The temp was about 65. Fired up the CA and headed into town to top up on gas and meet up with someone to make our way up to Hayward, WI. Its about 50 miles north of me. Its also a tourist trap thats usually crawling with visitors who have made their way up from Chicago or the Twin Cities. Anyway we meet up and get on the road. I'm leading and he's following on his '95 Virago with a sidecar. All is good for the first 10 miles or so but then I get this feeling like the bike is working pretty hard to maintain speed. Slowly my speed creeps down into the 40's and I downshift to maintain speed. Not good. So another mile or two I make it to a gas station and pull in. I notice something right away. The old CA is really hard to push.I try the foot brake lever and there is no movement. The back brake is dragging pretty heavily. So I whip out my multi tool and back the brake rod adjuster off 2 turns. Rolls easy and the brakes still work. Thought about what damage may have been done but decided to press on since it couldn't have been to bad.
Well the bike had renewed life and we were carving up the twisties like only a CA77 can. I even passed a few cars that were blocking my view of the fall colors.
We made it to our destination and found a parking spot about 3 blocks from where we actually wanted to go. But as it turns out I noticed that after I parked the bike and removed my helmet that this was the spot I was destined for. There spray painted on the wall was a single word, "Dream". Kinda weird.
Kind of a poor picture. A friend took it with a weird camera setting and I had to adjust it a bit to actually be able to see anything.
Anyway we ate, we talked, and then we rode 50 miles back home.
That trip bumped the old Dream to well over 2000 miles in the last 4 months. Not to bad for 42 year old bike. The only problems to date were a broken clutch cable, that brake adjustment, and changing the spark plugs a couple of times.(still runs a little rich on the top end) Oh, and a few oil changes.
