Friday 6th March
On our way to Daytona for the start of bike week we stopped off for a coffee at Starbucks where thanks again to our UK plate we got talking to a biker named Bruce who gave us some route advice for good roads through Texas (the Texas Hills) and also his contact details if we were passing his way we should contact him. We also took his advice on buying a phone from Walmart with 120 free minutes for $30 that would last for 3 months before we would need to buy more minutes, so we can now contact people in USA easily and cheaply. This was a lot cheaper than we had managed to find so far in any of the phone shops.
We headed on down to Main Street in Daytona by this time it was raining very heavily. Daytona was knowhere near as busy as we had expected even with the rain and managed to park our BMW right in the middle of all the Harley's, it looked very out of place. Even though Main Street was closed off to all other vehicles there was very little parking and they were charging between $5 and $7 dollars down some of the adjoining streets which were also closed off the only free parking was on the pavement on Main Street.
There were bands playing to very small crowds and all the shops and stalls were almost empty. We got free t-shirts from the guys at the www.motortourer.com stand.
As we were near to BMW dealers we stopped to find out how much to fix the leak on my bike and if I could get it done under warranty, also I needed to know how easy it was to get the water pump off as it looked very tight and I was not sure if I could get the pump out with out dropping the engine. They were very helpful but could not do it under warranty as my bike was not on there system but suggested I try and get my dealers from the UK to pay for it so I have emailed and await there reply. They also said that the pump will come off without having to drop the engine so I should be able to do it my self the only difficult bit might be replacing the rubber seal. As it was $395 I hope they say yes but it's not the end of the world if not.