incredible curves of the Pacific Coast Highway, I resigned myself to simply being happy that my chain had lasted over 28,000 miles, and instead stared longingly at the Transalp whenever I went into the garage.
The winery was a very busy place with trucks delivering grapes coming and going with empty bins, mechanics coming and going to fix the necessary machines that inevitably always seem to break during harvest when they are most needed. All of this noise faded into the background as I stared at the grapes riding the belt beneath my nimble fingers, ready to pluck any one of them that didn’t cut the mustard. Until one day, the FedEx truck pulled in and delivered a heavy box with my name on it from Bike Alert. This was a delivery that elicited celebration and ensured a long night after work… it contained all of the materials for the maintenance required to get the bikes back on the road in happy condition: new JT Sprockets, JT Chains and Hiflofiltro oil and air filters… YIPPEEE!!!
The Transalp and Africa Twin are both quite happy with JT Sprockets (the AT has been nearly around the world on JT Sprockets), but until checking out JTSprockets.com, we didn’t realize that JT also made drive chains, so it had always been a crap shoot as per what chain we would use, based off of availability, price and the tools we had at our disposal. Knowing what excellent quality the JT Sprockets are, we were excited to see how the drive chain would perform and so we reached out to Bike Alert to see if they’d be willing to help us out. Knowing what one would need for normal bike maintenance, they very generously added the Hiflowfiltro oil and air filters to our box of goodies, which sent us over the moon completely.
We rushed home from an abnormally “short” 13-hour day and got to work right away on my bike.
New JT Drive Chain/Sprockets… check!
New Hiflofiltro Air Filter… check!
New Hiflofiltro Oil Filter with new oil… check!
Roel followed suit with his bike the following evening.
The sad thing was that we knew our bodies and minds were not sharp enough after 4 grueling weeks at work to safely go for a ride. So our bikes continued to rest, but now at least they were ready to go at a moments notice.
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